Hi there I am in the same boat, what I found was adding a subwoofer to the mix seems to really round out the sound, it just seems fuller at low volumes. To put this into perspective we moved from a condo with concrete floors under hardwood to a Dricore floor on top of concrete in my new listening room. Room treatment aside the floor material really impacted the sound and not in a good way. I went with two rel T Zero subs instead of 1 larger unit. I find the sound comes across as balanced and you have more flexibility on room placement.
I have two Rel TZeros and two Focal Aria 926s. I hope this is helpful.
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The only constant in my system as it evolved over many years have been my speakers. Allae’s, they sound very good at low volume , say 9:00 or so on the big round knob.
Is 09:00 quiet?! That would be very loud for me.
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I’ve had a pair of Fink Team Kim speakers at home for the past week. I’ve been very impressed at how good they are at low volume
Very clever, disguising the T-zero as a Christmas present!
I run dual stereo subwoofers (2 x BK Gemini 2) which do exactly as you describe, as well as filling out the sound stage and adding to harmonics etc. Purchase 2 x Rel or BK, connect them high level (at the speaker end in my case), position/set them carefully and you then have bass extension that you can adjust to taste/room and which goes a long way to dealing with room modes.
I am contemplating adding two more BKs in a ‘4-pack’ as this will enable me to:
- Raise the bass response further from the floor - much less of an issue now that they are connected high level and integrate better - I don’t know why either!
- Have different filter/gain settings for each subwoofer, for example the lower woofers could have lower xover settings but higher gain, which would help increase the lowest frequency output (even subwoofers produce less output the lower the frequency) while the higher subwoofers could have a higher xover frequency and possibly lower gain, effectively transitioning between the ‘floor’ pair and the main speakers natural roll off.
- Increase headroom - 4 x 10 inch woofers driven by 4 separate 150 WPC/8ohm amplifiers has more headroom than two of each. Is this necessary? No, desirable? In my case yes. YMMV.
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Very enlightening chart - I assume 110db for a baby crying is an innate survival tool.
Interestingly, as a primary school teacher, I often wonder what DB level the children make in a classroom. I’ve not measured it yet but I have a strong suspicion that being in a classroom from 8:30 to the end of the school, 5 days a week, will have a much larger impact on my hearing long-term than my listening to HIFI between 70 - 85db and occasionally at 90db.
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I just checked using a dB meter on my iphone and 09:00 is 100 dB. Definitely too loud for comfortable listening, not to mention my neighbours!
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My bad, more like 8:30 ish on the volume knob. But the Allae’s perform very well from very low all the way up to trouser flapping volume. They’re 8’ apart and I’m sitting 10’ from them. My HiFi dealer in Seattle said I could do better than the Allae’s, but I would have to spend a lot of money.
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Speakers need a certain volume and then they come alive. My wife will happily listen to music on an iphone in her pocket! Not me!
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We don’t spend much time listening to music together!!
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Even with the same amplification it depends hugely on speaker sensitivity and listening distance, both of which can be very different between different people’s systems, and of course on source output.
That has made me smile. ( in a good way).
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Can you say a little bit about what’s in your system? 
I like your idea of adding the 2 additional subs with different crossover and gain settings. Something to consider!
I’m running the poor mans ESL57’s, the Magnepan LRS+ which are full-range ribbons and do great at low-levels.
In my youth I listened to stacked ESL57’s a few times, very, very impressed.
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If only Naim had been able to bring Guy Lamotte’s FL-1 electrostatics into production, I wouldn’t have needed to have a stacked pair of the QUADs.
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Once you’ve heard Quad 57s, it’s hard to go back. I’ve never heard them stacked, but they must be just extraordinarily good. The need to have several feet behind them and the reputedly narrow sweet spot rule them out for my listening world, alas.
I’ve had the FinkTeam Kim’s at home for a demo (and then an extended demo whilst I wait for the pair I’ve bought to be manufactured). They’re really good at lower volume, with a bass that doesn’t disappear as the volume goes down.
I’ve been really impressed.
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When I had Klipsch Heresy IIIs they flourished at higher volumes, they are made for that and they do best that way, listened at from some distance. In the OP’s position I’d go for some BBC-related unit…
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