Hi,
So your kitchen and great room sound good with music, but your theater setup does not? Is your kitchen/great room using the same system or a totally different system?
So ultimately you're listening to and hearing room differences.
The answer is most probably:
room treatment.
Your kitchen probably is lively with some reverb but has nulls which are canceling some of your bass out. Your home theater area, if it's not as great with music as it is with movies, I'm betting is just psychoacoustics of the subs in use in movies, since you said you have to turn
up the volume for music and turn
down the subs. This may be room treatment again, because maybe you have too much absorption going on and you could probably tame the room with bass traps so that you don't build up too much bass.
Can you describe the rooms, what's in them, carpet/flooring, furniture, any treatment you've done, etc?
For a new build, there's hordes of options, but all of having great audio in a room starts with the
room itself. Acoustic treatment is critical and should be part of this. Buying good gear isn't going to deliver with no acoustic room treatment. So I would start there before thinking of buying stuff.
With big rooms and big spaces, focus on efficiency; you'll want speakers that are efficient (92db or better maybe) so that you can drive them to high SPL without requiring a nuclear plant to do it and because you'll want lots of headroom for transient peaks and dynamics. Your current speakers may be able to do it. But it all comes down to the room and your listening position relative to the speakers. To answer if you need subs, again, absolutely depends on the room.
One thing I would do is add a calibrated microphone and REW so you can measure room response and start knowing what is actually happening in your room.
Reading material to get you started:
Not hearing enough bass through your monitors? The distance between your room boundaries and speakers has a huge impact on your bass performance. This tutorial will show you specific strategies for placing your speakers to get a balanced bass response.
arqen.com
Very best,