Why the obsession with the lowest octave

I really can't hear the lowest notes of an organ recording, but I sure as hell can feel them in my stomach. That makes it real.

My experience is a limited one, but here it is: I had a pair of Kef Reference IIIs for several years, and loved them; I think the floor on them is something like 40 hz. Very fine controlled bass. Then I got a pair of von Schweikert VR4 gen iiis., which have a floor of 20 hz. What I noticed was, as Tvad suggests, something nearly physical, in particular when listening to, say, the acoustic bass of Arild Anderson: it's the thud under the low notes that I really heard--or felt--for the first time. Then there is the orchestral/choral music of Arvo Part. In any case, I can't be sure whether it was the 20hz that made the difference, the speaker design apart from the 20hz floor), or the different flavor of the two speakers from 40hz and higher. But the vrs broadened the lower spectrum, and I'm speaking as someone who doesn't go in for cranked up bass that smears everything into a mess.

As far as the lowest octave, Cmon general question for all of you.

How many of you actually got into this in the beginning the very begining. You didnt hear airy and transparent highs and glorious midrange that got you in when you were a kid. It was the bass right. Playing your music LOUD rocking out.

Who can say they honestly didnt go wow, a speaker can do that, no freakin way!!!

I can honestly say that what I believe you are describing here did not impress me as a kid, and I was not interested in speakers that had copious distorted bass, vs those that offered some sense of clarity, honesty and what I now would call musicality (though back then I would have said they just sound more 'real'). The first time I recall being really wowed by a speaker was a pair of Quad 57's which were hardly capable of the bass we're talking about here. So I guess I'm a freak.

I cared more about a clear high end when I started and when I was younger with younger ears.

My first good speakers used Heil Air Motion Transformers to that end for better or for worse.

I realized the importance of a quality and complete low end to me as well only within say the last 5-10 years or so.

Why the obsession? Everything discussed in this forum is about obsession.

I like deep, but not too deep bass. In fact I like to have a upward tilt in frequency response below 40Hz. It sounds good to me. But what I have discovered from looking at countless spectrograms of popular music recordings is that there really isn't that much information below about 40-60Hz. As long as the harmonics are present, the ear/brain fills in the "missing" fundamental. However, if the recording actually has true low frequency content, then I like to hear it.

My system goes down to 25Hz and then steeply drops off. Are some people saying that there's musical info below 20Hz?

One last point, humans had not evolved when dinosaurs existed. Human hearing is not at all sensitive to low frequencies, witness the Fletcher-Munson curves. Humans are most sensitive to upper midrange sounds. Think about it.