This afternoon, it was back to the basement studio to tweak the new subwoofer and see what it was capable of. I dialed down the volume control on the Mackie HR824s that I use as mains, which allowed me to back off the volume on the subwoofer. I tried listening to PQR, but still wasn't certain if I was hearing enough bass to make things worthwhile.

I burned a fresh copy of the test mix of Digital Acoustic Compilation and headed off with daisy_knotwise for a fresh truck test, since I'd completely forgotten where I'd left this mix.

The score: Temperature of Revenge needs to be louder as does Rocket Ride. PQR needs to be rebalanced with attention to Tom's vocal, while Heat of the Blood feels overcompressed to me, although Gretchen is ok with it. I also need to make minor edits on two tracks, but that's a known, solvable problem.

The truck test also resulted in dinner at Fuddrucker's and dessert from Oberweis Dairy. Yum.

When we got home, Gretchen handed me the Fleetwood Mac 2-CD set and I took it down to the basement and ripped a copy of The Chain so I could play it through the studio sound system and see how the subwoofer behaved. Gretchen came down after I started playing the song and declared the subwoofer a success.

"If the pots and pans in the kitchen are rattling, there's enough bass."

I'll buy that.