How important is bass to you?

if bass really matters, why do so many people buy stand-mounted "monitor" speakers? They don't sound much like real music, to me, because of the lack of bass.

Enter the ubiquitous subwoofer.

Every time I enter a club in which live music is already being performed, I am struck by how much more bass is in the room than what I hear in the listening rooms of audiophiles (including my own) and hi-fi shops. A lot of that is due to the multiple 15" woofers in the club's sound system of course, some from the club's room itself, as well as the SPL common these days. But it's more than that. Reproduced music rarely if ever has as much "body" as does live, sounding eviscerated. There is still a long way to go to fully replicate the sound of live music.

Citing the sound of live music heard through a sound-reinforcement system rather than purely acoustically raises the valid question of whether or not that qualifies as a standard against which to compare music's reproduction. Recordings after all are made with mics very different from those used in sound-reinforcement systems, for starters. But I think that is how most of us hear the majority of our live music. Besides which, live music heard acoustically also has more of that body I'm talking about.

Bass is just as important as the rest of the spectrum. When I purchased my JL sub I found I was getting slight headaches. After adjusting the extreme low frequencies down to nearly -6dB my headaches are gone and the bass still sounds excellent.

Bdp24, I think you'd have to have similar amps, speakers and room to reproduce a live rock band sound. But personally that's not the standard I would use. Live band soundmen tend to push the bass and drums too loud, leaving too little space for the other instruments and voices. Try understanding the words sung at a live show--good luck. Also the overall volume is usually too loud.
I look for a system that will reproduce acoustic music well and figure it will do fine for the electric stuff. You're right, you can't get all the elements of a live performance in a living room reproduction. But we know there's a wide gap between the systems that come close and those that totally miss.