35Hz - 25kHz -- A Partial 'Purist'?

Goodness...I would have assumed that all you guys would have used subs. I'm a newbie here, but in the early 90's in college, myself and my friends were BIG into car audio. Not the minitrucks full of subwoofers stuff, but proper systems. I had an 88 4runner at the time with a Denon CD player/tuner(no amp in it)a Nakamichi PA304 30x4 amp running Nakamichi plate speakers up front & polk 6x9's in the back seat area. Boy those polks sucked. A friend of mine talked me into getting another set of plates & a sub. He sold me a pair of Soundstream SS12 reference series subs and a 50 watt soundstream amp. I took them to the local high end home & car audio shop in town where I knew the car audio installer (this was Audio Ecstasy in San Luis Obispo CA...highly recommended!!!...to bad I live in MO now). He checkout out the subs & found one to be bad. He told me that it was because the person that sold them to me didnt run enough power to them. I guess new soundstream stuff isn't so hot, but I guess that these subs were relatively rare...so rare in fact that in trade for the broken sub, he built a custom box, installed the rest of the stuff, completely rewired my system AND gave me a rock bottom deal on an xover & 200w fosgate amp that was powerful enough to run a single sub setup...the box was huge per soundstreams specs and HEAVY..the driver itself was a monster. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I couldn't believe what I was missing...still I wasn't close to where my friends were with their systems, but I was sold. I dont know if I could live without one in any music system.

I believe your speakers ought to produce the entire audio spectrum, for you to fully enjoy music as it ought to be heard and felt.

That being said, my speakers only go down to 50hz according to manufacturer specs. Yet, I fully enjoy my system.

Someday, I might add a subwoofer. Until this day, I still haven't heard a subwoofer that sounds better than a Velodyne ULD 18 or 15. Although, the early 90's production Klipsch subs works wonderfully with my speakers, KEF Referecnes.

I'm in Tireguy's camp, I've never heard a sub that seamlessly integrated with the satellites. This is not to say that I've never heard a satellite/sub system sound good (like Pipedreams and Airfoil), but there was always a discontinuity and or muddiness between the low bass and everything else.

It's a matter of degree and priority. Some are more than willing to compromise seamlessness for low bottom end. I'm happy at 35 hz. In 18 years of listening to sub/sat systems, my experience has been "honeymoonish." That is I hook the sub up and it sounds fantastic, but after awhile (one week or two) something is amiss, like a muddiness or an afterthought. And, low and behold, once I take the sub away the music gets its' life back. Then the cycle repeats, though a lot less now than before.

I think that if the speaker system was designed around using a sub, then it may have a better chance of sounding more seamless or less discontinuous depending on how you look at it.

Is it not entirely possible that some of you never had a good quality sub to work or with and/or you simply were not able to configure it properly with your mains and/or room acoustics?

If we assume that a few of the deficiencies you mention do exist and hypothetically, there's no way to correct them even if you had the very best sub, the very best room acoustics, and the very best system. Wouldn't the minor deficiency or two be worth overlooking rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water?

And that was kinda' my point of this thread.

Because the cannon shots in the 1812 Overture are not reproduced exactly as you anticipated (which itself is subjective) or there was a little hump, you therefore censor the cannon shots altogether?

To me, this simply defies logic. You'll treat your room for deficiencies with the mains. You'll upgrade your amp to solidify and pronounce the bottom regions, you'll bi-wire, etc.. In other words, you'll (IMO) apply band-aids to every other aspect but simply will not entertain the one possible cure that could resolve most concerns in this region.

It kinda' puzzles me I guess.

oops