Ohm Walsh Micro Talls: who's actually heard 'em?

Hello gang. I've been working with my Walsh 5000's and although I thought I was on the way to getting their performance right it's turned out to be a no go. The 5000's are inefficient and need high current and high power, particularly to play them and get good bass-fill at lower volumes. As some of you know I have the McCormack DNA-500 and a VTL 2.5 preamp. The DNA-500 is high current and 500 per side at 8 hohms. I like to play my setup at low volume sometimes and enjoy the music, thus the high current amp. At low volume the bass weight and fullness is not there and it should be with a high current amp. Now, you might say, "it could be your room or it could be speaker placement issues.". But I've heard the Walsh 5000's play with bigger bass in this room and in their current position in the room. The problem is that I've only heard them play with bigger bass when I've reconfigured some interconnects or power cords within the system. (When I powered up the system and the cables and system were settling back in after a reconfiguration) In other words, while the system was settling in after cables have been moved around there have been times when I heard these speakers play with the kind of low end weight I'd expect from speakers this size. But in my experience, the sonics of a system are never stable while cables and gear are in the process of settling in. Once everything in the system settles downs after reconfiguring cables, the sonics then stabilize. This can take a day or two. During that time I've heard the 5000's move more air and play with more bass weight, but as thing settle in the low end weight decreases. This has happened several times as I've experimented with cables and configurations and has been disappointing. But what this experience revealed to me is that the speakers have the capability to produce more and bigger low end weight in this room and in their current placement. So it's not the speakers, the room, or their placement holding back the low end. The question is, what to do? Change preamplifiers, power cables, or interconnects? I find it hard to believe that this high current amplifier could be the problem. I know that amp speaker matching is always a key to performance, but it does not seem possible in this case. I'm looking for answers.

Foster_9,

I'm at a loss. This is one for Mapman to figure out! ;-)

Foster 9:

The DNA-500 has more than enough power and current to drive the Walsh 5000s. This must be a placement issue, I have measured (and heard) substantial differences in the bass output of my Walsh 5s in the main power band (~40-60 hz) with movement of the speaker a mere 3 inchs. You need to pick up a Radio Shack sound meter and a test CD with tones from 20 -100 Hz and run scans for different loudspeaker positions. Believe me, a mere few inch adjustment can do wonders for sorting out the bass.

Yes, the exact placement can make a significant difference in the bass levels I have found also as Mamboni points out.

That solid brick rear wall I recall could also be working against you...not sure anything can be done about that.

Foster, you are heavily armed well beyond most at this point with that McCormack amp I would think. I doubt that is the problem.

Could something in the hookup be out of phase?

Foster, also I do not recall if you are using any power conditioning device? If so, try running without it and see if that makes a difference in the bass impact level.