Your story is so close to mine. I had a pair of Klipsch 10" subs in here originally and I really thought I had it as good as could be expected for bass. I had zero clue what I was missing (sound familiar?
). HD, Bill and Shady kept at me, pointing to those subs as the weakest link in my system. It took a little time, but I finally gave in. Ordered the right subs for my huge room, got them set up and I was almost instantly blown away. I finally got it. My first big level up. Now I understand how impactful having appropriate subwoofage is for good sound! This is where you're at right now I think.
After some time tho, I started noticing chinks in the armor. Weak bass with some music and pretty good for others. Great in general for movies. Ultimately not as satisfied as I wanted to be so that's when I got the mic. I was intimidated and had a couple of days of frustration, trial and error but got it sorted. Once I got it dialed in, that was my 2nd epiphany. It was like when I first got the new subs all over again! Better, actually because I was able to pinpoint and defeat a big null. It was totally worth the effort. Bass sounds great with all of my music now. Now I understand why folks go through the time and effort to learn it. I can't imagine it getting much better without going to room treatments next. My measurements are really good and I have enough subwoofage for some really effortless, low distortion bass.
Anyhoo, I see a lot of parallels between your experience and mine.
I'm almost over 9000 now!
