Carry a couple of CDs with a lot of drums, for example, 'Drums on Fire' by James Asher and Sivamani. If you can lay your hands on any CD of Kitaro, it will be even better. Kitaro, a Japanese musician uses the Taiko, Okedo, and Okaido drums. Some of these drums go very large - sometimes 2 to 3 meters in diameter. Another option is the Tabla of our own maestro - Zakhir Hussain.
In movies, a good option is 'Battle of Britain'. Any DVD that has war scenes or bombing scenes.
When you play these, you have to specifically look for two things from the sub - speed, and depth. By speed what I mean is that the sub should pay the sound in a very sharp manner without any boominess or echo. By depth, you should be able to differentiate between the sounds of drums of various sizes. Zakhi's plays the tabla in multiple ways. One; he uses his fingers and the base of his hand to create very sharp sound that lasts for a few millisecond. Second; he rubs the bases of his hand across the face of the drum that will create a longer 'brummmmmmm'. At times, he taps the drum lightly creating a melody using very low amplitude sounds. These differences are not just volume but also the tones of the low frequency sounds.
A good sub, if you close, your eyes, should be able to make you visualize all these.
In 'Battle of Britain', in one of the initial chapters, the Germans bomb an RAF base at Biggin Hill. As the bombs fall, the camera, in the initial stages, is very close to the drop points. Here the explosion of the boom will be ear splitting, but again dying very quickly without an echo. Slowly the camera pans back to give a view of the whole airfield. At that point the volume of the explosions go down, but you can yet feel the deep thump as the bombs fall far away.
Most action movies have similar scenes. Once scene I just love is from Kill Bill 2. In this scene, Beatrix is knocked by Budd in a shootout. He and his friends then nail her into a coffin. The camera is inside the coffin as the nails are hammered in. A good sub will clearly separate the metallic sound of the hammer hitting the nail and the deep deep 'thump' that follows as the nail goes into the wood. Real creepy.
Regarding how it will sound with your system., you just have to convince the dealer to give you home demo. There is no other option unless you find a dealer who has your system in his place.
Cheers, and have fun !!