How much bass do you want your system’s sound to have? A lot? A little? Whatever’s “normal”? But do you actually know how much bass your system reproduces in your room, or how smooth it is -- that is, how devoid of peaks and valleys caused by room modes? What’s the ideal amount of bass? Is there an ideal amount of bass for most listeners? Is the amount of bass affected by the type of music played?
In my February feature, “My System’s Most Important Component -- My Room,” I mentioned how a system’s sound can be altered by the simplest acoustic tweaks, such as throwing a blanket over a high-backed chair used as the primary listening seat. There’s a personal story behind that.
Read more: Your Listening Seat Matters More than You Might Think
I’ve seen a lot of online explanations of balanced audio circuits -- what they are, how they work, and why they’re desirable. Most of them are pretty accurate, but some are misleading. So let’s start with the ins and outs of balanced connections.
I vividly remember the first time I set up my two-channel system in a dedicated listening room. The year was 2000, I was 25, and I’d just bought my first home. Although I was already eight or nine years along on my audiophile journey, until then my systems had been set up in the living room of a two-bedroom apartment, and before that in my bedroom in my parents’ basement. I was excited to have a 15’L x 12’W room dedicated to my cherished stereo -- even if was still in the basement, it was my very own listening room. In fact, I’d chosen the house partly based on the minimum requirements of a space dedicated to serious listening.
In my December feature on SoundStage! Access, “Setting Up Speakers and Subwoofers Using Anthem’s STR Preamplifier with ARC Genesis,” I discussed my experience of using the sophisticated Anthem Room Correction Genesis software built into the STR Preamplifier. I explained the many benefits of ARC Genesis, outlined a shortcoming of using ARC Genesis in my own system, and wondered, given that the STR Preamplifier has a built-in phono stage, what it might be like to apply ARC Genesis to my record player’s output. Of course, that last would require digitizing my cartridge’s signal -- sacrilege to the analogophile.
In a July 2019 feature for SoundStage! Access, “Integrating a Single Subwoofer into a Two-Channel System for Beginners,” I discussed the basics of that subject, and in August expanded on it in “Integrating a Single Subwoofer into a Two-Channel System . . . for Those Unafraid to Take Measurements, Fiddle with Filters, and Apply EQ.” In that second piece I mentioned Anthem’s STR Integrated Amplifier and Preamplifier, both of which include Anthem Room Correction Genesis, and are turn-key solutions for bass management and room correction.
Read more: Setting Up Speakers and Subwoofers Using Anthem's STR Preamplifier with ARC Genesis
Lately I’ve been busy churning out reviews for SoundStage! Access and SoundStage! Hi-Fi, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process. While listening to, evaluating, and comparing audio gear comes naturally -- I’ve been involved in the hobby for 25 years -- I’m relatively new to reviewing that gear, and in the past year I’ve learned a lot about how to write reviews. As a career public servant working in the sciences and regulatory sectors, I’ve done my fair share of technical writing, and that’s helped me in writing the technical sections of my reviews -- but I continue to sharpen my skills in describing, in the Listening sections, what I hear.
Read more: Getting to Know Me -- and the Music I Use to Review Speakers and Subwoofers
When, in June 2019, I reviewed SVS’s SB-3000 active subwoofer for Soundstage! Access, I liked it enough to buy the review sample -- and we gave it a Reviewers’ Choice award. I noted that in my room, the sealed-box SB-3000 ($999 USD in Black Ash, $1099 in Piano Gloss Black) effectively equaled the quantity and quality of sound produced by my reference sub, SVS’s own sealed-box SB-4000 ($1499 in Black Ash, $1599 in Piano Gloss Black). The following July, the SB-3000 earned a slot on the Recommended Reference Components list of SoundStage! Hi-Fi.
Read more: Ported vs. Sealed Subwoofers -- SVS PB-3000 vs. SB-3000
Anthem is as well known to enthusiasts of two-channel stereo as it is to fans of surround sound. Anthem was formerly a subbrand of Sonic Frontiers; Paradigm, a speaker manufacturer founded in Canada in 1982 and headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, just outside Toronto, acquired Sonic Frontiers and Anthem in the late 1990s. Many of Anthem’s electronics are now made in the same Mississauga factory in which Paradigm builds their speakers, but they’re designed in the Paradigm Advanced Research Centre (PARC), in Ottawa, Ontario, not far from where I live.
Read more: Anthem's Peter and Mark Schuck on Subwoofer Integration and Room Correction
Last month, in “Integrating a Single Subwoofer into a Two-Channel System for Beginners,” I wrote about the first steps of that process. This month I go deeper, into various ways of using a high-pass filter with your main speakers, and the advantages of taking more measurements and using equalization (EQ), aka room correction.