I've been going crazy waiting for my speakers to arrive(ascends),so I could give the 950/rotel 1075 a listen. I finally broke down, and dug up the dreaded tiny cube speakers with the bass module and gave the system a listen. I could max out the volume if I wanted to! Please tell me it's the speakers, and that with some type of quality speakers the sound and volume will never see max again.

My cubes and "bass" module went on eBay several years ago, thankfully. You are likely running into a limitation in the speakers, but in preparation for the arrival of the Ascends I'll ask one question anyway: did you calibrate the system?

I did tinker with the calibrations, half-fast as it were.

You can only expect so much from a 2.5" driver, no matter how good the quality. There is physics involved here.