What is bass management?

Bass management and room correction are two different things. Room correction is the process of analyzing a room’s acoustic signature and removing the adverse effects. Bass management refers to the process that redirects low-frequency information from the various speakers within a system to a subwoofer. Most speakers cannot efficiently handle low bass. By utilizing a subwoofer for the low bass, you not only relieve the strain on woofers, crossovers, and amplifiers but also elevate the performance of your entire system. Because ARC measures the full acoustic response of speakers and subwoofers, in addition to calculating room corrections it can recommend ideal settings for bass management.

One aspect of bass management that often confuses people is how it works with LFE (Low-Frequency Effects) tracks (the .1 in 5.1). A home theater processor passes the full bandwidth of an LFE track to the subwoofer. When bass management is set to redirect low bass from other channels in the system to the subwoofer, the processor sends this information (up to the crossover point set for the other speakers) in addition to the LFE track so that your subwoofer plays both.