I do hear this opinion being expressed now and again; why do you prefer it that way? Or, if you already have elsewhere, could you point me toward the previous post(s)?
One idea I've heard, I believe on the SVS forums, is "why waste your speakers' bass [...]
Good question! I have talked (vented, some my say...) at length about bass management and high channel counts, but not so specifically about why I don't currently bass manage my own LCRs in my *listening* rooms, so:
(a) I believe bass has "stereo" properties. While it may be difficult (impossible?) to localise at very low frequency, you can prove that a sine wave completely out of phase between the L/R will be basically silent on a mono'd bass management system but wide stereo when summing in room with "full range" There's something nice about it.
(b) in one of my asymmetrical rooms it happens that the bass summing of my L(C)R evens out some of the room cancellations. Unusually for me outside of work, I've measured it, and it seems real enough. A bit like multi-sub. I guess if you're running multisub optimisation, or just have a very well behaved room, this isn't relevant and/or may not be so lucky in other setups.
(c) This one kinda circles around my previous thread.... But in simple terms of what it means to me as a listener, I find the bass variance between different content more forgiving without BM. I've never felt the need to tweak anything for a particular viewing like I sometimes did when I ran with BM on all channels.
None of this is anything I feel particularly strongly about, nor is it based on some sort of conceptual ideal it's just where I've landed for now!
Better it happens in a poll than derailing a thread with 30 pages of discussion. Real clear format for everyone to express themselves.
