Amp Question Please advise

You have great speakers but they have small base cones (I believe 2x6.5 inch on both fronts and an 8 inch cone on the sub woofer) and you have a large room....I suspect that this might be the base issue that you perceive at low levels.

You also mention that you have in-wall speakers in your other similar setup at the office..... but not only are they in-wall but the fronts are Paradigm SA 35's, which have 2 x 8" cones giving a total of four 8 inch cones and a wall mount versus one 8 inch and no wall mounts .....this could be the factor in the different base sound you are hearing at low levels. Bigger cones with correspondingly bigger cabinets generally amount to better defined base - even if they are ugly!

Suggestion: Try auditioning a PDR 12 sub....it might be your cheapest solution to get that missing lower end at low levels at home...alternatively you could just boost the base at low levels....in any case, a larger cone and cabinet will generally give you better defined base.

I should think that the Denon 3805 at 120 WPC is enough for these highly efficient speakers (91 db at 1 meter for 1 watt), especially if your problem, as you have described, is at low listening levels.

A bigger amplifier will ONLY help at higher output levels where the lower power amplifier will CLIP...of course this can happen at low listening levels too... provided the source has a heavy amount of base like in an earthquake or dinosaur footsteps during a movie.

(Aside: Tweeters require almost no power...50 watts is about the most they ever require at any sound level....base is a different matter, however, and a single 15" cone in a professional quality sub woofer will generally need several hundred to one thousand watts....typically under powered amps will clip when driven too hard and then the distorted sound will burn or damage your tweeter as the coils get overly hot from being driven by a square wave.)

These days almost all solid state amplifiers have a VERY flat frequency response for a variety of speaker loads and Denon will be no exception.

Your room and speakers will NOT be flat frequency reponse....especially at the low end ....where the small size cabinets of the 40's will rely on speaker placement (walls) and the built in tuned port to generate low end (below 120 Hz).

Antman27,

I am not familiar with the Denon 3805 surround processor. I assumed that for two channel music that you program this Denon amp to send the audio signal also to the subwoofer as well as the left and right channels (many surround processors allow this option). If this is not possible then my suggestion to try a beefier sub woofer (PDR 12) will not help you at all with your music... in this case you might want to look at a surround processor that does allow you to drive your PDR 8 when playing stereo source music or, alternatively, larger front speakers with more defined base reponse (usually means larger cones and may unfortunately be much less esthetic for your room).