Bass rant


Does anyone else surmise that the minions weaned on exaggerated THX sound in sticky floored cineplex's, sold on window-shaking subwoofers in their motor vehicles, and subjected to hearing loss in loud stadium concerts - might have trouble understanding what constitutes an accurate bass guitar tone/timbre/volume? I read post after post on this and other forums of those decrying their systems lack of bass. While I grew up listening to a lot of live music in nightclubs and stadiums from Bobby Short at The Carlyle, to Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, to John Fogerty at The Greek Theater, I believe I can differentiate the realism of an upright bass and one unnaturally amped (acoustic or electric), and yet I cannot understand all the bleeding over of the home theater systems exaggerated bass sound into many dedicated audiophile sound systems. Please educate me.
byegolly
The problem is subwoofers are a total design compromise need to be small for waf and cost, thus need large excurtion and massive power this greatly reduces transent responce and bass details. Needs boundery reinforcment to generate bass, again bass qualitys effected since best spot for subwoofer to generate low freqincy might not be the best sounding spot or best integration. Andmany loudspeakers today are using such weak motor transducers no wonder bass is droning booming dull delayed etc. With bass go big, large drivers, low excursions, hi-eff. Thus massive. If you cheat physics you get a conventional subwoofer and thus subwoofer sound to bass.
With bass go big, large drivers, low excursions, hi-eff. Thus massive. If you cheat physics you get a conventional subwoofer and thus subwoofer sound to bass.

Exactly large 12"+ drivers in a massive box is the way to go or else it is just BEP Boom Boom Pow...
The laws of physics are strictly enforced. I tried every short cut that was offered before I ultimately wound up with 15 woofers in 5 cubic foot ported enclosures. This approach has provided me with a very realistic bass that reaches all the way down to 50 hz. before it rolls off rather steeply.

The reason I am willing to accept a lower limit of 50 hz. has to do with trading quantity for quality.
I used to have Dodge RAM3500 with subwoofer mounted under the right rear seat. It was lots of fun especially for the females sitting on that thing turned up rockin' high:-)
As I have said many times before, once home theater became popular, the emphasis in audio shifted from music to sound effects. Doesn't that explain what's going on?

Marakanetz - If you had used your Stereophile test CD, you could have determined the ladies' resonant frequency. Would've been interesting to find out if they are all tuned to the same pitch.