Why the obsession with the lowest octave

I'm sure sound without bass would not be very enjoyable, not sure that was Larryi's recommendation - certainly a speaker that produces clean bass down to 35- 40hz (-2db) is sufficient to reproduce "sound with bass", in fact there are many world-class speakers (many British)that do just that and are rightly considered "HiFi" and ideal for most domestic-sized rooms.

I see the value in having clean bass down to 20hz, and I
agree that much of the value comes from the sense of venue
that those very low frequencies can provide, and if could
have it without tradeoffs that would be great, but there are
tradeoffs indeed and Larryi articulated them very well. It
took me a long time to break away from the obsession and
accept that in many ways the Merlin VSMs with a brick wall
at 28hz and a sharp drop off at 32hz were more musically
satisfying that my previous speakers that were +/-3db at
20Hz. I would take that extra bass if I would not loose that
Merlin midrange and resolution and the ability to run with a
relatively low-power OTL, but I have not found a speaker
like that. The benefits of deep bass are real, but so are
the liabilities that come along with speakers that can do
the deep bass thing. Perhaps with some price-no-object gear
you can have it all, but at relatively real world prices I
would seek to compromise some of that deep bass for other
values. The fact that I listen to acoustic jazz 90% of the
time I'm sure has something to do with that perspective.

I wonder if Ecruz' experience is due to removing (filtering)deep bass from the main speakers and the bass/midrange drivers so they are actually performing better since the heavy burden of producing the deepest bass is removed from the main speakers - the drivers than perform better with lower distortion.

"then perform..."