It is interesting you guys are not hearing these things. A lot must have to do with your crossover settings. In my opinion my 80's are producing most of those frequencies based on my 80hz crossover.
And yes, after smoothing things out with my SMS-1 this "punch" did improve as I've eliminated most of nulls/peaks that were cancelling the frequencies in those ranges.
I think my new 600 amp has the updated firmware with no brickwall in place, but even before I've always heard the stand up bass strings and kick drum.
Great summary Randy.
You nailed it.
All this talk of slam and punch should be directed at how well the subwoofer is integrating with the speakers. The fault lies with speaker/sub implementation not with one componenet. Replace slam and punch with mid and high bass. Several things will mess it up incuding: wrong crossover point resulting in improper phasing , poor sub placement relative to the speakers, FR anamolies, room acoustical problems, use of mono instead of stereo/dual subs. A single sub will always sound inferior to a pair.
If your sub and speakers are out of phase near the crossover point because of placement or room issues, you aren't going to hear that crisp pluck or snappy snare drum. Also for that purpose, the brickwall filter is actually beneficial since the sub stops contributing any output to the upper harmonics which are more deftly handled by the speakers. If you are using a mono EP600 with M80s with music, I would strongly suggest not going higher than a 60hz crossover and ideally with a 40hz crossover since the M80s can easily handle the stereo bass duties down to 30hz. I'm assuming also that you have a powerful enough amp to drive the 80s as they will need more power with the lower crossovers. Lowering the crossover should reduce artifacts which are likely caused by several of the above noted problems.
Interestingly at a blind sub shootout last year with several newer subs, the EP600 held its own very well during some very demanding scenes, with one participant choosing it as his favourite sub.
