can subwoofers make things worse?

I would drop SVS. Not good at all unless you want a one dimensional boom.

That’s just a ridiculous statement and not true at all.

That neck bearded reviewer on the vid though...he kinda looks/ sounds like a 1 note boom

@deep_333 Heh heh.  Good points BTW.

@sudnh Note he did not say SVS was a one-note boom sub and said it was capable of doing bass tonality.  In general are they as good as REL or Rythmik in that area, no.  But neither are they a one-note boom box as you imply.  That he lumps JL Audio in the same camp as SVS seems pretty silly BTW.  And it’s also ridiculous to imply if a sub is musical it can’t slam.  I’ve heard Rhythmik subs and they sure as hell can slam, so that’s just total BS — a good sub can do both musicality and slam and they are not mutually exclusive.  Of course it’s all about integration, and a well-integrated SVS sub can sound great and certainly not a one-dimensional boom box.  I can point to ten other reviews where experienced reviewers got great results for music with SVS subs, and not one of them categorized them as one-note boom boxes.  This reviewer didn’t say that either — he was just over generalizing to make a point.  Your assertion that SVS is all about boom is misguided and misleading, and there’s plenty of evidence in the form of other reviews to back that up.  I have an SB2000 and it is NOT just a boom boom sub if properly integrated.  Is it state of the art?  No, of course not, but it’s not what you call it either.

His argument is that subwoofers are inherently out of phase alignment with the speakers.

That’s why subs have phase adjustment.  Duh.

The SVS SB1000 Pro would be a better choice than the 3000 Micro and isn’t all that much bigger, goes lower, and is $300 cheaper.  Just another option to consider.

The phase adjustment on subwoofers is very close to totally worthless. Trying to adjust subwoofers by ear is extremely difficult it not totally impossible. Measurement is a must and unless you are extremely lucky the only way to dial in a subwoofer array so that it disappears is with digital signal processing, otherwise you have a home theater system with which fidelity takes a back seat to vibratory excitement. 

@mijostyn This is not my experience at all.  If you take the time to use the “crawl method” to find the best placements for subs (critical) and then take a little time to appropriately dial in the crossover, volume, and phase you can get subs to totally disappear in a system and provide all the sub magic.  I don’t think it’s luck, I think it’s having some knowledge and the willingness to do the work to dial it in.  That’s my experience anyway.  Agree at least two subs are necessary and placed in a staggered arrangement to deal with room modes.