Bass frequencies are the lowest audio frequencies, below which everything becomes DC or direct current. DC doesn’t commutate from positive to negative – it doesn’t ‘cycle’ – so it cannot be transformed. Low bass frequencies to a transformer move so slow that they’re ‘almost DC’, As a result transformers distort most of all at low frequencies.

All sorts of tricks and adjustments are employed to reduce this distortion – many include the use of expensive metals and labour intensive winding techniques in a bid to overcome the bass distortion. This is why good S.U.T.s are so expensive.

But the distortion is never really overcome and in the place of detailed bass, all the transformer can really do is ‘fudge’ the sound. You might have heard people refer to the bass they get as a ‘smooth chocolatey sound’? I suppose that’s similar to fudge….

The electronics of the Elevator EXP however, don’t cause anywhere near such levels of distortion, so all the bass details – the layering and the timbre (the characteristic sound of an instrument or voice) is there to be heard and enjoyed.