ELAC Bass 130 Active Bedienungsanleitung Seite 31

Volume- or Level Controls in audio systems are often thought to be the same as a cars accelerator pedal. This is
understandable, but wrong on principle.
The accelerator foot is the program material, for example music with its own dynamic. The listener adjusting the volume
control exercises a function comparable to the driver changing gears. High and low settings are inverted, i.e. a low volume
setting corresponds to a high gear and the volume full up is the first gear.
A Volume Control half open does not mean, for example, that the system is running with (only) "half power". With the input
signal high enough, the power output stage could be working at or above limit. A comparable situation in the car example
would be: Full throttle in the 3rd gear going uphill. Changing the conditions to 2nd gear (= volume further up) or going
downhill (= different CD with higher levels) with the same full throttle may result in damage for the engine.
Volume- or Level Controls simply affect the gain from input to output.
The Speaker Level input on ELAC Bass 130 Active has been designed to achieve full subwoofer output even with very
small power amps for the main speakers. With typical HiFi amplifiers and -loudspeakers a good balance is achieved with
the Subwoofer Level mostly below midpoint. With main speakers of low efficiency and 8 or 16 Ohms impedance
sometimes a position below -7 dB is normal.
The Line Inputs of ELAC Bass 130 Active will handle the quite high line levels of professional audio components without
problems. Many HiFi preamps and Surround Decoders for home use work with much lower line levels, so the typical
position of Subwoofer Level will be clearly above midpoint in these cases. For demonstration purposes or, if you want a full
sized bass reproduction of an original "thin" sounding program, sometimes even the maximum position is needed.
A Subwoofer Level adjustment which matches the main speakers is occasionally difficult to find, especially if the Crossover
Frequency is low. Some programs carry nearly no low bass at all. If you do adjustments under these conditions, you end
up with much too high Subwoofer gains, which show up as soon as the CD is changed or a different soundtrack is playing.
Also it is easy to get used to extremely high deep bass levels -- "they don't sound loud, do they?" -- which would require
subwoofers of many the size of Bass 130 Active.
In order to catch the risk of damage by extreme situations, the ELAC Bass 130 Active features an internal control circuit.
When reaching the full power limit, a soft clipping of the waveform is done (instead of the otherwise sharp clipped peaks).
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