Bass sensation like a loud car system in home?

As long as you live in an apartment, and this is an assumption on my part, what you ask for is a pipe dream. If you can " feel" the bass, your neighbor can too.

Move into a house ...

+1

@yukispier --

Actually I am just trying to be a courteous home owner and not have a house that can be heard down the block like a car with a nice system

So you do live in a house? Let’s be clear on that, because if you do there’s no reason you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Since I’m not interested in have 140dB of bass in my home lets say SQ system. Clean and defined sub bass yet strong enough to cleanly vibrate through your body.

You don’t need Richter scale levels to vibrate through your body, but make up your mind here: if you want what you’re asking for - that is, sound quality and impact - be prepared to go the distance (i.e.: there’s no magic "feel the impact on your body without the near within-the-same-structure surroundings being affected," and you won’t get proper impact from tiny, decor-friendly subs). If your residential situation can accommodate it there’s no reason why you can’t achieve your goal.

My advice: forget about "buttkickers" - it’s a cheap and distracting trick, if you ask me. Visceral sensation is very much created through prodigious lower 30-ish Hz reproduction in particular, and with bass it’s relatively simple: ample displacement (meaning: a certain minimum of driver size and overall volume) and proper implementation, and with that quality of reproduction and felt impact naturally follows.

It seems to me your real problem isn’t the neighbors; it’s that you want felt bass impact from a soundbar. Moreover, if you do live in a separately situated house then 90-110dB SPL’s from capably implemented subs won’t affect the neighbors, even louder than that, and you’d definitely be able to feel it. A mono-couple DBA bass setup with likes of, say, four PSA S1512 sealed subs (fairly compact and quite powerful) would give a sensation of a impactful and rather smooth "inside your head" bass, not entirely unlike that experienced in a car (personally I prefer symmetrically placed, stereo-coupled subs, but that’s not subject here).

@mijostyn --

You do not need to resort to huge drivers to get the best bass. They take up way too much room when you factor in the enclosures they require.
Today’s subwoofers are way more powerful than drivers of old. Their Xmax is much higher, up to 2 inches is not uncommon. The old drivers you were lucky to get 1/4 inch out of them. The larger drivers also tend not to move straight in and out. They wobble! I have seen it with high speed photography. In a 16 X 30 foot room four 12" drivers in corners and along the front wall (were they are most efficient) will do fine given enough power and a little EQ. Eight 12" drivers would be definite overkill.

More displacement area means less cone movement needed for the same SPL, which again is less distortion and cleaner sound. Indeed: smaller cones moving more violently to equate the SPL of larger cones moving less, sound different; you sense their effort producing bass (a bi-product of any direct radiating bass system, really, compared to horn-loaded bass) even though they mayn’t be working close to their limits. Inertia build-up in the moving parts of a driver, inevitable with prodigious excursion, IS audible - negatively, that is, as a smearing of transient ability. Ample displacement, not least combined with high efficiency and horn-loading simply creates a more effortless, smooth and relaxed bass by comparison. The cones of the 15" pro drivers (B&C) in my tapped horn subs move a few mm’s at most when making the air viscerally shake in the whole listening room (and beyond), at dB’s that’re downright scary. No wobbling of cones, I can assure you, and totally effortless at these levels.

Btw, there’s no "overkill" with bass; only an approximation of sufficient headroom ;)

The one concept I really dislike is the one that requires different bass for different functions like theater vs 2 channel. My 2 channel system doubles for theater and I do not make any adjustments between these functions. Last week I almost scared the projector tech to death with Star Wars then next I put on Dave Holland. No adjustments. Accurate bass is accurate bass regardless of what you are listening to. Maybe people like juicing the low end for theater because they think it’s cool like oversaturating the colors. Definitely, there are way more theater people than us audiophiles and you always want to buy equipment that was designed especially for your purpose which is marketing garbage. A good is a good amp regardless. Accuracy is exactly the same for theater and 2 channel. Maybe some of us audiophiles are thinking we don’t have to go down that low. You don’t have to do anything but in regards to the performance it is a vital part of projecting realism and making you think you are really in a much larger room. Many systems start dying at 100 Hz. The specs might say 28 Hz to 20 kHz but that is at one meter in an anechoic chamber not three meters in a 15 X 25 foot room. Just get a measurement microphone. Actually, don’t do that. It can be very depressing. Sh-t! I was listening to that??

Wholeheartedly agree here. What I’ve realized is that less clean bass means that you have to "negatively compensate" with less level for it not to be too conspicuous, and this really robs music (and movies) of a foundation that it should ideally have. That’s why, I gather, many feel the need to "juice up" the levels again with movies, because otherwise they don’t have proper impact and energy. With my former sub set-up that’s exactly what it lead to (re: negative compensation with music), whereas now the gain of my tapped horn subs sits at the same value, where it should, with both music and movies.

Regarding proper extension, this is where displacement and efficiency (and, ultimately, size) really matters, because hearing acuity lessens with lower frequencies, and so your sub setup needn’t only be linear down low but with progressing amplitude the lower the frequency. That’s why, with bass, headroom is so important, and for that "overkill" makes all the more sense.

@tony1954 -

My only question would be, why?
Unless I am watching a battle scene from Avatar or Midway, the last thing I want is bass that is disproportional to the way it was recorded.

I believe I understand what the OP is after, that "inside your head" kind of bass that’s produced in a car, and I find it is most closely reproduced with a mono-coupled DBA sub set-up in your home. I like it for what it is, many aspects actually, but ultimately I find the "outside your head" bass that’s created with stereo-coupled, symmetrically placed subs - usually a pair only placed fairly close to the main speakers - to be the more natural sounding. The real culprit it seems isn’t as much whether there’s stereo information in the bass below 80-100Hz, but that what’s effectively a pair of subs are placed symmetrically to the mains - i.e.: with equal distance to your ears - and that may put even a symmetrically placed DBA subs setup in a disadvantage. Some may want to convince (that is, ’correct’) us timing in bass doesn’t matter, but it absolutely does to those sensitive to it for whatever reason. In any case, that’s not what the OP is asking for, so: mono-coupled DBA from my chair.

The thing about "bass that is disproportional to the way it was recorded" is a bit tricky, if not easily misleading. If anything I’d say most hifi setups fall short of reproducing bass proportionately (i.e.: with proper energy and immersion), and moreover an addition in capacity doesn’t dictate for it to be dialed in overly "hot." That said cleaner and more effortless bass can (and usually should) be dialed hotter to recapture and natural balance and foundation in music (and movies) that a less capable bass system can’t approach without making itself too "visible" in the mix.

@mijostyn --

I would feel free in saying the vast majority of us do not have the room for subwoofer horns.

Maybe so. And yet; if you have the allocated space anyway it seems to me the sheer will to do it is the predominant factor, unless the horn cabinet volume itself turns out to be acoustically obstructive, something I haven't faced even when they've taken up a combined 100 cf. in moderate spacings. 

They are bandwidth restricted in their upper range, certainly tapped horns like mine, so you have to know what you're dealing with in how to best suit your specific needs. I take it you're fully aware of that.

... In my case it would not work anyway. I have to form a line source with them which means 4 or more drivers in most situations. If you put the subs in corners and in a wall floor intersection you do increase their efficiency requiring about 1/4th the power to get the same volume. In this case as a line source 4 12" drivers can do a lot of damage in your typical room. My own system will shortly have 8 12" drivers in 4 sealed cylindrical balanced force enclosures.

I've wondered myself why your setup didn't comprise line source bass towers when your main speakers are configured this way, but that seems to be underway now. It should make for an interesting, dare I say significant upgrade even. Please keep us informed.