Gonk

Actually, the situation is a bit more complicated for “loss of bass”. When you redirect the bass to the sub, the bass management circuitry will simply mix the stereo bass signal together to create a mono sum and there are some problems with this approach. First, the center-panned portion in the stereo will be over-emphasized in the mono-sum signal. Second, any stereo bass effect in the stereo mix will be completely lost due to cancellation in the summing process. As I said, bass sounds have certain amount of directionality (especially in stereo signal) it is best not to cut them and redirect them to other speakers. If you really require extremely low frequency (below 30HZ) for your system I would recommend you to filter that small portion of frequency out from stereo and run it at a dedicated LFE sub; separate that low frequency with rest of full range channels untouched. I found not too many recordings contain frequency that low and it is not necessary to hear that low unless you are testing the special bass disk. For me, mid-bass is the most important. Maintaining highly correlated low bass in the stereo signal not only affords subjective advantages such as higher bass impact, but also technical advantages like higher bass efficiency. I usually buy raw drivers to assemble my own speakers. Even though Bi-amp or Tri-amp is not very cost effective; the performance is excellent and worth it. With active crossover, you can cross any frequency depend on driver’s characteristics with fine-tuning. I found if you really want truly “full-range” with dynamic and impact, bi or tri with larger drivers is a necessity. ICBM or Paradigm X-30 crossover is suitable for subwoofer.