Very cool, thank you for the feedback!
I don't have the recent experience to really know first hand: my old Onkyo was pretty poor at processing as it turns out. (Whadya expect for a $500 HTIB from 2008? I couldn't figure out why so much stuff rattled with the old sub, but when I plugged it into the Marantz I'm using now, the rattling stopped, even though I'm running it louder. First hand lesson about distortion and signal clipping.)
Regardless, having spent months looking through audio websites and speaker companies, I am surprised at the proliferation of the quasi bi-pole design: Monitor Audio, Martin Logan, PSB, SVS, Klipsch, Emotiva, etc. At first I was really intrigued and started questing out those options, but the more I researched them, the more I started questioning why. Seemed to make more sense to purchase a better bookshelf pair with better overall performance than any of those "effect surrounds" usually offer, and usually for the same price too.
Again, thank you.