Before we get into it please note that above all, set your system up however it sounds best to you, playing the music and movies you enjoy. Use common sense and a respect for the demands you're placing upon your speakers, amplifiers and subwoofers to ensure long term enjoyment and reliability from your system.
A Little History
If you browse the GoldenEar forums (www.goldenear.com/forum) you'll quickly find that bass performance in general and surround sound bass management* remain a source of confusion, generating lots of questions and messages. To further complicate matters, it seems some electronics manufacturers have been changing their bass management implementation (see below). We thought it might help to re-visit these topics as they relate to GoldenEar speakers, subwoofers and the Triton series with their built-in powered low frequency sections.
*Bass Management is the setting of speaker types and crossover points for a system that includes a subwoofer. This is typically accomplished on the "speaker setup" menu of the typical home theater receiver or processor. See next article for a full discussion of this topic.
Bass management didn't come up much in residential audio systems until home theater came about. It only existed with a very limited number of satellite/subwoofer configurations dedicated to specific speakers. Home theater changed all that because subwoofers were an integral part of their makeup and many theater systems included smaller satellite speakers with subs. Also soundtracks evolved to include the dedicated Low Frequency Effects channel (LFE, the ".1" channel). The content of this channel is separate from and independent of the information sent to all the other channels (more about this below too).
Bass management potentially brings many benefits to the performance of a quality audio system. But it can get a bad rap concerning issues that aren't necessarily its fault, particularly when there isn't a clear understanding of how it works and how it should be set up.
Boom Happens
It's common when describing bass reproduction to talk about "tight bass" and "boomy" bass. Everyone loves tight, punchy bass and most everyone hates boomy bass. But what causes that undesirable, boomy, indistinct thud? In most cases it's the result of standing waves/room modes caused by a combination of the room dimensions and the wavelengths of the frequencies being reproduced. When they match up you get a perfect reflection of a particular frequency's wave back and forth between room walls or floor and ceiling.
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Every frequency has a wavelength |
The result will be areas in the room with way too much of that frequency and other areas where the same frequency seems almost non-existent. Sit in either area and you'll complain about either boomy, one note bass or lack of bass. And if you sit right up against any wall in the room there'll be a buildup of bass pressure waves that will cause bass boom there too.
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Out of phase reflection causes cancellations, in phase reflections cause large peaks and deep nulls |
Another common cause of boomy bass is too much subwoofer volume. It seems many of us like a little more bass than is called for, so cranking up those subs becomes a fun guilty pleasure. It's important however to realize that "tight bass" actually starts in the lower midrange. If you can, disable your satellite speakers and listen only to the output of your subwoofer. If it's crossed over
between 80 and 100 Hz (as many are) you'll primarily hear deep rumbling "noise" and little if any "bass tightness", which is as it should be.
That pluck of the bass guitar string, thwack of the bass drum hit, etc. emanates from the midrange section, not the subwoofer. Turn up those subs too much and they'll overwhelm the output of the midrange driver making for boomy, indistinct bass response. So be judicious with the subwoofer level controls to achieve the best bass performance.
Changing the Game
Of late we're seeing electronics that limit the dynamics and/or level of the LFE channel when you've chosen to set the powered-bass Triton main L/R speakers to "Large" with the sub set to "No". The LFE channel is typically recorded into the soundtrack at a 10dB higher level than the other channels and we believe that manufacturers are playing it "better safe than sorry" in limiting its output in this case. Try comparing the LFE channel output with the settings as noted above and then with the main L/R speakers still set to "Large" but sub now set to "Yes" for a comparison in your system (of course you'll need to run the LFE cable to each Triton with built-in powered sub).
Be aware too that when you set the front main L/R speakers to "Large" and Sub to "Yes" with other system speakers set to "Small", all the bass for these "Small" channels will be re-directed to the main L/R channels, NOT the subwoofer(s) - and only the LFE signal will be sent to the sub.
You can always experiment with various combinations of bass management settings but always use caution and common sense to avoid system damage.
