Anybody Felt Lower-End ARC preamps Bass-Shy?

Ngjockey, I am not driving the 805's with the Plinius as they are 'easy' speakers. It's the PMC LB1 Sigs which have Dynaudio drivers. It's surprising these monitors can be quite power-hungry -250W/4ohms with a rather low sensitivity. The SA-100Mk3 only delivers 180W/4ohms and the difference is clearly apparent between running the speakers full-range and high-passing them. I also wished the Mk3 was sufficient for the PMC's but this didn't seem to be the case.

Although I felt the system sounded good high-passed with a subwoofer, I was intrigued by the benefits of running the speakers full-range after reading some comments from others here.

Thanks for the link on the informative thread.

Ryder, I run my ARC LS-25 with Pass Labs X250.5 amp driving the B&W N803 with absolutely no problems. Bass is the best it's ever been in my system, courtesy of the Pass amp.

Try getting an amp or double up on Plinius so the speakers can be given adequate amounts of power so they can be run full-range. To me this is probably the way to go...unless you are used to your sub and you'd rather have it in there.

Dynaudio are very good drivers, but almost every speaker I have heard that used Dynaudio drivers, like plenty of power.

Good luck.

Hi Audphile, I suppose you won't have any problems driving the N803's with the X250.5 since it's a powerful 250W amp that can run into 4 ohms load. I will most definitely get a 2nd Plinius amp and run my speakers full-range but the sub still needs to be there since the PMC's are limited to 35Hz only, and there's a lot of low bass missing.

Off-topic. I just recently listened to some Marten Duke speakers driven by Gryphon Tabu amp. The highs on the Marten Duke is better with a cleaner and more refined sound(due to the ceramic tweeter that extends to 40kHz) but midrange down to the bass the PMC's are better to my ears. Not too bad since the Dukes can buy 2 pairs of my speakers. I think I'll be sticking with my speakers for a while.

Ryder, it depends on what kind of music you're listening to. For example, the lowest note on acoustic double-bass is 40hz. Lowest note on the piano is 28hz.
With PMC speakers you may still be able to reproduce 28hz. I don't know how they roll off.
Run some test tones to hear how deep they go. But wher I do see you need a sub is that the PMC may simply lack the cabinet volume to have a lot of bass impact. But as far as playing a certain low frequency, they may do fine.

Check out this interesting chart

Audphile, thanks for the link. I never thought piano notes could go that low. I've just had a quick check on my piano and have to say that most music does not go past the lowest natural D note at 37 Hz. Most low piano notes are in the region of 40Hz and above.

Not too sure about organ though but I don't think I have any music on organ. I don't see any category for 'drums' but if double-bass has covered that then I think I'm fine.

Anyway I'll see how well the PMC will perform in full-range when I feed them with more power. I agree that the lack of cabinet volume will affect bass impact to a certain degree but the current speakers are just right for my room size. Bigger floorstanders will not be too ideal