My recent personal experience starts with my room, which is 24 x 35 x 12ft peak. Due to the layout of the room I am forced to sit slightly forward of the middle= zero back wall reinforcement. My speakers are Emerald Physics Open Baffle 3.4s, which consists of one 12" concentric woofer with 1" polyester tweeter per speaker. I had 2 early model SVS cylinder subs with plate amps. The volume controls were too sensitive, coming on way too loud when barely cracked. In fairness, they were designed for home theater, not hi-end audio, so I sold them. I found a lot more lower mids and bass when I rewired my entire system with the chinese Nordost Odin 2 knockoff cables AND treated all connections with Mad Scientist Audio's Graphene Contact Enhancer.
hth