I have been using an old Yamaha SW-216, which while it has been trusty and adequate in our former houses, it is now time for an upgrade. I have some different limitations that have left me stuck trying to determine what the best course of action is. Our new family room is 22'W, 27-31' deep and 9' high. So it's ~5500 sq ft, plus the middle half of the RH wall opens up to another 4-5000 sq ft. The main listening position is 13' from the front speakers. Ideally, I'd put two big ported boxes on diagonal corners of the room, but when I floated that idea by the spouse she looked at me like I was asking to throw one of our kids out the window while driving down the highway, so that setup seems to be a no go. Due to aesthetics I can't have huge boxes flanking the tv cabinet sticking way out into the room, so I'm limited to about a 20" deep box size in that location. Alternatively, I can put a fairly large single sub in the corner where the Yamaha currently resides. Acoustically that spot works really well as even though the 216 is only 10" and 100 watts it still has some kick to it.
Given my limitations, I know I am going to have some tradeoffs to an ideal situation. My usage is almost completely HT, so I'm looking for that deep bass to pack some punch with movie viewing. Here's what I've narrowed my options down to:
1. A single, large ported sub in the corner. My top choice in this category is the PSA TV1512. It's about as large as a box as I can safely get the wife to go along with. It seems to dig really deep, and it's also the simplest choice from a setup perspective as it is just going bigger than what I already have. It is also right around my ideal budget of 1500.
2. Dual, small driver ported subs flanking the tv. Here I'd be looking at 2 Monolith 10" subs. The plusses of this are that I get the benefits of a ported sub, it's the cheapest option, plus it would fill the room better since it's a dual setup. I know that in general 2 is better than 1, but at what point does the size of the 1 outweigh the benefit of 2 smaller subs?
3. Dual, larger driver sealed subs flanking the tv. This is the bleeding edge of my budget, but if I go through the outlet I can get dual SVS SB-3000's for right at 2k. It's the smallest, most wife-friendly box, and they come very highly reviewed across the board. I've just never dealt with a sealed sub before, so on the deep bass I'm not sure how that would compare to the single TV1512, which (on paper at least) can go 4hz lower.
So there's my dilemma. I know that no matter what I do it'll blow my current sub out of the water, so I can't really lose, but I'm just curious on what people's thoughts are given what I've got.