I thought I knew home theater bass until I experienced an 11.13.8-channel demo with an ‘infrasonic’ 32-inch subwoofer

German speaker maker Ascendo and France’s Trinnov are known for putting on breathtaking home theater demos, and the one they teamed up for at the recent Audio Advice Live 25 consumer show in Raleigh, North Carolina, which ran from August 1-3, was perhaps the best one yet.

For sheer immersive audio horsepower, the joint demo utilized Trinnov’s flagship Altitude 32-channel audio processor and a pair of Amplitude 16-channel amplifiers. That electronics stack was used to power an 11.13.8-channel Ascendo speaker system consisting of three The12 Passive On-Wall point source speakers up front as LCRs, a surround array consisting of The10 Passive On-Wall and The10 Passive Wedge 30 speakers, and eight The6 Passive Wedge 30 speakers used for height channels.

I haven’t even mentioned the subwoofers yet! Six The16 Sub Active Sealed subwoofers were positioned at the front of the room, and six more at the rear to enable Trinnov’s WaveForming, a sophisticated type of room correction processing that can cancel out bass peaks caused by room modes while simultaneously filling in bass frequency dips for smoother and more evenly distributed bass throughout the listening environment.

Along with its 12-pack of 16-inch subwoofers, Ascendo also brought along a secret weapon: its The32 Pro Passive Sealed subwoofer, a model that uses an enormous 32-inch woofer to deliver ‘infrasonic’ bass that’s meant more to be felt than heard. In fact, The32 Pro is specified for 109 dB output @ 10 Hz.