Brianca:

Very interesting article; thanks for the link. This all points up my main objection to the current 'bass management' thing - it's confusing as bloody hell to just about anybody, and when you factor in SACD and DVD-A, it's worse! I'd bet there are _very_ few people out there who can make sense of all this stuff: it doesn't pass the "my grandmother can do it" test!

He's quite right that when summing signals to be low passed, you do the summing first, then low pass the result. Phase anomilies result otherwise. That's one of the reaons I do it the way I do, (not using the LFE output of the processor: setting it to "no subwoofer"), avoiding the whole mess. I noticed that he described my setup exactly in the last sentence of the article, too. In an actual film dubbing stage, they don't use 'bass management'. The LFE is just sent directly to the sub woofer as a seperate channel. Setting the low pass on a subwoofer (in a conventional setup) really low, like to 40hZ is not really much of a liability in my opinion. Any 'hole' that results may not be audible as such. Things get pretty messy in the bass region below 100hz on any system, in any room, so differences might be swamped by such things as standing waves in the room etc. Short of using a real time analyzer and calibrated microphone, it's going to be a comprimise in any system. My recommendation, tune it by ear if that's the only option, and enjoy the show!

I _am_ taking it as an article of faith that when I set my surround crossovers in the 950 to 60hZ and the center to 150hZ that it does what I would expect it to do as I outlined in my original post. Now you've got me thinking. I'll have to measure exactly what's going on to confirm. Luckily, my surrounds and center are actually capable of running full range. In the 'mixing console' configuration of my system, they are in fact receiving a full range signal.

Thanks for bringing all this to my attention!

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited October 11, 2002).]