Quote Originally Posted by Walker
Hi Tons of fun and others,
I have some questions about my new 540a.
I'm a little concerned about the power of this amp. I have to crank it to 12 o'clock (on some older cd's, Fleetwood Mac Rumors) to get some feel of a powerful sound. It's probably still breaking in (played it for about 30 hours now) but I must say that the lower end is almost completely lacking. The sound is very thin and not at all convincing. The detail is great, much better than my HK and Onkyo, especially in the drums it's incredible what I have been missing.
But again I could not throw a good party with it the way it sounds now, you don't feel it; basically it does not rock (yet). Is this normal for this amp (after only 30 hours on low levels most of the time) or are my speakers a wrong match?
Thanks for advice.
Your amp is now giving your speakers what you feed it. The fact that there's less bottom end is not because your amp is not driving your speakers well, in fact it's driving them BETTER. What you used to think was good bass, was actually distortion caused by your old amps inability to control your woofer, allowing it to distort. This is a common problem with amps that have low damping factor. The fact the the drums sound better is a hallmark of a good amp.The sudden attack of a drum strike, and the shimmer of a cymble with mulitple harmonics are very difficult things to reproduce well.

With your speakers the amp is not really working unless your've got it really load. So if your worried about turning your volume up and "blowing" something don't. You want your speakers to rock? Turn up the VOLUME! You'll find that as it get's louder there's more apparent bass, as human hearing is very non-linear in the bass range. My guess, and it's an educated one, as my buddy has the same speakers as you do for surrounds, is that your speakers will ROCK is your just turn it up a bit.