Do most people prefer tight bass or non tight bass?

The big ported 12 inch woofers on our Northcreek crossovered with custom Northcreek woofer zobel circuit Matrix 801 S2 speakers got tighter and go about a half octave lower going from a Jon Soderberg modified Threshold Stasis 2 with 250 watts per channel to custom built 140 watts per amp KT77 monoblocks.  The bass became a lot more textured as well.  And started blowing my pant legs around from 15 feet away.  And everything else got better in fact. Better enough that I’ll never spend any money on the system again for anything other than KT77s and an occasional cartridge.  

I want my bass to sound accurate.  I want a well recorded string bass to sound what I can hear live sitting close to a jazz trio, I want an electric  bass to sound like an electric bass, I want a pipe organ to sound like a real pipe organ in a real hall.  

Other than that, we are talking damping factor/speaker interaction.  They need to be matched perfectly whatever the combo.

End of discussion so far as I am concerned.

I prefer bass that is accurate to the recording.

The problem is you can't tell whether or not the recording is realistic.  You can only tell if the sound produced by your system is realistic.  And that means compared to live.

The problem is you can't tell whether or not the recording is realistic.  You can only tell if the sound produced by your system is realistic.  And that means compared to live.

When you compare it to "live" to see if it's realistic, are you thinking live from the front row, 7th row center, the back? Big hall or small? How can you decide which of these versions are best? How can you know what the actual conditions of the hall were like in order to know if the recording matches up and is realistic?