Subwoofer meshes well with 2-channel?

Dwag you're looking for a sub that will go to 20hz clean. If you purchase a sub that only goes to 30hz @-3db you really don't gain a lot other then a little better control of the bass
Bass should not be heard but felt in the center of your chest for a two channel system

Sdcampell I have a great respect for vandy and have always been intrigued by their offerings for the past 20 years
I didn't mean to offend you in any way but I just think his speakers go to low and eliminate only but a few of the deepest reproducing subs out there

Vandys seem to work best with vandy speakersIMHO

Greetings
Mr Cambell is offering you fine advice.
what should also be explained is the Vandersteen 2WQ is unique in that you can run them with the optional Vandersteen 5A Battery Bias Hi pass.
These allows your main amp to dramatically lower its distortion improving clarity and transparency of your whole system.
There are 3 8 inch woofers in a sealed enclosure
the quality of bass these offer is unriveled by anything I have found for 2 CH music.Most people ask the question why did my mid range improve?
Best John Rutan

>I hadn't really given it much thought before, but will a sub work well with a 2-channel system (when reproducing music)

Yes.

>or does it just muddy things up? I have full-range speakers (Tyler Linbrook Sig's) that go down to 30hz or so, and have 2 7" Seas drivers.

A couple of 7" drivers or an 8" driver are OK for upper bass (80+ Hz) but lack the excursion to play lower frequencies cleanly. Most significant is that using such drivers as mid-bass units screws up your midrange through IM distortion when you ask them to reproduce real bass at the same time.

You need at least a 3-way speaker (a sub woofer counts) to get acceptable mid-range performance if you're going to listen at reasonable levels and not restrict your musical choices (witness "audiophile" speakers that do a fine job on small ensembles but fall apart on orchestral works at subjectively realistic levels).

>If this the case, is there a particular reason that huge speakers are common, vs. a smaller speaker and subwoofer combo?

Many sub-woofers are bad, built for maximum output instead of accurate response. Most consumer speakers are built with ports to get more bass extension but this makes them harder to integrate with sub-woofers due to the inherent phase shifts and problems with excursion skyrocketing below the port tune. Most sub-woofers don't address the integration problem. So lots of sub + main speaker pairings are outright bad and there's understandable audiophile prejudice against them.

Among other things, separate sub-woofers allow you to position the units for much better interaction with room resonances and so that you don't have the quarter-wave reflection dip from room boundaries within neither the main speakers nor sub-woofers' pass band.

Avoid the problems and you literally can't do as well with a single enclosure speaker system.

My advice, as always, is in direct contradiction to Bobs, which must be derived from home theater practice. I use 2 REL Stadium subs with either Spendor SP-1s or S 100s which are full range speakers. Being full range does not imply a 20 to 20k Hz response. It refers to a speaker that is capable of reproducing music by itself. I cross mine over at 22 Hz and do not high pass. The subs are not noticeable , they add weight to the sound but you do not "hear" them. They provide a noticeable increase in the realism of the sound. A good sub will, as Alvin Gold recently pointed out in his review of the Eclipse TD 725, " if crossed over with care, without high pass filtering the satellites( i.e. around 30 Hz for floorstanders and 40-60 for more compact designs) integrates unusually well, seamlessly adding color and scale as well as bass extension." Bob does not know of the advantages of this approach because he has never tried it, I wish he would post his own system so we could see where he is getting the ideas he espouses with such certitude. Anyone who has ever run his main signal through a crossover can tell you that it degrades it. REL recommends setting up their subs as I suggested, I arrived at this approach independently almost 30 years ago when I was selling Audio Pro subs.