System needs more watts??

How big is the room?

With a sensitivity of 89 dB and 75 wpc, plus 3dB for a stereo pair and another 2dB for room gain, this setup as is should be able to hit clean peaks around 112 dB at 1M away or 106 dB at 2M away. I like having 150 wpc or more, but I've heard very dynamic systems with middling sensitivity and 70 wpc in medium-sized (say 16x18) rooms. It helps when the system has a very low noise floor.

To make sure you don't have impedance matching problems, try swapping in a SS amp with high input impedance and low output impedance and stable into 2 ohm loads.

However it is normal for music not to sound full and dynamic at lower than natural levels.

Play at correct volume or resort to mid-fi cures like equalizers or tone controls.

Im with Frogman. Good Luck

I'm puzzled. I don't see a separate DAC in this setup. If the DAC is what came in the Cary and thats circa 2001, then you are describing exactly the issue of an older CD player... same difference I hear comparing the analog outs of my Linn Genki (2001) vs the digital out from Linn to my DAC. Review makes the Cary sound like a wonderful transport so if it can feed digital to a DAC, that may be the cure.

If I'm not mistaken, your preamp has only unbalanced inputs and outputs, which does not seem ideal for use in conjunction with your fully balanced amplifier. For that matter, what is the means by which you are connecting the two components, as I believe the VK75SE does not provide unbalanced inputs?

If you are doing it with a simple RCA-to-XLR adapter or adapter cable, that is absolutely not ideal. Depending on the design of the amplifier, it might even result in putting no signal through one of the two balanced signal paths through the entire amplifier, for each channel. In that situation the result would be (among other things) a reduction of the amp's power capability that approaches 75%, reducing the amp's capability from 75 watts to less than 20 watts.

Also, a point to be aware of is that the 89.5 db specified sensitivity of your speakers is with respect to 2.83 volts, not 1 watt. 2.83 volts corresponds to 1 watt into 8 ohms, but it corresponds to 2 watts into the 4 ohm nominal impedance of the speaker, which means that their sensitivity is only 86.5 db for a 1 watt input. And as a tube amplifier, the BAT is not able to deliver significantly more power into 4 ohms than it can deliver into 8 ohms, being rated at 75 watts into either impedance.

Regards,
-- Al