Anyone with a high-end home theater sans sub?

Exert-who? Fluffer? No, I've never done gay-porn, nor do I care to, thank you.

Without a doubt, you can have a high-end home theater without a sub. The point of home theater (for me) is to enjoy the MUSIC in movies. I used to have a pair of bottlehead straight-8s hooked up to 5WPC SETs and watched many movies with friends on this setup. Movie soundtracks were OUTSTANDING and "high-end" in every way. Like any other system, there are trade-offs and comprimises that you will have to choose. An HT system without subs certainly can still be high-end. Too much bass is way more annoying than bass that's not quite as dynamic as it could be with active subs.

Flrnlamb -
No, not talking about gay porn here, please don't take offense at my question. Just wondering because there were a couple of very lively and informative threads on the 'Gon several months ago regarding proper bass management for home theater and "Exertfluffer" had lots to say on the subject.

The info/opinions and style of the writing by that author is very similar to your posts here. For example, check out a thread started on 12/31/04 titled "Too many speakers for theater?". The response from Exertfluffer on 1/02/05 sounds almost exactly like your posts above. Just wondering if you had changed your Audiogon handle.. no big deal.. and if that wasn't you, the coincidence is very interesting. JZ

Huh?...who dat?...who der?...dat you mama???
Sorry, wrong person.

Flrnlamb said: "YES, EVEN A PAIR OF OLD DEFINITIVE BP2000'S WITH 15" 1000WATT ACTIVE AMPS DRIVING THE BASS, WILL STOMP ANY WILSON GRAND SLAM, JM LABS UTOPIA FULL RANGE, or anything else you can think of that's passive, even being driven by, YES, Bolder 1000watt monos!!!!!...graantee it, every time!!"

Nothing could be further from the truth. The active subwoofer section of a Definitive BP-anything is not capable of high-end bass reproduction any more than Flrnlamb is capable of writing a respectful, modest, or believable description of his own knowledge on the subject.

Most powered subwoofers like the Definitive (and actually 99% of powered subwoofers) are incapable of the kind of accuracy, control, lack of boom or overhang, and integration that defines high-end sound. I would argue that systems which contain state-of-the-art amplification driving very accurate full range speakers are far superior in every qualitative way to all but the very rarest few powered woofers. By telling your surround unit to route the LFE information to the much more accurate main front channels, which are in turn being driven by a far superior amplifier, the result his high-end bass.

The vast majority of active subwoofers can, when dialed up to exagerated levels, provide much more bass quantity, but very poor bass quality.