LFE, Friend or Foe? The Pros and Cons of the Low Frequency Effect Channel

King R, Theriault M. LFE, Friend or Foe? The Pros and Cons of the Low Frequency Effect Channel. In: AES Convention 154. Audio Engineering Society; 2023.pp. 104:1-5. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=22076

@inproceedings{King2023_22076,
  author = {King, Richard and Theriault, Marc},
  title = {{LFE, Friend or Foe? The Pros and Cons of the Low Frequency Effect Channel}},
  booktitle = {AES Convention 154},
  pages = {104:1-5},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=22076},
  year = {2023},
  month = may,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - LFE, Friend or Foe? The Pros and Cons of the Low Frequency Effect Channel
AU  - King, Richard
AU  - Theriault, Marc
T2  - AES Convention 154
SP  - 1
EP  - 5
M1  - Paper 104
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/05/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=22076
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - The Low Frequency Effect or LFE channel originally developed for use in film sound has now become a common tool for immersive music mixers looking to enhance low frequency program material. Extra warmth and power can be easily added using this single channel of exclusively low frequency content, normally band limited to 20-120Hz. Potential problems may arise, however, as LFE level settings vary greatly from room to room. Downmixes from multichannel to binaural renders may exhibit some cancellation when the LFE is summed with other channels such as left, right and center. The filtering of the LFE channel may also affect the result of channel summing in down-mixes, whether minimum or linear phase is used. Various low frequency measurements are shown in the paper, comparing the differences between summing processes and filter types used for binaural renderers currently in use by a few commercial streaming services.
ER  -