Why I dislike traditional bass management

[VonMagnum]

I think there is more flexibility than you might think available on many AVRs. My Marantz
7012 can play my PSB T45 mains (L/C/R are identical) as large (response flat to 35Hz) and play the sub too for extension. I can cross my rear PSB full size X1T surrounds at 40Hz (they play flat to 35Hz also, being a newer version of the T45) separately from any other sets (bass is weaker in the back of a 24' long room than the front third and I have three rows of seating and 18 speakers. My older Def Tech Powerfield 1500 sub has full phase control. I can toy with the sound in many ways without moving a thing.

What I have personally found inflexible are people. Try and suggest to use full range towers as full range in addition to the sub on a site like AVS and watch the mosquitoes come to bite you. They have a couple of well regarded (some might say worshiped) gurus there and you can be 100% correct and one of them wrong and the crowd will turn against you anyway (sone have me on ignore for contradicting Sanjay) because you couldn't possibly be right against their god.

The first thing they will tell you is to cross even Def Techs with built-in subs at 80Hz. A corner sub is always better. "Studies" have shown this blah blah blah. Odd how I've got perfectly even response down to 30Hz with my Carver AL-III ribbons with two downward 10" drivers (bi-amped with a custom active crossover designed by a former Carver engineer) and they're most certainly not in the corners.... My room must be magic! Actually it has uneven boundaries in the back and a long hallway where a corner should be. I've never heard better uncorrected bass response in a room before and the wooden sub floor gives a visceral impact/feeling my home theater (that plays flat to 20Hz at the MLP) can't quite match. According to those experts, I should cross those off at 80Hz and buy a subwoofer to put in the corner!

 

[GrimSurfer]

I'm not sure how much I accept the theory of the inflexibity of people. I think some of what we see is the result of people having an incomplete understanding of the issues affecting sound.

Bounded thinkers usually don't want to discuss theses -- they'd prefer talking about their solution. They do this because a discussion of the issues runs the risk of reaching the point where they are proven wrong. When forced back to discussing the issues, they often become quite dismissive once they reach a point when their position is undermined by fundamental physics.

It's as if somebody challenged their belief system, though it would be a stretch to say that they had a system at all. Only preferences, normally product based, and almost always occupying a place in their living or family rooms.

The points you raised about hard views illustrate this.

Subs in corners? There is no simple answer for this, but is very much dependent on the application. (Personally, I'd prefer to buy a sub with the necessary LF response that having to rely on room gain and all the issues that brings.)

Using towers in full range to even out bass? Again, no simple answer. One cannot simply dismiss the potential effects of having two LF drivers, in a tower, side by side at one end of a room. (Personally, I'd prefer a satellite/multi sub arrangement because it avoids this, and other effects, in a cost and performance effective manner. But there are times when the tower/sub approach makes very good sense. It's all in the application.)

80 Hz crossover? Yeah, that's the THX boiler plate but one is better off getting a detailed diagram of their speakers' frequency response and doing some spl calculations to figure out the logical crossover point. (Personally, I'd rather work things out on my own and get things as close as possible before expecting room correction software and a $30 microphone to do the heavy lifting.)

So all the boiler plate audiophile "dos and don'ts" don't mean as much to me as having an issues and principles based discussion on a particular application.

I guess that's why I'm so popular ;-)

 

[VonMagnum]

There's a matter of taste too. I like my bass dialed up 4-6dB below 80Hz. I do wish there was a simpler way to adjust that in AVRs. It's a simple matter with a sub or bi-amping (the only legit use for bi-amping with an AVR IMO). I just turn up the bass output dial on my active crossover on my Carvers. Even the Q-point is adjustable.

But I can't turn up the bass levels on my PSB mains or surrounds short of the tone controls. So even if I'd like a bit more bass out of them below 80Hz (again, I'm not crazy about flat), I can't get it except to let the subwoofer do it all.

I can get another pair of X1Ts for side surrounds instead of the bookshelf B15s I'm using or a speedwoofer for a similar price for the back of the room. Which would be easier to get flatter response? I dunno.

 

[GrimSurfer]

There's a matter of taste too. I like my bass dialed up 4-6dB below 80Hz. I do wish there was a simpler way to adjust that in AVRs. It's a simple matter with a sub or bi-amping (the only legit use for bi-amping with an AVR IMO). I just turn up the bass output dial on my active crossover on my Carvers. Even the Q-point is adjustable.

But I can't turn up the bass levels on my PSB mains or surrounds short of the tone controls. So even if I'd like a bit more bass out of them below 80Hz (again, I'm not crazy about flat), I can't get it except to let the subwoofer do it all.

I can get another pair of X1Ts for side surrounds instead of the bookshelf B15s I'm using or a speedwoofer for a similar price for the back of the room. Which would be easier to get flatter response? I dunno.

Active crossovers... I like it!

 

[VonMagnum]

Active crossovers... I like it!

Yes, it's been pretty sweet. I've had the crossover for like 20 years now (I've had the speakers a bit over 23 years now; I bought them in the fall of 1995. I remember buying Tori Amos' Boys For Pele just to try the harpsichord out on it (IMO one of the best recorded alternative "rock" albums [if you can call it rock as it's all over the place on that album] of all time, IMO, recorded tracks went straight to DAT and Tori's sound engineer built a "room" over her piano and harpsichord keyboard areas and shared bench to separate her vocals from the piano and harpsichord so she could sing live as she played in a church in Delgany, Ireland). The drums were the only analog recorded exception (her previous album Under The Pink was all analog and also had pretty good sound quality; I've got her first four albums on vinyl as well as CD along with Abnormally Attracted To Sin and the rest on CD). I started using that album along with some Pink Floyd to test speakers at hi-fi shops.

The active crossover has no off switch so I've been concerned a bit about its longevity. OTOH, it has no caps in it (inductive only) and they along with cheap transformers are the primary components that go bad. As long as I can figure out what eventually does go bad, I can just replace the part. I don't have the schematics, though. And the guy that made them disappeared (web site vanished) shortly after his divorce went south so I'm afraid another isn't an option (I'm afraid something happened to him too).

Frankly, my ribbons should be dead by now from everything I read (they did start going flappy/snappy sounding as the ribbons loosened; the lifespan was rate as around 8-12 years based on humidity where you store them). But it turns out they have built-in tensioners that seemingly few knew about. You can tighten them back up similar to a guitar string. I wasn't sure that's what the screws did, but they felt like it turning them and the odd thing was the effect wasn't instant (they are also possibly fastened in other ways too), but within a day or so all the noises disappeared. They came back about 5 years later. I tightened them again. Good again. I think the left ribbon is about as tight as it can go at the top, though now. I do have a spare in the closet downstairs, though that hasn't been tightened yet.

There's a guy that makes replacements, but it's pretty pricey for the original material (I read he bought all Carver's inventory when they shuttered) and he's disappeared now and again at times too, I think. There's another company that makes replacement ribbons also, but they use mylar (like electrostatics typically use) not Kapton film and while they claim it's within +/- 3dB of the originals, that's the typical range for ALL speakers (up to 6dB peak to peak isn't tiny). I'm not convinced the speakers would ever sound as good as they do ever again. The crossover is based on the Kapton film material and it's frequency response too. However, my active crossover does have three "tonal" controls that supposedly match the variation in the original passive controls on the back. I know the top one makes a hell of a difference in the high frequency output or lack thereof (also a bit harder to drive the more you crank it up). It took some time to find the optimum tonal settings I like the best. The controls are pretty subtle except at the very top (turning that one down to the middle is a bit like listening to a record with a CD; the highs just start slowly rolling off above 12kHz.

 

[ryanosaur]

Tori Amos' Boys For Pele

This and Choir Girl are both amazing works! I agree that there is a great range in both albums to use for testing purposes. (I like Northern Lad off Choir Girl for its stripped down Vocal and Piano.)

I like yours and Grim's comments here about the dogma aspect of bass management... Too much "just do this and you'll be fine" type of attitude. Everybody is in a different boat with their equipment, room, and preference. If I corner loaded my room, I would have the worst bass response.
As @GrimSurfer followed some comments I made on another thread, I at least find flexibility in the Geddes approach to setting up subs. I don't run active crossovers, and I won't have full range fronts for a bit... but the idea of strategic and asymmetric placement has been key for me! When my towers do come in, I'll prabably have to move a sub... don't know where, but then I'll have four LF sources instead of just two right now.
That said, ya, there is a certain amount of truth to some of those attitudes, but like all things: moderation is key.

 

[VonMagnum]

I agonized whether to open/play my Choirgirl Hotel LP or not when I bought an reasonably introductory high-end vinyl rig. So few copies were sold it was worth quite a lot of money unopened and still quite a lot played once and if I did sell it some like to know it's not defective so I played it ONCE and recorded it at 24/96 on the first play. I thought that album was a bit too lacking in the dynamic range department (much louder than her other albums overall) and kind of shrill on the high-end compared to her other albums at the time so I figured the LP might be better and bought a copy for $14 in 1998. It was selling for over $350 by 2015. Sure enough, the LP sounded much better to my ears than the CD, although still not Under The Pink or Pele quality, IMO. The Pele record cleaned up with iZotope RX sounds just shy of the CD, IMO. Little Earthquakes cleaned up with iZotope has less hiss than the CD (well I purposely sampled the hiss as a filter and wiped it out; amazing software for that sort of thing). It now probably sounds better than the CD.

I also recorded the 30th Anniversary Dark Side of the Moon LP on its first play. I got lucky. There were two pressings. One had a defective pressing and supposedly sounded terribly noisy/horrible (ratings were pretty bad for that release overall because of that). The other plant produced perfect copies. I had no idea which version I had until I opened/played/recorded it. It was the good one. Not so much as a single click/pop the first play. I play that one occasionally straight off the record, though.

I still have one unopened album and haven't opened it for a reason. It's worth a small fortune and I don't like the album that much compared to the studio album versions. It's Pink Floyd's PULSE LP set with 4 records and a tour book. It's still shrink-wrapped. The last time I looked a few years ago it was still going for $800-1200 unopened. Of course, if they ever re-release it like they did The Division Bell it probably won't be worth squat by comparison to now, so I probably should unload it.

 

[ryanosaur]

For me, flashing back to mid-late 90s and the days as a performing rocker, I was really impressed by the evolution she exhibeted in her sound and style, between those two albums. Of course, at that time, I had nothing compared to the rig I have today. Still enjoy both.
Funny, I think back to a movie quote about cigars being more expensive than drugs. Vinyl is more expensive still!
Cheers!

 

[VonMagnum]

Tori is my favorite artist of all time.

There's actually no chance of me selling that LP or any of her LPs, really.

 

[VonMagnum]

I've linked posts/pictures in my signature now to both my systems if you want to see what the Carver system looks like, etc.

 

[Jon AA]

But I can't turn up the bass levels on my PSB mains or surrounds short of the tone controls. So even if I'd like a bit more bass out of them below 80Hz (again, I'm not crazy about flat), I can't get it except to let the subwoofer do it all.

But you can with the 7012--I do--with the Audyssey App! And I strongly suggest doing so to better integrate with the subs when using a boost to the subs--especially with bass-capable main speakers. While the implementation of the App leaves much to be desired, it really does unlock some serious capabilities we didn't have before it.