Large speakers plus EQ, what have you done?

I've had a pair of Altec 604-8G in smaller than optimal cabinets, about 5 cu ft.    Spent a bit of time with REW and placement in a fairly large room, ~ 500 sq ft, and found the best overall support for the bass was, you guessed it, close to the side walls.  My Cardas speaker placement guide was laughing at me.  But the bass was strong down to 40 Hz with no EQ, and the nulls due to placement weren't noticeable.  But the horns seemed a bit peaky in the 1-3k range with certain vocals and brass.  Given the age of the stock crossovers, I made some using J. Markwart's simple crossover, listened to them for a while, but never quite liked the sound.  Went back to the stock crossovers and added some very steep notch filters at two of the frequencies that tamed most of the peaks.  Still short of perfection, but they're very pleasant to listen to for hours, and quite forgiving of less than ideal recordings.  To summarize, placement did the most good for bass, and getting control of the mid band peaks was the second step.  Have pondered DSP, convolution files in JRiver, etc.  It's all about the journey.....

Hi @toddalin - Every passive crossover is an EQ, but that’s really not what I wanted to discuss especially as most hobbyists aren’t going to mod anything about their passive crossovers.

While we can, generally, adjust the speaker to the room to match output with room gain what we can't really do efficiently is deal with narrow room modes.  I mean, it's possible, but then you end up with a very custom speaker that only works in one place with probably a large extra outlay in parts. 

pickindoug, these eq units are what you need, but they are probably "one-offs" made especially for my "one-off" tri-amped Super Big Reds with their "one-off" electronic crossover. I bought these from a recording studio that went under.

Yamaha NS-5000. 12 inch woofers. 26 hz. Very satisfied

I also have the NS-5000 with a CODA #16 amp and is a really great coherent sound. I do not want to eq anything on this system or add any subs. I have used convolution filters with other systems that were in smaller rooms with different speakers,

I will be buying an open baffle speaker in 2026 that uses multiple 16-inch woofers, and the bass on that speaker is setup using some sort of analog eq. I think there will be 5 Eq settings on the bass. That speaker sounded so good that I am going to get it and flip back and forth with the NS5000. 

Another way I have eq'ed bass is using the services of Mitch Barnett of Accurate Sound CA. His solution works with digital streaming servers such as ROON. I used that with my old Thiel CS3.7 which were in a too small room. I got some genius level convolution filters made by Mitch for that room, speakers, and listening position.