See?
Nope, I'm going to disagree, probably totally misguidedly but here goes.

If the bass is EQ'd at 0db, and you play the stereo at 0db, then the loudest bass peak in the music is at exactly 100% and doesn't clip.
Agreed.

If there's some loudness applied at 0db, then it would start to clip.
Agreed.

That's why my ideal setting would have no loudness at -14db. No matter how much I cranked the loudness, or the volume, it wouldn't clip.

Hang on, the idea is that the loudness tends to zero at that -14dB. This means that there would be no adjustment between 0 and -14dB.

At say -16dB there would only be a bit of loudness adjustment say ~1 dB, i.e. not enough to push it above the zero point.

So if you assume that the eq. is never boosted, then you can quite happily set the zero point of the loudness to 0dB since this is the point at which loudness has no effect.
Also as long as you keep the point of max loudness below -14dB (and have a linear scale) then there should be no clipping.



You should consider backing off the input gains on your amplifiers. At that level, you're amplifying the system's noise floor quite a bit, and not taking advantage of the full dynamic range of the Empeg.

But for those rare times when you just want to give yourself a hearing loss or need to attempt removal of the rear windscreen, I'd find it inconvenient to grovel around in the boot with an allen-key.

Actually I even tried it and noise-wise, I think the output is superb across the whole range. In fact for given (average) listening level, I couldn't tell the difference between low-gain amp, high-gain empeg and the reverse. That's why I choose to run the amps at their normal gain.