well, i went to best buy and decided to get myself a set of speakers about a year ago. i listened to a few diff ones and the ones that stood out for me were the altec lansing vs2121 (2.1 channel)...mainly cause they reproduced good high frequencies and the sub had a lot of "kick" or impact to it, and not just low frequency hum like the bigger, more powerful ones that could never reproduce the same "impact" feeling that this one does.

so i decided to get surround recently to see what i've been missing in doom3 and got myself the vs3151 5.1 channel....identical satellites to what i had with the the 2121 except an added 20w center as well as left and right rear. i initially thought that the same sub came with the system, but this one is a little bigger. but the crappy part is that i thought it would sound the same, except more powerful and that's not the case...

all it does is hum, like all the other ones that i didnt like. so the bass guitar comes through really well, but there is no crisp bass drum impact that i had with my less powerful, smaller 2121 sub.

is there some technical term for what i'm describing or a way to rate this difference?

tried fooling with the lower end of the equalizer on my sound card, and still cant come close to what i had before. .

suggestions?

thanks,
Leon

It's probably the frequency response of the speaker system. If it doesn't go low enough then bass "hits" (like deep bass drums beats) may not be reproduced well, where most (higher frequency) bass guitar notes would be.

I have Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers, and they do both sustained bass and low impacts very nicely. They also offer a 5.1 setup that sounds equally good in terms of frequency response.

Just a suggestion, in case you can return the vs3151 setup.

crisp bass drum impact is rarely anything but "bass".

That can't be true. The impact of a kick drum is often located around 2-3khz. Try boosting it on a parametric EQ and notice the increased snap. And the most impactful part of the bass portion of the bass drum is probably around 100-120hz.

Exactly. What your lacking isn't bass - its mid bass.