I have two floor-standing speakers, no sub. Maybe it is just the usual placebo effect, but I could swear that when I put the switch to "BP", there is more bass coming from the speakers.

Is this possible or it it just my mind playing tricks on me?

That is more than just possible, it is exactly what should be happening. If you put the bass management switch in any position other than BP, you are engaging a crossover network that applies a high-pass filter on the left and right speakers (removing data below the crossover point for the position that the switch is in and sending the rest to the left and right speakers) and a low-pass filter on a summed copy of that data for the subwoofer output (removing data above the crossover point and sending the rest to the subwoofer). Since you don't have a sub, the only position that you'll want to use is "BP" because anything else will simply throw away the lowest frequencies.

Hmm, I guess I understood the manual wrong then.

It ships with bypass switch set at 80 and I did not see anything in the manual that says to set it to BP if you do not have a sub.

The manual seems to focus more on what to do for subwoofer setups. Bypass (like all positions of the bass management switch) provides a subwoofer output, but it is an unaltered duplicate of the left/right data - good for using a sub's own bass management. The other positions apply bass management to the subwoofer output, but what isn't explicitly stated (as far as I could find at the moment) is that the low-pass has a high-pass companion.

Thanks for posting this. When I set my system up, all the possible bass control options just confused me and I ended up leaving everything the way it came from Outlaw. But it just didn't sound right, the bottom end just was not there. Radio stations sounded better in my VW Golf than they did in my living room. After reading this thread... I checked to see if my switch was on BP... took me reading the manual to find a switch with a BP position. Seems the Bass Management switch on my unit was set to 100!! No wonder the bass just didn't sound right. Set the BM switch to BP and everything sounds much better. Thanks

Hmm, I guess I was not the only victim of the bass management switch.

I think it would be great if Outlaw could change the manual or put in an insert into the existing printed manuals to explicitly state that if you don't have a sub, you should put the switch to BP.

Definitely good to know, since I don't have one yet either.

My girlfriend plays violin, she has a much more musical ear than I do. She says everything sounds better since I flipped the switch to BP. She felt before that notes just ended, no decay to them, she says that the notes now sound complete and fuller. I didn't tell what I changed, I just told her that I made a change and asked her if it sounded any better/different. I am not sure what else this switch does to the music... but everything sounds better with the switch in BP mode, not just the lows.

Once again, Gonk rescues the confused among us!