Steve59, we have to agree to disagree, over the years we have seen large expensive speakers shoe horned into less then ideal rooms with sometimes surprisingly fantastic results.
The key is how the system is tuned and how the system is adjusted.
Systems which do have external subwoofers that are part of the system, speakers such as the Scaena Iso Arrays, which have adjustable gain for the woofers worked great in two of our clients rooms that weren’t large at all.
We demoed the Paradigm Persona 9H a speaker capable of 22hz bass response in a rather ordinary sized hotel room again with fantastic results and the same thing with the Legacy Aeris.
With today’s higher end dsp based room corrections systems you can solve the biggest issue in hifi which is bass which can over load the room and become boomy and ill-defined.
Even rooms and systems without Dsp you can use bass traps and custom hemholtz resonators to tune out the worst offending frequencies.
Our general philosophy is big room big speaker, small room small speaker, but as illustrated careful system matching and tuning can many times overcome the perceived issues.
With the desire to have X product and its intrinsic sound qualities and strengths and weakness in your room and commitment to getting it right you can accomplish things that shouldn’t sound right sounding pretty awesome.
Dave and TroyAudio Doctor NJ