First a clarification: I am talking about film.
Big budget films are always mixed at large (10m) studios. Those studios does not tend to use bass management as they are so large that speaker placement is not a problem but subwoofer use use is. Even at 80Hz wavelength is more than double the size of the room width and
you can localise the subwoofer!
I do not expect you to take my words as is but I hope you will trust me not to lie. I have personally seen and/or discussed with friends who still work at the following examples that use full range speakers without bass management. I have also been to a Dolby Certifications of a large studio and was told by their engineers that all speakers should have a similar frequency response, preferably all made by the same manufacturer and the the same speaker model should be used for LCR, side, rear & top pairs. Dolby does accept bass management but as a secondary option. This is from
their document: "
If using speakers with limited low-frequency response, it is necessary to employ bass management to redirect low-frequency sounds to the subwoofer." It is not exactly saying you must use bass-management is it?
I am not saying that bass management is bad or that it is not used. However, for a major film to be released these days it has to have Dolby Atmos certification and a large screen to cater for larger egos of directors. Large studio and Dolby specs does not leave much room for the need of bass management. Studio designers/owners simply increase size and number of speakers instead.
Two of the most respected film sound studios in the UK,
De Lane Lea Studios in London,
Powell Theatre in Pinewood and Skywalker Sound and Dolby HQ in San Francisco, all use the cinema studio standard
Meyer speakers with no bass management.
For music mixing things are different. Abbey Road use B&W 800 speakers for LCR also without bass management. However, Atmos for music is not as stringent as Atmos for film. As there is no screen requirement the room size can be much smaller and often is. This allows bass management to be implemented without the above localisation issues.