to base or not to base.

i posted a thread about listening levels & this kinda floats along with it.

it appears that most people have different ideas of what good bass response is & what it should be for instance i have heard much talk about the bass response in the B&W line being great & as having a full bass presentation but when i got a pair of B&W'S home i found them to be the exact oposite with a bass response that was weak & thin.

im not singeling out B&W nor am i saying anything bad about them but i am using them as an example as i just had a pair & the sound is fresh in my mind & no matter how i set them up they couldnt give up any bass.

ok here's another thought,we hear all the time about music being presented the way it was recorded or the goal to achive is to get as close to live music as can be had,are bass players invisable & durring a live show cant their notes be heard as well as the other instruments? with the exception of the rolling stones ive seen plenty of bands where i can clearly hear & feel the bass player now shouldnt rigs be able to produce the same bass that ocured in the concert,i cant see a band putting on a show where they had a good strong & clear bass then going into the studio & all of a sudden cutting the bass in half so the bass has to be on the recording i would think.

to me music seems lifeless without at the very least a decent bass response & it takes on an allmost a m radio type tone & over & over again i hear guys rigs in their homes & at dealers where they think they have excellent bass response & to me it sounds like all upper bass instead of a full bass response.

ive asked questions like this to others in the hobby & dealers too & most of the time i get the same response about being a bass head or somthing along them lines,isnt bass part of the music & shouldnt a full range speaker be able to reproduce a decent bass response down to atleast like 30hz on its own without the use of a sub?

is it just me or are there several different definetions of what a good bass response is,im not looking for quotes from a spec sheet or anything but if a speaker system is specked out as having a bass response of 40 hz how can it ever produce any real bass,dosent sub bass start at below 20hz?

im curious as to what other guys idea of good bass is & how they prefer it to be presented in their rigs.

mike.