Audiophile Bass?

^^^ Bass should have a tonal accuracy to it. My system produces it. There are three 10" woofers on each side of the speakers, one front-firing, one rear-firing, and one down-firing. I had a devil of a time getting the room dialed in, in order to get that accurate bass sound.

An acoustic, stand-up bass, should sound like an acoustic stand-up bass. Same with orchestral kettle drums, bass drums, and Koto drums. After all, bass is music, right?

On HT ... I'm not into that, but I have heard fantastic HT systems set up properly with amazingly accurate bass. Cannon shots, explosions, helicopters flying overhead, etc., sound exactly as they should.  It is a totally immersive experience for sure.

If a person is talking about bass "slam," in my opinion, they are on the wrong track.

Frank

IMO  "Audiophile Bass"  should mean a flat response as low as you can get.  Not a big subwoofer going thump thump thump with a 10-20+ dB bass boost.  That is for kids and home theater.
There is a place for subwoofers in some systems.   But they should be crossed over to match where your main speakers start to tail off.    Just like the crossover point for your drivers and tweeters.  You shouldn't notice any humps and everything should have a flat response.

I agree, delkal97.  Bass should be a part of the music, not a dominating force.

I like bread and butter, I like toast and jam.  One of the most surprisingly things I've found in a sea of surprising things is how much bass that is on the CD is missing in action, which I attribute entirely to the fluttering of the disc during play and stray scattered laser light. Yes, I know what you're thinking - "but my system already sounds fabulous."

delka and baclagg a proper subwoofer system requires a cross over with both low pass and high pass filters. They can then be tailored to match perfectly at the 6 dB down point that sounds best. 1/2 the advantage of subwoofers is taking the bass away from the satellite speakers. Just because a speaker rolls off at 40 Hz does not mean that it is not trying to go down to DC. It is. How many threads have you seen about pumping woofers? When a woofer bounces around like this it is Doppler distorting every other note carried by the woofer. Sometimes you can even hear the woofer flutter. For vinyl users this is a major problem. Getting concert level bass off a turntable is no easy feat. 
Papa, again, accurate bass is accurate for any bass. The best systems will do an acoustic bass just as well as an earth quake. I do not hype anything for movies. I just change inputs. I don't change anything for acoustic jazz.
I will also add that I had a hard time getting things near perfect until digital bass management came along. Most audiophiles particularly the vinylistas  have never heard this work. I could never get concert level bass off a turntable until I got a digital subsonic filter that does 80 dB/Oct from 18 Hz. Instead of spending hours critically listening and tuning I just plug in a microphone spend 5 minutes taking a measurement, plug in crossover frequencies and slope, done.