High End jargon; your take

Blackstonejd- In other words: Pitch resolution and speed= "tight" Anyone that has been standing(or sitting) near a well played drum set will know what "tight bass" sounds and feels like. Without it there is no sensation of the tautly stretched drum heads, stuck by wooden sticks, their resonances and decay. Likewise: The plucked strings of a double bass, and the resonance of it's body are lost without a system that's capable of "tight bass". I call that "rumbly blur" of an underdamped bottom, "one note bass", because it renders everything in the lower frequencies the same. ie: No distinction between the kickdrum and bass(guitar or upright) when playing the same line. Of course: If you never experience the sounds live, or are seated in the back row/against the wall/in the corner(cheapest seats), where everything is mud anyway: You don't know what "tight bass" is, and can't relate. BTW: My son is a drummer, and one of my best references when tweaking the bass of my system.

Rodman,

You're right regarding drums and bass!

BTW: I think the ultimate test material for bass "tightness" is Bela Fleck and the Flecktone's UFO Tofu album. Flight of the Cosmic Hippo isn't bad either. ;)

I third Rodman's comments - spot on - exactly right - that is just how it all sounds! Well said! Although a high Q system (underdamped) can sound pleasant (with plenty of bass for a small WAF friendly design) it will not convey the lower octaves clearly so that you can feel the "texture" of bass sounds. There is actually a stunning amount of information in the bass - every individual track should actually sound dramatically different in the bass just as every midrange and treble usually does.

I agree with the above comments, even if my own personal opinion is that the Q scale is skewed a bit low for my tastes. I realize these are the historical numbers, but I feel a value of 0.5 is beyond ascetic. Then again, there are a lot of guys who think the younger Kate Moss was the ideal, so who am I to say? Going against the traditional figures of 0.7 being ideal and 1.0 being on the voluptuous side, I feel 1.0 is pretty close to reality, the right balance of all parameters.