[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Interesting post, brucek. Goes hand and hand with what I’ve experienced recently: Since switching from larger full-range speakers to bookshelfs, what I ended up with was response similar to your last graph, since the bookshelfs don’t have enough bottom end to smoothly blend with the sub. The result has been a trade off: Upper bass is lacking with music, but with video programming it’s an improvement. I often had problems with the voices, especially male voices, sounding “boomy.” There is much less, virtually none of that now, since response now is remaining flat to a lower frequency.

I guess the only downside to the lower crossover point is less EQ adjustment for the sub. A good compromise might simply be using the receiver’s tone controls to get the same effect as your bottom graph. Many of them these days have adjustable turnover frequencies, and if the tone control also extends to the sub output, then setting a low turnover frequency and then boosting could get the same effective response as your method.

Regards,
Wayne