DJ Pulse had a problem. The bass at the mix position felt weak. His solution was elegant in its simplicity: turn the sub level up. When that didn't work, he turned it up more. When that also didn't work, he borrowed a third subwoofer from another DJ and added it to the stack. The bass still felt weak at the mix position. It did not feel weak on the stage, where the monitoring wedges were now vibrating off their stands.

The issue was a crossover-region phase mismatch. The main speakers and subwoofers had a combined acoustic response that created a cancellation notch right at the crossover frequency of 100 Hz. Adding more sub power made the sub's contribution louder — but the cancellation ratio remained the same. It was like pouring more water into a bucket with a hole: more volume in, same amount leaking out.

By the end of the night, the subs were consuming 4,800 watts to produce what 1,200 watts could have achieved with correct phase alignment. The power bill was four times what it needed to be. The bass was still uneven. The amplifiers were in thermal protection. And DJ Pulse was genuinely baffled.

Phase cancellation at the crossover frequency is caused by the acoustic sum of the sub and main arriving out of time alignment. No amount of gain compensates for destructive interference.

The Moral: If more gain isn't fixing it, it's not a gain problem. Use SonaVyx Transfer Function to check the phase relationship at crossover — a polarity flip or delay adjustment is usually all you need.