Thank you all for the advice. Now that it's the weekend I can try a few of your suggestions before actually trying a sub. First off, on the issue of speaker placement and room acoustics, I've been less than thorough at looking at that. We are in the midst of a minor remodeling project (old house...new ceilings and floor sanding and refinishing) and in doing so the re-arrangement has temoparily changed a few things:-there is half the furniture in the room there usually is -rugs I had on the walls behind the speakers are on the floor, under the speakers (at my wife's request "don't scratch the floors!") - I slid the speakers further out into the room (why not...no furniture to bump into). Basically, most everything has changed acoustically...though the mids and highs are currently glorious in my opinion. I just removed a good chunk of the Dacron from the speaker ports and slid the speakers back about 12 inches towards the rear wall...difference heard already. From a system perspective, concurrent with the housework I sent sent my Spectron amp in for an upgrade (goodbye 600 WPC) and pulled in my NuForce 9SEs (180WPC)...duhhhh...gee, that could make a difference. So...no final verdict forthcoming in the near future, but I hope to report back later. Say, Inhisservice, about the placement of the Dacron, are you saying not to leave it in the port...the tube part...but push it to the very back of the cabinet or take it out entirely?