Bass management with stand alone preamps

mike, the Trinnovs fan is dead silent. Very slow speed. It does tell you how much computing power they have in there. A Lot. To call it a preamp is an understatement. It is the best room control available at this point, it is digital bass management for two channels although not quite as powerful as the TACT bass management and it is a DAC. It is also $11,000 with microphone. 

Is this Trinnovs first foray into two channel?  I hold them mostly as a home theater type company.  

I always laugh when people bash tone controls but then roll in different tubes to flavor the sound. 

The problem that you often run into that makes people think they need bass management is something called a 'standing wave'. This is a bass note that is of such a frequency that when it bounced off of the wall behind the listener, the result is that there is a bass cancellation at the listening chair.
This makes the listener want to turn up the bass, which might come in the form of 'room management' or 'bass management'. If you have a high performance system, both will degrade the sound.


Another issue is when the standing wave is in phase with the incoming bass, creating something called 'super position'; IOW a massive bass output at a certain frequency. Both can occur at the same listening chair.

If you have this problem, room correction might be able to correct the super position but not the null created by the standing wave. No amount of power corrects that and room treatment doesn't work either.

The solution is called a 'Distributed Bass Array'; the best example being the Swarm subwoofer made by Audiokinesis. The idea is that two subs go near your front speakers, the other two are placed asymmetrically in the room boundaries to the left and right of the listening chair (placement is not critical). This breaks up the standing wave and gives you even bass distribution throughout the room.


Problem solved: no need for 'bass management'. Just a second output to drive the subwoofer amp.

esthlos13, yes Trinnov does 8, 16 and 32 channel units using the same system. The Amethyst is the only two channel unit they make. They make a stand alone room control unit but the Amethyst adds a lot of important features like digital bass management, a great DAC and even a phono stage which frankly I would not use. I need two phono inputs and I'm a dyed in the wool ARC guy when it comes to phono stages. But, if the turntable is a minor part of your system and room is limited it is probably fine. Lyngdorf is an out growth of TACT Audio. For some reason Lyngdorf does not offer a stand alone 2 channel processor/preamp which is a shame. The TACT 2.2X was at the Apex of TACT's development and it is an amazing processor/preamp. Built like a battleship it has very high resolution room control, unlimited target curve management and the best bass management I have ever seen. You can change cross over points and filters on the fly and choices are unlimited. High pass and low pass filters are set independently. You want a high pass filter of 97Hz @ 80 db/oct? Just dial it in and hit the go button. It has Dynamic Loudness Control. A series of target curves simulate the Fletcher Munson curves at various volumes and it drifts from one curve to the next as you change volume. You set the curves to be flat at the loudest volume you listen too then as you drop the volume the compensation increases. So, as you drop the volume the frequency balance of the music does not change down to -48 db. None of us ever liked loudness compensation because it only worked at one volume. It was off everywhere else. This system is  great. The music just sounds the same no matter where you set the volume control otherwise it is totally invisible. So, why did this unit not succeed? As you might have guessed I have one. TACT (Boz) decided to market his units directly. He did not use dealers. He was doing this to try and keep prices down. In his genius mind he did not realize that every one was not as educated in DSP as he was or just not as smart. The 2.2X is anything but user friendly. If you put the microphone close to any object funny things would go wrong with the measurements. You had to know when it was screwing up or you got really sick sounding compensation filters. The user manual sucked and the learning curve was steep. He had no dealer support so he got buried in phone calls and problems. His units got a bad reputation and finally Boz just disappeared. If you are techish and computer savvy and see one of these on the market for anything less than 4 grand buy it! You will have a blast.