thanks for the reply, chesseroo,
Nah, the marantz is decommissioned now - i've listened to it with both the loudness on/off, and with it off, the sound is noticeably flatter. But the bass/oomph is still there.
Now the arcam's completely replaced my marantz - i plan on using the arcam as a preamp with a seperate poweramp later on, but for now, the arcam is standalone.
And yeah, the bass is just.. gone. the mid/high is ultra clear and amazingly clean, its just that there's no lows to supplement that.
well, i hope a subwoofer fixes it. i was going to go with an svs or hsu, but the axiom ep125 appeals to me for some reason. how are those?