[antt]

Hi.  Yes, I know another bass management thread.  But I think this one is different because I've not seen this discussed before.

Today I stumbled across a bass management article on the "Secrets of Home Theatre" website.  See: link

I don't fully understand how this effects the sound, but it appears the basic argument is the high pass filter in THX equipment is designed for THX certified speakers, not for non-THX speakers.  Therefore....

The up front solution lies in getting receiver and processor manufacturers to start giving us a bass management scheme that caters to "full-range" speakers.  Taking the THX Linkwitz/Riley scheme as a good place to start, all they need to do is provide a choice of high-pass:  2nd order for THX speakers (and other true satellites), and 4th order for all others.  With such a crossover, the main speakers need only be reasonably flat to an octave below the chosen frequency, which, in the case of the common 80 Hz crossover, means being flat to 40 Hz.  Virtually all "full-range" speakers - even most of the smaller bookshelf models - qualify.

Yes, it's that simple.

The editors at Secrets seemed to consider this to be important.
James, what is Bryston's take on this?  Will the SP2 be offering this option?
Does anyone else think this is really important?  

If this feature was on the SP2, it's definitely one I'd use.

Thanks for reading,

Antt

[nicolasb]

This'd be nice, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

The bass management on the SP2 will be a significant improvement on what's in the SP1.7, partly because you'll be able to set different cross-over frequencies for different speakers, and partly because (I think!) it will do away with the SP1.7's problem of everything in the LFE channel above the cross-over being rolled off at 24dB per octave.

Being able to adjust the filter slope as well as the cross-over frequency would be quite cool, but it's less significant than either of the above, IMO. If you set the SP2's cross-over frequencies at the -3dB point for each speaker, I think you'll get fairly flat output - the in-speaker roll-off is more significant than the 12dB per octave of the cross-over anyway.