How do you get bass when you don't have bass management?

[sukothai]

Again, it's unfortunate to me that many mixing engineers have chosen to create an LFE channel for a music mix as you have, but life goes on.

Please explain to me why you think it is unfortunate. Why is it wrong for me to do this given my system constraints?

 

[seriousfun]

Please explain to me why you think it is unfortunate. Why is it wrong for me to do this given my system constraints?

In your situation, if it sounds good, keep doing what you are doing. It's little more than a tone control in your case anyhow.

To present this mix as the only presentation for all potential playback systems would be unfortunate. For the vast majority of users, it would sound worse that a properly presented mix (with no conjured-up LFE channel).

 

[Kal Rubinson]

OK for your personal use but putting essential music information in a .1 channel requires the user to have a subwoofer. In addition, those that lack a subwoofer will also likely lack bass management to compensate for that lack.

 

[sukothai]

if it sounds good, keep doing what you are doing.

conjured-up LFE channel

If it sounds good, is it conjured up? I almost thought I was getting an affirmation, but then ended up with just another assault.

I thought I had found a solution that didn't cost money and I still haven't heard any constructive reasons why it is wrong. Ah well, I'll just go back to my cave and make music that sounds good to me. I would still appreciate any *constructive* criticism of my approach or alternatives that don't require new hardware.

 

[sukothai]

OK for your personal use but putting essential music information in a .1 channel requires the user to have a subwoofer. In addition, those that lack a subwoofer will also likely lack bass management to compensate for that lack.

How does having a .1 channel require a subwoofer? The mains still have the full range of sound -- nothing was subtracted from them in the creation of the .1 channel. If they lack a subwoofer, why would they need bass management?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

You are proposing a redundant .1 channel? Even worse as it will require those with a sub and bass management to turn off the sub in order to avoid doubling the bass.

 

[sukothai]

You are proposing a redundant .1 channel? Even worse as it will require those with a sub and bass management to turn off the sub in order to avoid doubling the bass.

Yes, I am proposing a redundant .1 channel. Because I don't have bass management (the title of this thread.) And anyone creating a 4.0 DVD-A is limiting those with systems like mine to no bass. It is a real problem discussed elsewhere on QQ.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

You have a system with a subwoofer that will not do bass management with DVD-A. I am not an aficionado of automobile audio but it would be a rare and unfortunate home system that lacked that function. That's why I think that what you propose, while solving your particular problem, is a poor general solution.

 

[sukothai]

You have a system with a subwoofer that will not do bass management with DVD-A. I am not an aficionado of automobile audio but it would be a rare and unfortunate home system that lacked that function.

It was and still is a very common problem for DVD-A and is why the Outlaw ICBM and others like it were invented. I believe HDMI soved the problem and is why solutions like the ICBM are no longer available. Here is a review of the ICBM from February 2002 Stereophile:

"Outlaw ICBM-1 bass-management box
($249; reviewed by Joel Brinkley, February 2002)
Unless you're using full-range speakers in all channels and no subwoofer—a rare scenario for a home theater—bass management is a big issue with the new high-resolution audio formats of DVD-Audio and SACD. That's because the players provide limited or no bass management for these formats. And few surround processors or receivers redirect the bass to the subwoofer when playing these formats in the only way possible in most cases: by way of their analog multichannel passthrough inputs."

Note the sentence "few surround processors or receivers redirect the bass to the subwoofer..." above. This is exactly the problem I'm talking about.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Yes, that was 2002 Guide to Home Theater and I reviewed it in Stereophile in 2003: http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/1203round/index1.html Things have changed since and well before HDMI.

 

[sukothai]

Yes, that was 2002 Guide to Home Theater and I reviewed it in Stereophile in 2003: http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/1203round/index1.html Things have changed since and well before HDMI.

How have they changed? My home receiver is a Denon that I bought in 2000 and my car receiver is a JVC that is 5 or 6 years old. I have been using the ICBM with the Denon and I have been looking at HDMI and the proprietary Denon link. It's hard to find anything that does DVD-A for the car anymore. What else is there that solves the problem? Is there something that would work for my car? Maybe I'm just way behind the times.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

As I said, I have little knowledge (and not much interest) in car audio but, yes, a Denon from 2000 is fairly dated and, btw, predates the ICBM reviews. All the equipment I have reviewed seems to have no problems with bass management of DVD-As (although I have not paid close attention to them lately).

 

[sukothai]

I recently helped my Brother-in-Law set up a brand new Denon receiver. We found the bass management worked fine with Denon link or secure HDMI, but did not work with the analog connections. The Denon documentation is a little lacking, but it appeared to me that the bass management logic worked only in the digital domain; so required secure digital interconnects between the DVD-A player and the receiver. I would be happy to learn about a different solution and I understand you are not familiar with the car audio equipment, but anything you could pass on about home audio equipment would be helpful.

Thanks, - Ben

 

[Kal Rubinson]

That is, indeed, the case. All DSP functions, such as bass management, format decoding and processing, roomEQ, etc., are done on PCM signals and, therefore, require digital input (HDMI, DenonLink, S/PDIF, etc.) or a processor which will re-digitize an analog input. Very few will do that with a multichannel analog input (only the very expensive processors) but most will do that with (some) stereo analog inputs. In this day and age, I do not know why one would want to use analog from any digital source. Is there a reason why your brother-in-law needs to use multichannel analog connections?

 

[sukothai]

There are some very good reasons to use the analog outs: oppo BDP-83 Special Edition being one of them. But I was really only bringing this up to demonstrate that HDMI (or other secure digital link) *is* the reason bass management now works. In a previous post you implied the bass management issue was resolved well before HDMI and I was trying explain why I thought HDMI was the solution and trying to discover what non-HDMI solutions existed.

It sounds like you are saying there isn't anything that resolves this problem in the reasonable price range.

 

[depeche76]

i can confirm HDMI connections improves bass, (maybe a.k.a. bass management or LFE management). I used to connect my oppo 980 through analog connections and i always felt a lack of bass (CDRB excluded), more noticeable on SACD stereo recordings, but also in mutichannel, all the Police and Peter Gabriel titles were horrible to the point of throwing them to the garbage. Fortunately i tried the HDMI connection, and after that there was no turning back to analog, all SACD titles have a lot of bass and have greater "prescence", the sound really improved. Now i suffer from a lot of bass in some titles (for example Aerosmith´s Toys in the Attic SACD or Seal Best of DVD Audio).

 

[Kal Rubinson]

There are some very good reasons to use the analog outs: oppo BDP-83 Special Edition being one of them.

Some will say so but, as we are discussing, it results in a loss of competent bass/channel management which I find inadequate in Oppo players. http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/music_in_the_round_41/

But I was really only bringing this up to demonstrate that HDMI (or other secure digital link) *is* the reason bass management now works. In a previous post you implied the bass management issue was resolved well before HDMI and I was trying explain why I thought HDMI was the solution and trying to discover what non-HDMI solutions existed.

Any digital source will do into any modern processor. For example, bass management is quite competent with S/PDIF sources although that restricts the user to either 2channels or lossy mch formats. Nonetheless, there is no problem with bass managing such sources.

It sounds like you are saying there isn't anything that resolves this problem in the reasonable price range.

? Almost any cheap AVR with HDMI or S/PDIF can do it. How about a $300msrp Onkyo AVR: http://www.us.onkyo.com/model.cfm?m=TX-SR308&class=Receiver&p=i

 

[sukothai]

Yes, I should have specified I was talking about analog bass management. I know about the digital ones.

The orginal problem was how do I do a quad conversion so that I get bass in my car. While building the .1 channel myself works, I truly would prefer to have proper bass management so a 4.0 disc would work. To this end, I've been researching auto receivers and it looks like the Pioneer AVH-P7800DVD will do bass managment properly on DVD-Audio. Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks, - Ben

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Yes, I should have specified I was talking about analog bass management. I know about the digital ones.

Ah. The only ones I know are the ICBM and the ManagerMAX (http://martinsound.com/pd_mma.htm).

 

[Ge Someone]

Although most replies are correct on their own, the original question was something else.

To make a DVD-A that produces low end on the player (that refuses to do bass management on DVD-A) in the car, you should first determine the "crossover". That is where the normal channels roll off the low frequencies (that could probably be somewhere between 80 to 150 Hz). Then for the DVD-A you want to create, sum either the (3) front channels, or all channels, and use a lowpass filter to keep only the low end the satellites don't cover. Experiment to find a suitable level, and put that in the .1 .
Such disc might sound good in your car but not necessarily anywhere else. Just remember this disc will give double bass sound on a system with working bass management or big speakers and a sub.

Now you've told that your home system has no .1 channel. So, if there is again no bass management involved, the same disc might sound OK there as well. If necessary, you could take it a step further and add the 0.1 of the original (not the summed up one) to the front L+R channels. I don't recommend that.


BTW I was lucky that my Onkyo receiver was of a series that can have bass management on all inputs, including the Hi-Res analog. When bass management (or any other processing for that matter) is switched on, the input channels are converted to digital with 24/192 AD converters. Afterwards 24/192 DACs convert the result back to analog before amplification. This was not available on the lower models and removed in the next model range that came about (replaced by HDMI).