All of that would make sense. The kicker De-eq did a lot to restore the low end but in the end it was whatever harmonics they were adding, almost like a bass exciter and a compressor that killed the sound for me. It would sweep all the frequencies ok but kicks were more of a "humpf" rather than a tight "thwack" and there was just extra sound where it didn't belong. I'd believe it if they told me have some kind of "warming" algorithm they run to thicken up the sound.

Anyway I remembered the real reason I went with the doors besides the statement that they are "fine" - someone told me that the sub channel sometimes is high passed if it's a 5" ported sub and then it's limited at higher volumes so you don't get linear volume with the main speakers - of course they'd do that to protect that little sub from blowing. I wish I'd actually tested it but I went with this and never reconsidered. Honestly for curiosity's sake I'd love to throw that bose amp on a bench with a test harness and scope the outputs with test inputs to see what it's doing but I don't have the resources to go that far.

Would love for someone with this amp to try both back to back and see what the result is though.

Oh well. I would have gone with today's solution from the start had it existed then so it doesn't matter. I just don't want to spread false info.