Keep in mind that the Subwoofer will be in different locations than your Mains and receive separate signals than Front Left, Front Right. As far as utilizing a full Range Speaker at FL, FR as part of a Bass Control Update which also utilizes Subs… this is the same premise that Geddes uses in his strategy for using multiple Subs to even out response in the room.
With that, I would say that any Bass Control will not benefit a strict 2-channel system. On the other hand, full range towers (plus subs) could be smartly used as low frequency sources in the appropriate setup.
Based on my understanding, and that can be incorrect or incomplete:
- Dirac Live with bass control disabled will not do time alignment and phase optimization (the two are actually directly related and Dirac, Anthem, Audyssey never really even try to explain what phase optimization does aside from time alignment).
- With bass control enabled, it will time align the speakers among themselves and also align them as a group, to the subwoofers as a group (there is no detailed explanation of this "group" thing either).
I have searched extensively online including of course all Dirac bass control related articles on Dirac and other websites and have never found any single article that explains more details. My conclusion is that Dirac wants to keep any more details away from the public, to avoid, or at least delay others potential attempt to benefit from such information in their own product development.
So, we'll probably never know whether DLBC could, or already can help in 2.0 through X.0 applications, without subwoofers. In theory, it obviously can, as post#357 mentioned.
I respect Geddes, but without actually reading his publications that specifically discussed the strategy you cited, I could only add that based on my experience with the use of multiple subwoofers, I would have to say while the theory is sound, in terms of how it would tend to "even out response in the room", I found it made it hard for room correction systems, at least the 3 have experience with to work well, versus just a single subwoofer. Given the theory involved, I think it makes sense, that is unless the subwoofers are placed in symmetrical ways in a well shaped room (such as near perfectly rectangular, obviously), it could be a monumental task for the algorithm to work.
I can put together a set of comparison graphs to show how DL can do a much better job with one sub vs two. Can't do it with Audyssey any more as I traded in both my Denon AVR and gave away my Marantz AVPs.
