the tarantula is overrated. i've seen them go to smoke instantly. to give an adequate reference, type x's took their place with the same power without problem. further, the id max just hands down sounds better. i owned the vgs (van gough) subs. they were meant for "great" sq and stand down to the id max. so the soundstreams have no real advantage at all.
The new Soundstream is actually Power Acoustik explaining why they suck. How did you like the Van Gogh subs Mike? Aside from sounding worse than the ID's did they sound alright? I noticed the VGA series was the last one Soundstream made before the sell out so some of the VGA subs are the old Soundstream some of them are Power A's.
they were clean subs. not quite the output that i would have preferred. i was comming fresh off of 3 jl12w3's so.. the pair just didn't make the cut, lol. the sq difference between the vgw's (not vgs) and my brahmas is night and day. and the brahmas are quite comparable to the id max. but i paid 200 for the vgw pair, and they were certainly worth that. not nearly the value of my vga's though.