I have been listening to a newly acquired pair of MB Quart QL S830's that are connected to a HK3480 amplifier (150W / channel into 4 ohms). I am using a standard Onkyo DVD changer and am using the sub outputs to power a Monitor Audio sub. I've kept everything as simple as possible.

Now I've had a lot of speakers in my home and must say that I expected more out of the MB Quarts. While the speakers are fantastic in the mid and upper frequencies and the sub is able to pick up the very low frequencies w/o problems, I seem to be hearing a hole in the mid-bass as if the speakers aren't able to meet the sub. The speakers should be able to reach down to 33 Hz comfortably and I have the sub set to cross over at ~50Hz., but I still feel like there is a whole octave missing there. If I remove the sub out of the equation, the speakers just sound like they have very little bass at all.

I am using Audio Quest Sidewinder interconnects and I am using 16 gauge Radio Shack speaker wire crimped with generic banana plugs. I have some AQ bedrock speaker wire on order, but is that really the cause of the problem? I don't have any other 4 ohm speakers on hand, so I can only compare it to several pairs of 8 ohm speakers I have, and while none of them sound as good in the mids and upper range, they all have better bass response.

I prefer a warm sounding speaker, so these MB Quarts are becoming a bit of a dissapointment. I have not opened them up and looked inside, but before I do that, I wanted to post my question to the forum to see if I was missing something. I don't have much other equipment or wire to swap out right now, so I can't try too many things. So to recap:

- Am I using the wrong speaker wire?
- Is this the typical character of these speakers?
- Am I connecting something wrong?
- Is the HK3480 the problem?

Thanks.