Am I the only one that thinks this system is underpowered? 86dB 1w/1M on a 75W tube amp in a big space does not sound correct to me; I'd pick a good 200W/ch amp and see how that does. I may agree with some of the sub comments, but you don't even have your main speakers set up right yet. You won't know how the speaker really sounds until they are properly powered.
Underpowering speakers is the #1 most detrimental thing you can do to a speaker. Running very long speaker cable runs is another, as those long cables suck all your power away and drastically decrease dampening factor so you get very poor bass performance. so with a 75W amp, you don't have much room for error. Try your speakers on a 1 foot length of 12 gauge OFC and see what happens. Then borrow someone's big amp and try that, using your integrated as a preamp. I bet its night and day.
I work with speakers and amps all the time and I know from the ATC SCM19s i import, putting them on a small amp (say like a modern receiver, Denon, Yamaha, etc) they sound good. Plenty of folks would be happy. Put them on preamp with a big 200W or 300W amp (even if its a new Yamaha or Rotel or NAD -something like that) they sound like a different speaker- amazing! Way more bass, way more dynamics, headroom etc. If I tried that first, I might not add a sub.
Brad
Underpowering speakers is the #1 most detrimental thing you can do to a speaker. Running very long speaker cable runs is another, as those long cables suck all your power away and drastically decrease dampening factor so you get very poor bass performance. so with a 75W amp, you don't have much room for error. Try your speakers on a 1 foot length of 12 gauge OFC and see what happens. Then borrow someone's big amp and try that, using your integrated as a preamp. I bet its night and day.
I work with speakers and amps all the time and I know from the ATC SCM19s i import, putting them on a small amp (say like a modern receiver, Denon, Yamaha, etc) they sound good. Plenty of folks would be happy. Put them on preamp with a big 200W or 300W amp (even if its a new Yamaha or Rotel or NAD -something like that) they sound like a different speaker- amazing! Way more bass, way more dynamics, headroom etc. If I tried that first, I might not add a sub.
Brad