are there 2-ways that go down flat to around 40?

I just heard the ProAc Studio 125 this afternoon and I believe they did, with authority.

My old avalons did- the model Eclipse went to high 30's in a two way sealed design.

The Thiel 1.6 is flat to about 40 in my room, then falls off a cliff. The ProAc 2.5 has usable bass to the mid-20's in my room.

Troublesome topic. The ProAc 2.0 and 2.5 seem to. The Totem Mani 2 also.

But, so does the $300 AE Aegis One, and there's the problem. Most small speakers that give a robust response at 40 hz, or below, are not putting out a true 40 hz signal. The spl meter will react to what comes out and show a strong response, but the sound reproduced by the speaker includes a lot of distortion and doubling and the net effect is usually something closer to 60hz. Almost all speakers have a lot of distortion in the bass. Go to Soundstage.com and look at the measurements accompanying the archived reviews of loudspeakers to see what I mean. Many highly regarded speakers have distortion and noise a mere 30-40 db below a 90 db signal.

What's the value of 40hz anyway? I'd rather have the perfectly accurate and undistorted 50hz reproduced by my Harbeths (down maybe 6db at 40).

40hz is not that tough to get +/- 3db to. 30hz is significantly harder. There are quite a few two way speakers that will go down flat to 40hz. The real trick is to have the electronics that will drive the speaker well down in the lower frequencies to be accurate in addition to flat at 40hz.

What do you have in your present system?

KF