Help Needed Power Amp lacks punch

Could be electric power issues. Is your AC power clean? Are you still using a standard OEM power cord? Don't plug the amp into a power strip; put it right into the wall.

Kgveteran: The 555's were bipolar amps, hence my comments above.

Sugarbrie: While your basic suggestions are good ( heavier gauge cord directly into the wall ), "dirty" AC typically sounds "fuller" than clean AC on the bottom end and harder / grittier as frequency rises. The increased warmth has to do with all of the harmonic distortion of the 60 Hz AC signal itself being further amplified through-out the chain. Cleaning up the incoming AC and then minimizing the ringing that takes place in the equipment itself via replacing slow rectification devices tends to lean the sound out a bit.

Rainchild: If my suggestions above don't give you what you want, you might want to think about modifying your amp. That is, if you like it enough to want to keep it. These amps were notorious for starving the earlier stages of amplification when dynamic swings or sustained high level spl's were taking place. There are several different approaches that one can take to rectify this situation with the two most common being to add massive amounts of filter capacitance and / or install a regulator circuit. You can find the circuit boards for the regulators at this link that i've provided for Audio Xpress aka "Old Colony Sound Labs". Sean
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I agree that the 555II has got better tautness in bass region and the 5500 is a tag soft in this area. Compare to Plinus SA100 MKIII which only fetch 100w/ch, The 100 is way ahead in making my Hales Relevlation 2s sing. But again, it's price also very far ahead. Do you guy think Carver FTM-35 will do better in bass? I know the Bryston can do a good job but now my budget doesn't allow to fulfil this wish yet. I got Acurus 200 in mind too.

Big power helps, but the quality of the power is more important. I have seen 75 wpc amps absolutely stomp 250 wpc amps in terms of "punch" and ability to drive difficult loads. As such, i would avoid all makes / models that you mentioned short of the Plinius. Sean
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Thanks Sean,

I think this is too profound for me to understand. Should we go for tubes? I used a Electrocompanient ECi3 rated 70 watts class "A" before but I found that the ECi3 sounds more like a 40 watter to me. I also heard the YBA Integre DT and it sounds like a 150 watter driving a pair of Spendors. Matching equipments is a deep thing really. Can someone tell me what to use to drive a pair of Hales R2?