In reply to:
Most of today's DVD-Audio players, and some of today's multi-channel SACD players, do not have bass management when you're playing DVD-Audio or SACD discs. (The players themselves may contain bass management menus, but this built in circuitry is probably effective only when you're listening to Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks.)
As a result, when you're listening to DVD-Audio or SACD discs, all of the speakers get a full-range signal, (with deep bass being sent to all speakers), and the separate ".1" bass track goes only to the subwoofer. Thus, the main speakers in the system may get more bass than they can handle. And in systems without a subwoofer, most of the bass will be thrown away, because it cannot be routed to the other speakers.
The ICBM can fix these problems entirely. Connect it between your DVD-Audio or SACD player and your receiver or preamp/processor, and the ICBM will put all the bass in the right place. If you have small satellite speakers and a subwoofer, it will keep the bass out of the small speakers and send it all to the subwoofer. If you have large tower speakers and no subwoofer, the ICBM will route the ".1" bass from the subwoofer track over to the tower speakers.
Even if your DVD-Audio or SACD player does have bass management, it will be much less versatile than the ICBM's circuitry, and thus won't let you fine-tune your system, as the ICBM will.
The ICBM works not only with 5.1-channel systems, but also with 6.1-channel systems like Lucasfilm THX Surround EX and DTS ES-Matrix and ES-Discrete. We have included an extra channel of bass management to accommodate these systems. That extra channel also lets the ICBM work with the 6.0 channel systems now being championed by Chesky Records. These systems repurpose two of the channels in DVD-Audio or multi-channel SACD, using the center channel as a left front/side "height" channel, and the LFE channel as a right front/side "height" channel.
In reply to:I would probably think that a great piece of pre/pro like Rotel RC-1070 should have great bass management features
In reply to:
With the ICBM in place you can tell the amp does not have to work as hard.Without it the RB 1080 gets quite warm but with it the amp barely gets warm to the touch.