which monitor isn't lacking in the bass dept.?

First heard the AC Leisure2 SE in its original form at a freind's home, and I was really impressed with the build quality and performance. Recently ordered a pair from KAVD, which is modified in many areas. The result is much better and simply fantastic. It has the best highs, clear smooth mids, and an incredible bass for this size of a monitor. I can clearly hear bass E at a tightly controled fashion, which indicates a bass extention close to 40Hz, very rare in this league.

Quad 12LS

You might want to consider a pair of Dave Ellis 1801 monitors with cabinets made by Jim Salk (www.salksound.com). Absolutely gorgeous cabinets in custom wood with award winning driver design. Add a Vandersteen or VBT sub later on to pick up the lower frequencies.

I'll chime in on the Totem Mani-2s being great for bass as well as just about everything else. Amazing speaker. I really didn't want to spend the $$ on them, but be advised you can get them used for around $2K. I'm not fond of spending that much cash buying used so I "settled" for the ACI Sapphire 25th Anniversary Edition which gives about 80-90% of the performance for 1/3 of the cost.

The ACI Sapphires low freqs are one of its many strong points as far as I'm concerned. It reaches down fairly deep but not earth-shatteringly so. It's a rather large monitor at 35 lbs [Scan Speak tweeter, Vifa 7" woofer]. One of the great values in audio today as far as I'm concerned [you can only buy them direct from ACI for $1300]. An even better deal is if you can get ACI to sell you the Jaguar as a monitor-only pair as they did for years and years. IIRC they sold at around $2300 or so, but now only seem to come with hefty low frequency modules at a price of $7000 (yikes!).

I have not heard the Quad 12Ls unfortunately, but I do own the 11Ls. Good but not great in the bass department, it really sings in the mids. The 12Ls have a larger woofer and supposedly richer bass. The Quad 11Ls are perfect for a small apartment or office.

I use Spendor S3/1p (6.5" 2way) for my HT system specifically because they're much more efficient and have far superior bass to the otherwise fine S3 or LS3/5a...also mate perfectly with the spendor SC3 center speaker, which is basically a double-woofered S3. Too bad Spendor's discontinued it, as turned sideways it's a helluva monitor too...both it and the /1p are like S3s on steroids.