[Msquared]

Plasar, I certainly agree that if you want full reproduction of the last octave of music, you will need a good sub setup. FWIW, the G690 goes deeper than most 6x9s and play "Starship Trooper" and "With Or Without You" pretty well, with actual pitch and timber well reproduced. Most 6x9s won't do this so well, though. A good bass torture test is "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" by Bela Fleck. The GS690 will play that the lowest bass notes in that, although you can tell they are at their limits. On my Vandersteen Quatros at home, this is super clean and effortless (they have powered subs built in).

For my needs, there was no way I was going to spend the money or take the weight/space penalty of a good sub, and I just don't do "critical listening" in my car (in particular, a Camaro on 1LE suspension/tires isn't a very quiet environment and doesn't lend itself well to this use). However, if someone does it right, I know it will sound good. I was just saying that almost nobody does it really right. IME, very few people even know what music is supposed to sound like: the only live shows they go to are rock concerts that have awful sound (they don't all have bad sound, but a lot do), they have no idea what deep acoustic double bass or a bass drum sounds like in real life, and they've never heard a decent hi-fi system playing well-recorded music.