To Sub or not to Sub...?

Sub ... no doubt. I agree that it is the single most difficult thing to add to your system and if the rest is marginal at the start you'll be throwing gas on a fire. The thing that's usually missing for me from real live music in the hall to ANY system is the signature of the room the recording was made in. I made lots of recordings in college ... choirs, orchestras, soloists ... all types of groups, all kinds of equipment ... ALWAYS, I would find that I couldn't 'feel' the room unless I had a system in front of me with true full range extension.

Before you discount my college recording experiences, know that the department head and guru of all things audio at the school was a guy named Gary Galo ...

Hey guys forget about how low/HZ certain passages go. Especially if you own monitors, there is FULLNESS you can achieve by intergrating a sub. I own a pair of Sonus Faber Electa Amatours which go down to 45HZ. There really is not much recorded material that has information below that, but still a sub adds that certain fullness I'm referring to. I'm with the REL boys. I own the Stadium II which intergrates seemlessly in my system. Not many if any full range speaker can image & soundstage like a good monitor & will be as flexible as far as room dependency with the adjustments REL/monitor combo offers. I feel I have the best of both worlds by using a sub.

Lindemann is right in theory, though he forgot the lowest organ pedal point, which I believe is about 16 hz and comes at you in huge waves, more felt of course than heard and will scare the shit out of you, if it hits you unprepared. Otherwise I fully agree with the above posts. As has been stated, you need a good sub to get the feel of the space of the recording venue and also the placements of instruments right up into the midrange is vastly improved. As Kevint has put it so well: If you have one, you can't go back. Live concert goers will know, that the soudnd of a big orchestra playing full tilt can hit you like an ocean wave, both heard AND felt, coming at you on one huge continuous flow. You will never be able to get that in your own home, except with a really good sub which should go well below 20 hz and should be able to move a lot of air. Once you've experienced that, you're addicted. So caveat auditor....Cheers to all...

"One man's meat is another man's poison" Nowhere is it more true than in choice of loudspeakers. What features do you look in a loudspeaker? The perfect loudspeaker doesn't exist, and many of the requirements are incompatible when applied to practical loudspeaker design. If we want one we must sacrifice another.
' 'Tinfoil' is interested in classical music. He didn't mention anything about 'explosions' home theater or for that matter size, shape and associated gear. We do not know these facts. The fact is that amount of bass, that can be fully developed in any listening room depends on the room size. The lowest frequencies that can be produced is governed by the longest room dimension and is given by: f=560:d (divide). Where f is the lowest frequency and d is longest dimension in feet. So 12ft dimension limits the response to 46Hz. It follows than that throwing out other furniture to make room for large speakers or SUB, that goes well below the room's frequency limit does no good at all!
For 'Tinfoil' purchasing best speakers he can afford is best way to start.

I just installed a home theater system consisting Paradigm active 40s with active center and surrounds they each all have their own 325 watt amp. This is supplemented by their Sub 15. This has its own 400 watt amp. The Sub is marvelous during classical listening.