Three ways allow one to do bass right without resorting to subwoofers. Now if you have the space, $$$ and a sufficiently understanding spouse, a group of subwoofers (at least 2--one front and the other back with back providing cancellation of some of the more annoying standing waves) will always be superior), but there are no shortage of good woofers 12"+ able to cover 30-300Hz that provide the kind of oomph no woofer/mid bass can. As they say with cars, there is no replacement for displacement.
That said, modern long throw mid-bass drivers like the Purify, can provide some grunt, but unless stacked still come up short, and will likely require some 4'th order alignment with the possible attendant hangover or extraneous sounds if not.
Before the popularity of DSP/active channels, designing good crossovers was a major task, and to do it well twice is harder than once--although truncation of response due to stretching the coverage of drivers is much less of an issue going active and/or using waveguides. Still having some fat overlap between drivers makes matters a whole lot easier. There is one midrange
driver, a 3" dome coupled to a 15lb magnet that if owned would be an absolute crime not to be used.
My most recent system is 3 way, using really good 15" woofers to cover 30-300. What little loss of coherence that may be present is amply repaid by it's ability to hit 115dB peaks at 30 Hz in stride. Palpability of bass is not to be underestimated IMHO.
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