Why the obsession with the lowest octave

'
Yeah, I'm going with what Tvad said.

I have a set of Infinity IRS Betas. According to the spec sheet they go down to 15 hz. Every year around the first of the year for the past three years I've put them up for sale, this year is no different. Every year around July or August I get sick and tired of them taking up so much room in my living room (they are 4-chassis speakers with a total of eight 12 inch woofers in two bass towers five and a half feet tall). So I put them in storage and trot out my Infinity Kappa 9. The Kappa 9 have great bass with two 12 inch woofers per speaker and they go down to 29 hz. I am thoroughly satisfied with the bass of the Kappa 9. When potential buyers call me for an audition of the Betas, I have to bring them out and set them up for an audition. Once I get them set up and start playing music, I think to myself, DAMN, that is some serious bass and wind up keeping the speakers and not selling them. There is something down there below in the lower 15 hz that the Kappa 9 cannot reach and you can feel it immediately with the first song and know that you have been missing it immediately. It is an incredible experience. So, I wind up not giving a damn if they sell or not, or taking them off the market altogether and setting them up again to take up too much space in my living room until I want my living room back. So yes, there is a LOT to be gained by stretching the bass performance below 34-40 hz. When you get the opportunity, go down where the Lords Of The Low Frequencies reside at 15-30 hz and experience it....there's nothing like it.
.

Great post, Mitch4t.

I've heard it said that a lot of the information that communicates the size a recording venue comes from the very deepest bass.

Its human nature's hard wiring of the brain. Think about it, the fight or flight instincts of the human brain are more influenced by hearing low octave sounds. When you hear the rumble, T-Rex may be near, and that is exciting, know?

Reaching down to the lowest octave creates a realism in music not otherwise experienced. Even though the fundamental note may only go down to 40Hz there are overtones reaching far below giving music the proper foundation.

It's not a guy thing and it has nothing to do with balls. Men have larger eardrums than women giving them the ability to hear low frequencies better than women.

If one can get deeper bass without any tradeoff of other qualities, why not? But, such "free" deep bass is hardly ever achieved. Bigger drivers able to push more air usually means more mass (inertia makes such drivers less nimble), bigger cabinets (hard to control resonance), and most significantly, deep bass response usually means much lower speaker efficiency and the need for higher powered amps. To me, there are very few higher power amps that deliver the kind of performance of low powered tube or solid state amps.

I care less about high volume, extremely deep bass than I do about good behavior where most of the music resides in the lower range. I want realistic tonality to bass. There are a lot of speakers on the market with extremely tight, punchy bass, that lack the ability to deliver the proper tone and harmonic structure of lower range instruments (double bass, kettle drums, contrabassoon).