Bosso:

Your points are well taken, but I think you way overestimate what is being demanded of the subwoofer by the LFE channel. Also, the listening levels you are talking about will not be used in any home enviornment, at least by anybody who wants to keep their hearing intact. I don't even listen at those levels!

I think you are also blowing up the issue of potential phase problems too. They just don't exist in the real world, on real world movie soundtracks.. Movie LFE tracks and the bass in the other tracks just isn't that radical - mostly it consists either of slowed down natural sounds, of filtered pink noise that has had an envelope overlaid, or sounds processed by a DBX bass synthesizer. There are no "phase" problems to be had; they would immediately make themselves known during the film's mixing process. It is routine during the mixing process to do "crashdowns" into stereo or even mono in order to catch any potential problems down the road.

The film's mixing engineers take into account the fact that the film will be played under much different circumstances, and on lower quality system than on the dubbing stage. They mix the bass accordingly, and they have phase meters where they monitor for potential problems.

There just isn't as much to worry about as you seem to think there is.

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited April 05, 2003).]