You can clearly hear more bass when the (non existant) rear speakers are on then when they are off. You also hear more bass in large mode than in small mode. It is like you have the bass control on and say, that is OK. Well, maybe it is. It is like my wife's car with the sub. They just added the sub. clearly too much bass but she likes it. I, however, don't want my living room soulding like a JBL car system. To me, the LARGE setting is unusable, so I use the SMALL setting.