WHOA This isn't what I expected.

I'll try to make this as brief as possible. I am bi-amping my setup because of the new speakers I am getting. I am initially keeping my old integrated amp (Mac MA-6500)to use with the mid/high speakers. I borrrowed/bought a Nakamichi PA-7 from a friend to try out with the bass speakers. The Mac can be used as a preamp for the Nak.

I don't have the new speakers yet, but was dicking around with my old speakers this morning. I wanted to see what the volume level difference was between the Mac and Nak. I connected the Nak to the Mac using fairly good interconnects (Audioquest Pythons)and used my existing speakers and speaker cables (Audioquest Volcanos)and connected them to the Nak. After listening for a while, I reminded myself of why I was getting new speakers. Then I connected the speaker cables to the Mac, and as expected, the volume did decrease slightly. BUT, the sound quality increased in everyway and was immediately noticed. The Nak did not hold a candle to the old amp, and in fact it sounded pretty pathetic.

Can anyone tell me if this should have been the anticipated result? Or do you think something could be wrong with the Nak amp? What else am I missing? Power cords? I don't know, other than there was a VERY big drop off in sound quality that I sure wasn't expecting.

Thanks for any input.