Using preamps with Bass Management and Room Correction?

I use the STR integrated. It's a wonderful amp to begin with and the ARC makes it glorious.

I have the STR Stack to a 2.2 system in a smallish dedicated room and it works awesome. ARC is a great tool but not the magic bullet, properly treating the listening space is also a good idea.

I have a Paradigm PW Link preamp and a Paradigm PW Amp integrated amp. They both have ARC and it is much better than a straight ahead preamp or integrated amp without room correction. Yes, you need to still do room treatments but WOW, even better in a treated room.

If you are on the fence get this:

https://www.dspeaker.com/anti-mode-x2

@schw06 You’ll find bass management difficult in most rectangular rooms without something called a Distributed Bass Array. This is the use of at least 4 subwoofers placed assymetrically about the room so as to break up standing waves (nodes) so that bass is evenly distributed about the room. Quite commonly a standing wave can cause cancellation at some bass frequency at the listening chair.

If you’ve noticed that there is more bass other than the listening position then you know what I’m talking about. A DBA corrects this quite easily. In fact so easily that I question whether bass management and room correction is really needed.

A subwoofer meant for this sort of use, and designed to be flat to 20Hz when placed directly against the wall, is the Audiokinesis Swarm.

Bass problems are easily 90% of the difficulty you run into in most rooms, and if you only have two woofers (one in each speaker, or two in each speaker for those with speakers that have dual woofers) no amount of room correction will get rid of a standing wave. So if room correction and bass management systems are trying to correct that, they will send a signal to the amplifier that has lots more bass in it- and since its being cancelled by the standing wave, you’ll run out of amplifier power before the correction can occur.

This is true even if your amplifier makes 1000 Watts.

Alternatively, less than four subs can be used, but you’ll find that they have to be placed precisely to be heard correctly at the listening position (in particular if you have only one) and that position might not be very convenient!

If the bass is right, you’ll notice right away that the system gets more relaxed in the mids and highs. This is because the ear has its own ’tone control’ so if bass is lacking the perception is the system is bright; if too much bass, the system might seem dull or muffled. But using a DBA this is easy to correct. In my system it took me 5 minutes.