CD players will not offer any bass management, so to some degree it's a moot point. DVD players will offer some bass management on multichannel analog outputs, assuming they have onboard Dolby Digital and/or DTS decoders, but that bass management only relates to the analog output - digital output is unaffected by the player. The bass management issue gets complex due to two factors: players with good two-channel DAC's for CD listening, and SACD/DVD-Audio/universal players that force you to use the multichannel analog outputs.

For players that have good enough DAC's that you want to use the stereo analog output rather than use digital output and your receiver or processor's DAC's, you want to be able to make sure the analog signal passes through the receiver without being converted back to digital and processed. That requires an analog bypass, and since the stereo output from the player has no bass management the question often becomes what (if any) bass management can be applied at the receiver or processor when using analog bypass. In general, options are very limited - the left and right channels should get an unaltered signal, but it is sometimes possible to generate a signal for the subwoofer.

For multichannel analog output, many players (especially older ones) can't do bass management on high-res audio (SACD and DVD-Audio), which once again raises the question of what can be done at the receiver or processor. At one time, there was even less possible here - that's why Outlaw came out with the ICBM a number of years ago. More recently, processors (and some receivers) have offered a couple of options. Some will convert the analog input to digital and apply digital bass management. The 990 does this if the speakers are set to small in the 990's setup menu, and the 1070 and 970 will do this if the analog bass management switch on the rear panel is set to "digital." A very few cases will offer a basic 80Hz analog crossover network - first seen on Outlaw's Model 950, this has appeared on a few other products (including the 1070 and 970 when the rear panel switch is set to "HPF/LPF"). All of these options have to be balanced with the player's capabilities. Basic bass management (large or small speakers and a fixed crossover at 80Hz or 100Hz) is pretty much standard for Dolby Digital and DTS decoding, and more and more players are applying the same bass management to SACD and/or DVD-Audio. The trick is finding out if the bass management really does work for SACD and DVD-Audio, and if the crossover used is what you want.