I believe the HT2 may have been designed to be used with McIntosh amplifiers/receivers that use their autoformer output stage which has 8 and 4 ohm positive and negative speaker binding posts.
If your amplifier only has left and right + and - binding posts and your stacking both your tower speakers and the subwoofer cables, this may be responsible for the lower output your hearing.
Refer to the McIntosh HT2 manual as well as a McIntosh amplifier manual or contact McIntosh directly for assistance.