Bass rant

As I have said many times before, once home theater became popular, the emphasis in audio shifted from music to sound effects. Doesn't that explain what's going on?

Marakanetz - If you had used your Stereophile test CD, you could have determined the ladies' resonant frequency. Would've been interesting to find out if they are all tuned to the same pitch.

I use 18in aura sound in big sub its good. Or 31.5in in our KCS subbass system. Or I use 4-15in per horn 8 total for hi-eff mid bass or 4-18in in dual giant bass horns. Nothing I heard is close to the bass quality provided by the massive 31.5in fostex or multiple bass horns. No free lunch. To me many audio complants are from folks expecting too much from wee little kit. They do all they can system wise but when it comes down to it in loudspeakers size maters. And shopping for loudspeakers based on low end responce is missing the point. You want a good sounding loudspeaker deep subsonic bass has effect on over all performance but its not that large compared to other aspects of loudspeaker design. And very costly to do right. Many times my monster bass systems reviel subway noise truck or bus motors as well as pressure produced by venue and instruments. When using such for TV viewing they seem to never filter true subsonics on TV, CNC always sounds like a UPS truck pulling into my driveway. Even my dogs bark thinking such. But on pipe organ, live music,pop rock etc the impact and pressure will raise the hairs on your body. I feel some of the excitment of hearing live music is the pressure of venue as much as the musical notes.

In my experience bass from small woofers, like what you find in most stand-mount two-ways, never sounds realistic. It doesn't matter how low the speaker goes, if there isn't enough surface area moving you won't get that rich and visceral sound of an upright bass or percussion instrument. For me at least I think this inherent compromise in many modern speaker designs leads to a nagging dissatisfaction with the lower frequencies.

At some point I suppose I'll just have to pony up and buy a speaker featuring big transducers and big cabinet volume.

Ethanh - You won't have to pony up much because older designs that feature the design characteristics you outline are not much in demand. I used an old pair of JBL L-200 speakers as my woofer section. These can be found for $1000 to $1200 per pair and are the basis for a great system. If you do your homework and find some good horns with compression drivers for the top, you will be most of the way there. Look into it.