Should Home Theaters induce ANXIETY? 

I came home after getting it and nobody liked it. I like it!

@@PoesAcousticsI like it too! Lookin good!

Why?

@@PoesAcousticsYou show me how much I don’t know!

Happy to be helpful 😀

Yeah why? Love life, love ❤️ truth, love theater, life is beautiful!!!!

@@shaolin95, it's perfectly fine to want to run 20-30 dB EQ to bring out a flat response in the infrasonics, but many BEQ proponents act like they are restoring creator's intent, when that is most likely not the case, as Matt states in the video. Trying to justify a gear obsession with extreme low-frequency effects is fine, but don't go around claiming people who don't are ignorant. Even the creators don't do that. Are they ignorant or lacking real world experience?

I dont use BEW, but am intrigued and would like to hear more from users and professionals in the industry… most other you tubers with high end systems have chosen not to use BEQ, so I’m temped to follow their choices.. but still cusious

I know a lot with high end system owners that use BEQ Unfortunately, many don't even know what it is and when people like Matt make a comment that boosting subs level is the same things (as he did on this or a different video) then of course less people is going to be interested in trying it. If you got the gear to take advantage of it, BEQ is a game changer ​@@NicolaeLorimer

@@NicolaeLorimer Lots of people with high end systems also use BEQ so it goes both ways. This is not a commercial app so in HT meetups rarely anyone is familiar with it but when I demo it in my HT room, hardly anyone does not ask me how to do it as they want to add it.

@@NicolaeLorimer I think it's interesting to use BEQ if you have a Bass shaker or a HoverBOSS, but not for subwoofers. That's my opinion, but in my opinion, not using it on subwoofers allows you to retain what the designer intended to be heard. At least you're closer to it, while having Tactile with the HoverBOSS and or the Bass shaker.

I don’t know what your amps and sub drivers are. But I’ve achieved very good infrasonic results from 12’s sealed subs. Distortion always rises below 25-30hz. That’s to be expected. You may not need that highpass filter.

Thanks for the reply! I am using Icepower 500 amps and my drivers are low fs 20Hz tuned to 0.7Q but not extreme xmax. What kind of distortion levels are you seeing in the 10-20 Hz range?

Thank you for supporting my channel. I'll be recording a video and answering your question shortly.

@@PoesAcoustics Since my question is fairly narrow in scope for others, if you'd prefer we could address this question and others I had in a private phone consultation. I'll post a consultation request on your website so we can take this offline.

Just donate a few bucks, the price of a cup of coffee is not that much to spare…imagine how much time and effort it takes to shoot, edit and post a video

Nah, I figure if there isn’t any reply or acknowledgment to my question on several videos where there are only 30 comments, it’s not that kind of RU-vid channel. That’s fine, there are lots of one-way channels and media types. I had just assumed this channel was more interactive.

@@AV84USA you can also try the AVS forum to get information and answers to questions

There’s an assumption that he’s actively ignoring your question. Instead, he may well be addressing those who have paid first and if there happens to be time to make more videos and others haven’t donated then answer questions of those like yourself. In a lot of ways, he’s giving away his experience and knowledge to all that watch for very little money from 1 person.

@@derekharrell9116 it sounds like that is probably the case. Incidentally, how much have you donated to his channel? I’ve never thought to donate to RU-vid channels, mostly because by liking and subscribing RU-vid pays them royalties on ads. However I have hired several people based on their RU-vid channel. For the record, my question was simple, nothing open ended. I laid out all the variables and it was just a yes or no type query based on his experience.

Yes. As I said in the video. Anytime I’ve asked any sound engineer (which spans many studios and three major groups), nobody has told me infrasonic bass was intentional. They all point to the standards which dictate the focus down to 25-30hz. I have heard stories of studios adding special subs to reproduce infrasonics. But I have no idea if that is true as told or what the room response was like. They may have added something for better deep bass but meant 20hz to 35hz. Not sub-20hz.

I can remember 1974’s “Earthquake” with Sensurround - Cerwin Vega and BGW amps delivered reportedly in excess of 120dB of infrasonics - enough to crack the plaster is one theatres, but not to rescue an otherwise dreadfully formulaic film.

​​⁠this is one of those situations where the legend is better than the reality. Film stock can’t produce bass that low. Not even close. The amplifiers and tape decoders were AC coupled with -3dB points of 20-25hz. So they used a random tone generator that worked between 17hz and 120hz. Barely into the infrasonic range. The cerwin Vega subs couldn’t produce infrasonics with any significant output either. The BGW amps were AC coupled and rolled off below 20hz. Really none of the system could produce significant infrasonics. What was significant was that they created more bass output than had been the norm. That bass was still strongly in the sonic range. Before that they simply hasn’t used subwoofer effect speakers before and it significantly increased bAss energy. There was a cracked plaster incident but only because of the amount of bass. Not because of some infrasonic blast shaking the building apart. Reality is that tons of bass at 20 or 30 or even 40hz can do plenty of damage. And it’s a good example of where the playback didn’t match the dubbing. It was monitored without the effect speakers. I am sure there was a playback in a properly equipped venue before its release. But they didn’t install the subs and number generator into the monitoring system. That was really added for effect.

@@PoesAcoustics Clearly as credentialed industry expert, you have access to both data and insights that some of us old farts don’t. All I can remember is that I left the theatre with a sense of WTF was that about, and let’s not forget that was approx 50 years ago. As for impactful infrasonics in a domestic environ that don’t wake the family or neighbourhood, I can imagine that’d require substantial investment in structural support and hardware.

@@fonkenful yes and no. I think people would be surprised. I mean my system shakes the whole house to a point if pushed too much. But 99% of the time I can be going full blast and it’s like mild thunder in the distance. Certainly the neighbors can’t hear it at all. Standard basic sound isolation methods executed correctly can stop a lot of infrasonic bass. As for the old Cerwin Vega system. I have no doubt it was a wild experience. Nothing like it existed at the time. There was no surround format with an LFE channel. I believe Dolby introduced it and that was late 70’s. The idea that you would not try to carry the very low frequency effects on the tape and instead use feeder signals to drive a noise generator on site was actually kind of brilliant given the technological limitations at that time. We still suffer the same problems we did back then. It’s just not as extreme. Making devices that could be or are flat to DC is tricky to do right. In fact well engineered electronics won’t pass DC by design. So when you want to pass near DC it becomes really hard. Pro audio amplifiers today largely roll off below 20hz and have a -10dB point of around 10-15hz. Even the best amps still are -10dB at say 5hz. Home theater processors are similar. Their outputs are far from flat to DC. And the problem was just worse back then. Same with subwoofer design. In the 1970’s the drivers just weren’t very good. Not by today’s standards. Limited power handling. Limited xmax. And then we have the CW horn enclosure. Horns don’t typically do infrasonics well. There are exceptions and you can build them for that. But they tend to have a quick roll off below their lower bandwidth limit. 4th to 6th order rolloff. Designing a horn to operate below 35hz requires that it be really large (much larger than the CWs even). JTR built a sub that did decent sub 25hz bass using a sort of design cludge that, when combined with the extremely powerful and high excursion driver (one of them is equal to 4+ of the old CW drivers) allows it to do well down low. But the problem back then was efficiency and output below 50hz. Nothing at that time could produce a lot of bass below 50hz with any real volume to fill a concert hall or theater. CW made horn enclosures which are a way of gaining a ton of efficiency but limiting bandwidth. So they were amazing for the time. And of course horns are still used today for their virtues. But no horns put into theaters or concert venues are producing much below 25hz. The greatest exception are still limited to 17hz and above. Which is a half octave lower than the industry standard, so it’s a big deal. But it’s not what most home theater guys seriously consider infrasonic.

Look up BEQ and a new world will open up for you. 1Hz 3Hz all that is possible with Tactile and BEQ and the immersion is through the roof

@@shaolin95 The sickness strikes again!

@@Saturn2888, the best argument to me for the EoT intro being unintentional is the fact that the same square wave is present in the center speaker. There is no logical reason that should be there, or why you'd place infrasonic effects in a bed layer speaker.

@@shaneb0422 why would they implement a filter in the mastering, if they are confident they are in place during playback, and the filter is in place in their systems during the mixing as well? More to the point, it might have been a habit thing. Until quite recently, getting infrasonic bass in a home was a niche of a niche (still is to be fair), and in-home sound systems were not expected to replicate full-range full-scale signals, so worrying about mastering to avoid damage to equipment in homes was not a problem. It's a *very* recent issue, and streaming/recent disk mixes are starting to implement it as per Matt's response. It's not that they didn't know better, it's that it wasn't a problem.