Benchmark or McIntosh....

Holy crap those are big subwoofers you have and you have two of them.

How did you make a decision to buy such huge monsters for this room? I have a subwoofer that's 12 inches in a comparable sized room and it is set at 20% volume and still very very dramatic.

@emergingsoul The Paradigms I had were all mis-matched (see previous comments in this thread about the room looking bad) so I upgraded to 18" PSA subs. I was having some noise issues during certain parts of songs so I decided to try their new(ish) 21. I like the 21 more versus the 18s, so I ended up with the two up front and one in the rear. The sidewalls have a dual-opposed 21 on each side. It works well since I don't have to push them hard to get decent output in the room so it keeps the distortion low, which is the goal. Also, the McIntosh is dead quiet. The Wadia had a little noise if you got very close to the monitor. With the Mac, nothing but silence. 

Switched the speaker outputs from the 4ohm to 8ohm (speakers are 6ohm.) Completely changed the sound of the amp (in a good way) MUCH more to my liking now. Absolutely wild.

👍 outstanding!

I have never heard the Benchmark amps, but what you describe is exactly what their preamp sounds like.

I’ve owned both the amp and preamp and currently still have the preamp. That’s not really the case at all if the LA4 preamp is matched to a synergistic amp. It will reveal weaknesses upstream though, and unlike many FET and tube preamps on the market, it won’t compensate for a lean or unrefined source.

The AHB2s, OTOH, do indeed sound less refined than some designs but that’s really because most A/AB amps produce enough 2nd and 3rd order harmonics to give them a sort of false refinement. But when paired with the right speakers and sources this isn’t really an issue.