as far as "hand(ing) us this garbage about the REL sound", i am only handing you my honest experience, & that of someone whose rigs i am very familiar with. just because you may not like it, or it is different from *your* experience, doesn't mean it's garbage. in fact, it seems likely to me, from experience of others above, that my experience is *not* out of the ordinary, if the x-over point is much above, say, 30 hz. for me, this eliminates one of the benefits of using a sub: the ability to cross over your main speaker so it does not have to see that last octave or two...
and, fyi, i *don't* think vmps is the only game in town - if i had the bucks, i'd surely audition a pair of bagend d18e-i's, w/an elf-1 integrator. this system, retailing at ~$6200 (w/no amps), can be had for ~$4k from fullcompass.com. if i *had* to have an active sub, i'd audition the bagend infrasub18, retailing for $1500, available from fullcompass.com for $1100...
http://64.213.162.194/lit/s_bagend.html
regards, doug s.