front firing vs side firing woofers

That three dimensional bass wave that you can almost see rolling towards you across the floor can be musically distracting. My front firing floorstanding KEF's had it and they went way loud without distorting. Tight well shaped bass waves do have heaps of geewhiz factor but because they draw so much physical attention to themselves coming at you, they're ultimately annoying. Overall, I'd say hearing good bass is preferable to being forced into watching it. You're better off than you realize.

If you want slam (this is counterintuitive, but bear with me)... you need to get rid of resonances--by their nature, resonant frequencies take "some time" to resonate and also to decay.

Thus the koan: to get more bass, you need less bass.

i'm thinking driver size has a bunch to do with it. My current dunlavy speakers have downward firing 10's that have deep, tight solid bass. They get lower than my brothers EV dual 18 subs (good to about 40 hz flat vrs below 30 hz for the dunlavy) but but no chest pounding on the horizon for the 10s. An old Klipsh cornwall system with 15s i had would thump roack and roll like there's no tomorrow. there was bass you could feel in your guts but barely hear on some recordings (all records in those days). For that system i used 12 ga wire, rat shack interconnects and crown amps, nothing special there just moving air.