Automatic Room Correction has won the Subwoofer Wars

Configuring a sub with digital bass management is not all that hard. Choosing the right crossover points and slopes is probably the hardest part. It helps if you can see them on a screen. Then it is all trial and error. Everyone has a theory but there is no single right answer. It depends on the speakers and set up. After this the subs have to be equalized so their response is flat at the listening position and finally delays set so that the sound of the subs and satellites gets to your ear exactly at the same time in phase. This require a full 2 way digital crossover. In my system the computer measures each speaker and automatically computes correction filters and delays. They are more accurate than what you can do manually.

I’m a very slow typist so I missed some of the action. Manually shifting a car is fun. Manually programming correction filters is not. I encourage people to look at my system page where I go over this with screenshots. What I see here is long on theorizing and short on experience. 

I'm seeing the title of this thread as clickbait.

Unless we are talking about DBAs vs oldschool, there are no 'subwoofer wars'.

Now one thing I'm not seeing here so far but Duke did allude to it is the Total Room Energy which dominates the room sound above 300Hz or so depending on the room. The thing is, if the speaker design is competent, the measure of this in an anechoic chamber gives a very good prediction of how the actual Total Room Energy will work out in an actual room. We all know how the off-axis response needs to smoothly drop off; the Total Room Energy is actually what dominates people's impressions of the tonality of a speaker.

This is a matter of good speaker design; it appears to me that ARCs are apparently most useful in dealing with speakers with poor response.

I’m seeing the title of this thread as clickbait.

Sir, do you not understand my role here?? :-)

It was meant to be a discussion, in earnest, about how easy ARC systems have made subwoofer integration and, my point, that the advantages for the average audiophile outweigh the negatives.

Look at how easy and how little complaints there are in Audiogon. I think that overall, ARC has proven itself quite useful and more of us should look at them as a good solution.

If anything, this thread was prompted by another I started about how hotly debated subwoofer solutions, and bass in general are.  ARC is the great simplifier.


Best,

Erik

I hope the OP will forgive me, but it seems this thread has already gone in bit of a different direction already.  It would seem to me, despite being somewhat contrary to audiophile common sense; that flush to wall/corner mounted drivers (preferably flat, concentric and with 1st order crossovers) coupled with room correction might be most advantageous.  Such flush mounting of drivers with room correction would negate the differences and overcorrection of the direct vs the reflected sound, as the time of sounds would be nearly identical.
 As the room response would be in someways more predictable, some of the placement induced concerns might be built into the drivers response, further reducing the amount of room correction intrusion into the signal.