Alleviate brightness by using tube pre?

Carl is right, the cheapest and most benefficial way to upgrade your system is changes you can make in your room. Heavy curtains, persian rug, bookshelves...etc. Room acoustic is THE most important "tweak"

Hi Srama. The two above postees are right on-- treat your room. I've been there and done that, and ASC tube traps are great. If you added a tube pre-amp you would only have a little smoother irritating brightness. I envy your 20 ft. ceilings-- as long as your room isn't square you have potential for great music quality.

Yes, our room adds and subtracts a lot of information to audio signal. And, most of us don’t have a dedicated listening room for aggressive room treatment :( And, usually a good spot for speaker is a bad spot for our spouse :) You might want to use near field listening test to learn how much room you are hearing first. One possible way to combat room problem is to use planar speakers. I also believe that the tube front-end will elevate your listening pleasure to combat room problem.

Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful responses. A lot of my troubles are definitely room-related. I have a couple of -2 to -4 db dips at the 80-100 Hz range and some +5 db spikes in the 1.5 KHz and the 5-6KHz range. Moving the speakers closer to the wall alleviated the lower-frequency dips somewhat- unfortunately, I don't have an RTA, so its painstaking work! So, my next question is, what exactly are ASC tube traps/frescoes and where would I find information on them? Depending on their aesthetics, they may or may not be a viable option for me. (My wife already thinks I have gotten away with murder because I use Sound Organization shelves instead of a big, honking entertainment center!) Again, thanks for your responses.

Hi Srama. For ASC, go to www.tubetrap.com, It's located in Eugene, OR., but has a world wide reputation.