what can i say? the system is calibrated properly.

i have dts-es discs, pearl harbor, gladiator and LOTR.

gladiator has very little LFE, actually. LOTR has enormous LFE content. i have to back off quite a bit with certain scenes to equal gladiator or pearl harbor (or, are you saying it's the player or the preamp or the amp?).

the clip indicators don't flash constantly, only during the scenes i use for demo purpose, and i assure you, i don't have the levels set too high. after many hours with many discs and all formats and nearly every conceivable routing/processing scheme...i know a hot signal when i see one.

my point is, really, that i don't believe that average systems handle LFE+RB well at all. they have subsonic filters, peak limiters, grossly distort (and most people simply don't recognize LF distortion), boost certain freqs with cheap eq, produce phase anomolies (the 950 can send RB from 5 different speaker locations at 3 different crossover points plus the LFE at a fixed 120 hz to a single sub that's usually 'placed' where it fits in the room best, close to an a/c outlet), holes or humps in response at crossover and do not play back the original content very well at all.

as far as what engineers would or would not ever do, mixes of all surround formats differ so wildly from one disc to the next, that i simply don't buy that statement. in fact, the fate of hi-res multi-channel audio rests largely in the engineer's and producer's hands. so far, not so good.

using a sub to augment an inadequate stereo setup is one thing. multi-channel audio is vastly different, mostly misunderstood and very far from a 'set-it-and-leave-it' standard. i feel about stereo like i felt about mono when stereo came on the scene. it frustrates me to hear the 'everything is perfectly fine the way it is' response. i guess if i was selling a bunch of this or that dolby or thx or whatever gadget, i would say the same thing.

separating the LFE to it's own system, helps the situation in more ways than one, and not just a little. of this fact, i remain convinced.