[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Hey Chris,

I seriously doubt that many could make good use of brucek's or Wayne's suggestions. Few want to get that involved and only want a reasonable response so that they can relax and watch films.

Yeah, I know - we’re a sad, sad bunch, aren’t we? I’ll have you to know we spend lots of time and money on our systems making sure the deliver the absolutely best-sounding sine waves!

Just kidding, or course...

Cutting to the core issue: What is the general recommendation for those suffering troughs? To boost the overall suboofer gain then drag the surrounding response down to the target curve?

Well, I guess it all boils down to which “general” you want to go with! My esteemed college likes to keep S/N ratio as high as possible. I’m not worried about it, since you can’t give up more than 16 dB, which still leaves the S/N at least 78 dB - plenty for a subwoofer application. Back in the days of turntables and cassette decks we would have thought we had died and gone to heaven if we could get the S/N ratio that high!

More specifically to your problem, I usually recommend a combination of boosting and cutting filters. Just look out for a null when boosting – i.e., a problem that doesn’t respond. Try to keep the input and output meters at about the same levels when you’re finished, and you’ll be fine. The output meter shouldn’t be drastically higher or lower than the input meter, which is what you might get using all boost or all cut filters. I also think I’d try to keep the levels well below clipping, since I’m finding the meter doesn’t seem to give us accurate readings with those booms and explosions in movies. I think I’d keep things no higher than the –6 reading until we can get this sorted out.

By the way, this that you wrote earlier...

I have noticed very little lightbar activity on my BFD. A third bar is very rare even on the heaviest bass.
Even the second bar is quite unusual. Which suggests I am not pushing anything too hard.

...tells me your levels are way too low. As noted, try to get them up to at least –6.

Regards,
Wayne