Granted there are obviously some speakers better than others in every price category but forget everything else? No component is an island and the speaker is perhaps more affected by every other element of a system than any other component.
How can anyone possibly tell a speakers' true capability without serious attention given to the electronics, room acoustics, speaker placement, cables, line conditioning, the amount of juice coming from the wall, and vibration management applied to the speakers and to all the other components?
Fall short in any one or two of these categories and you could end up with some of the sloppiest, rolling earthquake-like, ill-defined bass you'd never care to hear unless your cruisin' in your low-rider.
Get all of these elements right and you're in a whole 'nother league and you may find that it matters a little less which speaker you chose. Assuming it's a full-range speaker of course.
All that taken into consideration the tightest, most well-defined, and most realistic bass I've ever heard by far came from a pair of used $4K (new $8700) Aerial Acoustic Model 10T speakers mated to a pair of Nuforce SE Class D amps. Never heard anything even close to it. At least until recently.
Case-in-point, there are plenty of people who will claim the Aerial Model 10T's bass was some of the worst they've ever heard.
-IMO
