volume vs presence

Jaffa,

Don't worry about your ears (provided you don't exceed half an hour loud).

Your amp can dish out more than your speakers can handle IMHO.

Your speakers must be pretty good if they sound better when turned up loud. (Most monitor speakers sound absoultely terrible when cranked => dull, flat and distorted and with loads of port chuffing) However, your monitors are still definitely too small to ever get quite the correct "impact" of real live music.

Think of small monitors as an upgrade to a regular radio - there is still no way to be fooled into thinking the music is real unless it is just a very quiet acoustical piece - this is because real music (especially drums) has lots of dynamics and proper bass is more felt or hinted at by room pressurization than heard. What you hear mostly from small monitors with impressive bass is RESONANCE not dynamics which is why most sound fake...think of resonance as like "humming" a tune versus saying Blue Dubba Dee Dubba Die - one is softer and blurred while the other has attack. Proper bass will not mask or bury the midrange - a resonant bass ruins midrange clarity through "masking".

If you love the PMC sound and the deep TL bass then I'd recommend you get the MB2i - this speaker will open you up to whole new world where percussion sounds real and visceral...

Check your hearing here

I think you may not have a problem at all. I find different albums and even different songs on the album have a volume where they sound best through my system. It always changes from day to day. It could be the environment you are in all day at work that could change the volume required to reach that sweet spot in the volume. I try at the end of the day to sit in my sound room and chill out with no noise or sounds for about a 1/2 an hour before listening and even longer if I drove around with the windows down in my van. Noise levels through out the day effects hearing a lot more than one would think.

Try adding a good powered sub.

I know exactly what you're talking about.., to feel involved with the music you have to crank it up.

I live in a Condo, and I had the same problem when I switched from a floor-standing speaker (Alon IV) with deep bass to stand-mounted monitors (Sonus Faber) and Sub (Rel Storm). I had to blast the monitors to allow it to sound great, and then my neighboor started complaining that it was too loud and I would have to agree that she was right. I now have larger floor standing speakers (Kharma) without a sub, and I can enjoy the music at normal levels and it even sounds great at low levels at night, and my neighboor hasn't ever complained again.

I would have to agree with Mulveling, that you need larger floor-standing speakers to better fill the room with a wall of sound. I would recommend something that at least goes down to 30-35Hz.

Rich