Anybody Felt Lower-End ARC preamps Bass-Shy?

Ryder, define enough bass please. Without hearing your system how can anyone know how well bass is reproduced by it?

I had an LS-15, the older version with the REL capacitors and it did lack bass impact and drive. I upgraded the caps to TRT Dynamicaps and the bass performance was improved big time. I can't call the LS-15 with Dynamicaps bass shy at all. Your LS-16 has Infinicaps, same is in my LS-25.
My point is that the bass on the LS-15 with TRT Dynamicaps was not any better or worst than I now have with LS-25. It's the same as far as I can tell. The added advantage of LS-25 is its adjustable gain and this means you can up the gain to drive your amp harder to give more bass, but it may be at the expense of top end smoothness and midrange may become a bit forward sounding.

My suggestions to you to improve on the bass in your system:
Get the single-ended interconnects out of there.
ARC performs better when run balanced. So is your Krell cdp and Plinius amp. You have to run balanced from player all the way into the amp balanced. This will get you 6db more out of the preamp into the amp and will drive the amp better and I am pretty sure bass will get tighter, plus you will lower the overall noise floor and resolution will be better.

Also, try some NOS tubes in the LS-16. I don't know what you're using there right now, but I am using Mullard made by Amperex in Holland NOS 6922 tubes from Brent Jessee and these tubes do bass on completely different level than the stock Sovtek or Eh tubes do.

Bottom line is, you have to experiment.

Good luck.

10-02-07: Reb1208
I owned an LS-25 mk1 (6922tubes) Infinicaps for many years. While the bass went fairly low, rhythmic drive/impact was sorely lacking.

In relation to what other tube preamp?

I'm not familiar with the mentioned Metheny discs. But being "earlier" works, as you say, is it possible these records are just lacking the ultimate bass?

You may want to try running some sort of a reference cd, may be even stereophile test cd 1 or 2 with bass frequency test tones.
Or may be get a cd with plenty of bass. I recommend Brian Bromberg "Wood II" cd that I often use for bass test and actually enjoy listening. In case you are not familiar with Bromberg, he plays acoustic double-bass and the recording quality on "Wood II" is very good.

Ryder, LS-16 to Plinius should be OK. The amp is lacking power for your speakers and that needs to be addressed. I don't use subwoofer in my system and can't complain about the bass now with the 250w/ch, but when I had a 100w/ch amp the bass was lacking. Amplifier is the key in this case. Your LS-16 is fine. If you get an amp that can drive your speakers ful range with ease, you should get better balanced sound overall.

Ryder, I run my ARC LS-25 with Pass Labs X250.5 amp driving the B&W N803 with absolutely no problems. Bass is the best it's ever been in my system, courtesy of the Pass amp.

Try getting an amp or double up on Plinius so the speakers can be given adequate amounts of power so they can be run full-range. To me this is probably the way to go...unless you are used to your sub and you'd rather have it in there.

Dynaudio are very good drivers, but almost every speaker I have heard that used Dynaudio drivers, like plenty of power.

Good luck.

Ryder, it depends on what kind of music you're listening to. For example, the lowest note on acoustic double-bass is 40hz. Lowest note on the piano is 28hz.
With PMC speakers you may still be able to reproduce 28hz. I don't know how they roll off.
Run some test tones to hear how deep they go. But wher I do see you need a sub is that the PMC may simply lack the cabinet volume to have a lot of bass impact. But as far as playing a certain low frequency, they may do fine.

Check out this interesting chart

I know. It's not in every piano piece that the lower notes come into play, but if you have a chance to pick up Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, the opening has a seven octave descent all the way to the lowest note. It's a great piece of music. If you don't own it, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, good luck and please update this thread if you can when you get everything in place. I'm curious how the PMCs will do full range. Dynaudio drivers are usually very competent.

Zear, I was actually referring to "WoodII" disc.
Aside from being a recording of a double-bass, I do not really find the bass overdone on it.
I am not familiar with the original "Wood" recording. I will try to pick it up. Should be interesting to compare the 2 discs.