Here's another response I found....

Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Bateman View Post


Autosound 2000 solved this one twenty years ago. Save yourself some heartache and pay the three bucks for their guide to doing this. (Google "david navone autosound2000 upfront bass etc")

In a nutshell, you want to get a few things right:

  • As Lycan noted, the "impact" of the bass is a lot higher than what you'd think. If you screw up the midbass range, you'll never get the "upfront bass" illusion.
  • When it comes to subwoofers, second and third harmonic distortion is The Devil. For instance, if a big bass note hits at 40hz, the 2nd harmonic is at 80hz and the third is at 120hz. THERE'S NO ELECTRONIC METHOD TO REMOVE DISTORTION. That's the critical thing to the illusion of upfront bass. YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH ELECTRONICS. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something, or simply doesn't know better.


Once you have those two points down, you'll start to realize why some systems seem like the bass is up front at low volume, but when you crank it up, it goes to hell. That's subwoofer distortion rearing it's ugly head.

Once you have that figured out, you just pull out the usual tricks to fix it:

  • Distortion goes up with excursion. Therefor, if you can keep excursion under control, you can keep distortion under control. (There's a reason that Richard Clark used dual 15s. Lots of cone area = low excursion = bass up front.
  • Infransonic filters can lower distortion dramatically
  • Unconventional box designs can lower distortion dramatically. Tapped horns, horns, ported boxes and bandpass boxes aren't used half as much as they should be. YES they're difficult, but they're distortion-killers when designed properly. Designed improperly, they can really suck.
  • Push-pull mounting is free and reduces second harmonic distortion dramatically.
  • The best way to reduction distortion is to measure it, and deal with it accordingly. I'm always kind of amazed by how difficult it is to pinpoint distortion by ear.