You never answered the questions about full range speakers, DVD-A titles with 24/48 surrounds, why there would be bass doubling on pre-pros that handle the LFE signal correctly, etc. Let me get this straight: the recording engineer has double bass in the recording (bass in all 5 channels plus the summed bass copied from ALL channels in the LFE). His studio's professional monitoring set-up does "not reveal the mistake" but a consumer home theatre does? You're really expecting me to believe that no one in the production chain would catch a double bass problem? Yes, inept engineers exist, but they're not a reason to broadly advocate discarding the the LFE channel. Why? Because some engineers might actually know how to use it properly. Or do you not think it's a remote possibility that there are recording engineers that understand how to create a mix using an LFE channel? If the system is set up wrong, then bass problems will occur for all sources, not just DVD-As and SACDs. Bad bass management doesn't discriminate that way. Conversely if "a consious audio lover has adapted the sub in the specific system to match the other loudspeakers such that it makes for a nice and flat frequency response when listening to music", then the frequency response should be flat for 5.1 channel DD & DTS material as well as 5.1 SACD & DVD-A sources. All those sources have LFE channels and the system won't give you double bass on SACDs but not double the bass on DVD-Vs.

You can balance a system around a 5.0 source, where the sub only sees derived bass from the other channels. THEN, introducing the LFE channel would give double bass. But why would anyone do that, especially at a time when the LFE channel is ubiquitous on multi-channel material (music and movies)?

Again, for the your examples of double bass to occur, the prerequisites seem to be: 1) a problematic recording that has twice the bass, because this problem was apparently never caught by the recording and mastering engineers; and/or, 2) a problematic speaker set-up where if you reproduce the bass in all the channels plus the LFE content, you automatically end up with double bass.

By your argument, any system that faithfully reproduces the contents of an SACD (i.e., the full contents of all 6 channels) is automatically doomed to the double-bass problem. And surprise, that's why you didn't name a single one, even though I asked you twice. No need to suggest it; I do it routinely. At the push of a button, I can switch the 5.1 inputs on my pre-pro between the digitized version or pure analog bypass. Can I hear the loss of resolution with the digitizing step? Yes. But it's negligible compared to the benefits that proper bass management and time alignment give. Based on listening to it both ways, I've always chosen the digitized version. As I said before, we each choose where to compromise (until there's a digital interface and the digitizing step won't be needed).

BTW, my pre-pro also allows me to adjust the volume of the LFE channel separately from the volume of the derived bass from other channels. I've tried dialing down the LFE on SACD/DVD-A recordings; the result always sounds anemic compared to the flat setting. But then again, my system was set up and balanced with the LFE channel in mind. Sorry, my mistake. I have no experience with the ICBM so, unfortunately, I'll have to withdraw the only "100% agreement" I had with you.

Best,
Sanjay