Physics of downward firing woofers

Now, why do I get tired of hearing about Classic Audio speakers? Seemingly no reason, right?

The main advantage of a downward firing sub is to avoid forward driver modulation that would compete for your attention by adding confusion to the highly perceptive mid and hi frequencies.
try reversing your subs and experiment with 180 switches and this is for many folks an improvement in focus.
Downward subs, when used with neutral speakers, will be complementary
 in balance.

Ralph, did you remove the carpet to compare or move everything to identical room ?

As you know I have a set and have shown with them at shows since the early 1990s.

I've had carpet underneath mine and also bare wood floors (went from wall to wall to tribal rugs about 10 years ago). At shows we've often had carpet and it seems like other factors of hotel rooms are issues- usually we are trying to tame the highs in the room. Things like false walls and false ceilings are far more problematic for bass. Such things act like bass traps but usually you don't run into problems like that at home.

Sound travels at about 1087 ft/second so the length of a 40 hz bass wave in 1087/40=27 feet.  Carpeting won't have any significant effect on a wave that long.  It's why bass traps have to be so big. 

The Vandersteen 2Wq sub has 3 eight inch woofers facing downward at the bottom of the cabinet with no holes for woofer exposer. It seems to have slots cut around the bottom outer edges of the cabinet where sound comes out from the back side of the internal woofers. All you have to do is listen to these subs properly setup and make your own decision as to how they sound.