Wyatt, on the point about bigger speakers not sounding as "sharp", this isn't necessarily the case. First, all subwoofers are inherently "slow" in that the 20-100Hz frequencies that they cover are very slow in relation to the rest of the audio range. As long as the magnet for the bigger driver is correspondingly more powerful, the subwoofer range is just as well-controlled as a smaller sub would be(see Dr. Toole's discussion of this point on
page 11 of his paper). Another point is that to the extent that a low frequency sound seems sharp or fast, it's due almost entirely to the upper harmonics of the low note, which are reproduced by the mid-range speaker, not the sub. A check on this point can be had by playing a CD which has some low notes which sound sharply defined, but with all speakers but the sub disconnected. The result is in no way "fast".
