Having done a few hundred googles for reviews and reread both product lines (HSU and Outlaw), it looks like there are about 4 choices here:

$ 339 - LFM-1 compact: 10" speaker, 225watt continuous, 38 lbs, 17hx13x19, warranty: 3 yrs

$ 500 - HSU VTF-2-mk-3 12": 250watt, 60 lbs, 22hx15x23, warranty: 7 yrs speaker, 2yr electronics

$ 549 - (SALE) LFM-1 EX: 12", 12", 350watt, 80 lbs, 22hx17x24, warranty: 3 yrs

$ 629 - HSU VTF-3-mk-3: 12", 350watt, 80 lbs, 22hx17x24, warranty: 7 yrs speaker, 2yr electronics

Furthermore, right now music is important, not movie explosions (but maybe next year when I purchase HDTV). So my goal is bass that is even and not muddy and follows the bass instrument without dropoff or boomy deviations in SPL in various frequencies in the actual listening room.

However, I don't want to shell out EVEN MORE for a SMS-1 to tune the speaker to the room and I don't even own a functioning EQ anymore.

Given these caveats, if I buy a cadillac subwoofer and it kicks out major SPL, then if the darn thing isn't tuned just right for the room it will fail more miserably because it will be more obvious at high volume.

My living room is 25' x 15.5' x 8', with a 7' wide opening to dining room of size 15' x 13'. The room is carpeted with drapes on 2 picture windows, and the main speakers are a pair of highly efficient Polk Audio monitor 70s corner mounted at the end of the room, one atop the sub, and the sub about 6 to 8 inches from wall and pointed to the center of room.

The sub I have is a 130 watt POS, but it still gives some good thump, just very uneven frequency response and very muddy.

Placement of all speakers gives no dead spots -- I can hear bass in the center of the room, along the sides and end where the couches are, and even in the center of the adjacent dining room, since the corner where the sub is points diagonally towards the open air entrance to dining room near opposite corner.

And the Polk Monitor 70s are now lifted off the ground sitting atop the sub in one corner and on top of a 14 inch toybox in the other corner. The imaging is perfect with these Polks, each one has great midrange from two 6.5 inch midrange, two 6.5 inch bass, and one tweeter.

But I'm not sure the Polks really need the highest power (350watt) sub or something smaller.

Last night I took one last stab at trying to get the most out of the Velodyne VRP1200 sub. Firstoff, circuit city will give me a full refund.

This time I did NOT run the Outlaw RR2150 subout into the Velodyne LFE, because with that previous setup the Velodyne had to be set to 100 percent volume to even hear it, and even then I had to put the Outlaw 55Hz bass boost on, and used a 60Hz Outlaw crossover.

Instead, I troubleshooted using the RR2150, without any internal crossover, and using speaker outputs "A" for the Polks and "B" for the sub, so I could test A or B or (A+B). I only needed to have the sub's volume set to 50 percent, not 100 percent like before. Powering the Velodyne by itself I played with the crossover - it was muddy sounding above 80 or 90 Hz, but diminished volume if set to below 75 Hz. Also, the bass did not have good definition of individual notes. The Polks sounded fine by themselves, well into mid-bass, but the bass guitar was not pronounced enough.

Overall it is listenable, but the bass is very uneven at present and it probably overemphasizes mid-bass since both speakers are playing bass frequencies. I didn't want to run 100 percent of my quality Outlaw signal into the sub, then run the mains from the sub's speaker output, since it is probably a poor quality crossover on the cheap sub, and I didn't want the sound quality in the mains to suffer. Or am I wrong there- would it not make much difference in sound quality for the main speakers to have them routed through the sub's crossover first?