Need more bass response

If jazz sounds great but not rock, it's probably not the system but the recordings that are causing your consternation. "From the Cradle" is hardly a mastering wonder. (Not to brag, but I've heard EC do most of that material in a club, so I have some basis for comparison.)

I certainly wouldn't do anything that would mess up your jazz reproduction. Adding a sub might be the ticket, though your Silvers are no slouch. Rearranging the room could help, but if it's your living room that's probably a no-go.

Here's a radical suggestion: Get an equalizer. Bypass it for good jazz recordings, but tweak it a bit on other stuff to see if it improves things. (Purists will howl, but it's not their ears, now, is it?)

Power conditioner? From a guy who has his doubts about cables? C'mon, you know better than that!

I have a Rogue 66 with a Rogue 88 amp. I replaced all tubes with Mullards (preamp takes 2 12au7's). I can't believe the base. I may have to put back one of the nos Philips that Rogue puts in from the factory to get a little shimmer back in. What I am saying is try a couple of Mullards if you want base.

Ax:

Bomarc is on to something. I recently sold my solid state CJ line stage pre as I am reconfiguring my main system. I replaced the CJ with an old Hafler 100 pre that had been sitting in storage for years.

Eureka! I had the same nagging problem with my system --- sounded great with jazz, orchestral, acoustic, and vocal material, but SUCKED the life out of rock. In fact, I had stopped listening to my rock collection over the years precisely because of this. The Hafler, with its tone controls, has made it so I can listen to rock again, and I love it! Now I'm not going to lie, the Hafler is nowhere near as detailed, the soundstage is not as well defined, and it is a noisy little bugger, but ahhhh, the glorious BASS response.

I am going to grab an old Adcom 565 pre that has tone controls and is actually pretty decent sounding, and I'm going to use the system with it primarily for rock. I am lucky to have a second Magneplanar/Roksan-based system that I will listen to jazz, acoustic, etc. on.

Please do yourself a favor and consider tone controls at least as seriously as you consider cables and other tweaks. I know that this advice will be looked down upon by many of the pointy-headed audiophiles that lurk here, but what will it hurt to experiment? Musical Fidelity makes/made such a device called the X-tone. You've nothing to lose by bucking the audiophile orthodoxy and giving tone controls a try.

yay Doc: let's hear it for Tone Controls!
I bought a $10K list Accuphase preamp for, among other reasons, Tone Controls! And for late nights when everyone else in the house is sleeping, it even has 3-stages of Loudness Compensation. All of that extra circuitry has an internal bypass feature; 95% of the time I use it bypassed anyway. But when you have marginal source material that desparately needs some Eq then who cares about absolute purity?

I'm sure I'm going to be way off the subject. But cables do make a difference regardless of wether or not they will give you more bass. Trust me on this one! I am a system tech for a " very " large broadband company. And if there is one thing we have found out the hard way. Different cables do different things.

But it's not just cables this applies to but just about anything. Try putting 87 octane gas in a 69 Plymouth Road Runner with a 426 hemi engine and see how it runs. For that matter try jumping this beast at -20 with cheap K-Mart jumper cables as opposed to the higher priced, higher quality auto parts jumpers. I'll bet you will want the high priced jumpers by the time your done.

Try running your average street tire on a Nascar race car, and see how well the car holds the track. Is high-end audio any different? I once had a friend who told me her boom box sounded as good as any other audio gear. Surprise! Surprise!

I cannot see why people are willing to spend big bucks on high-end audio, because they obviously believe that audio gear can " make a difference " But then they want to use bottom of the line cheap cables. If cables don't make a difference then why not just go to a Target store and buy some of the $4.99 audio/video cables and be done with it? In fact that would be a good comparison ( unless of course that is what your using ) go get a pair at Target, and A/B them and see for yourself.

just my 2 cents worth......