Better than Usher Dancer Mini-X DMD?

Thanks for all of the responses. Sorry for the delay on my part but I wanted to sketch up my room in it’s current configuration and what I could change it to. As far as what I listen to It’s a pretty broad cross section. Mostly mid-1980s and earlier. Prog rock such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, Gabriel era Genesis, Pink Floyd. Rock like Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, Montrose. Lately a lot of funk and soul music. Classic country and a lot of blues too. I guess you could say I listen pretty loud considering it’s such a small room, but nowhere near as loud as my equipment could go. I think my original post is probably putting the cart ahead of the horse. I should make a final decision on a room configuration and possibly treatment. And I confess my room has other crap in it like a computer along the left wall and a dresser in the front right corner. Should get all that crap out of there and get to a good baseline of the room itself. I’m definitely very interested in opinions on which of these two room configurations would likely be better. Now that I’m trying to attach photographs of the sketch I made I can’t find a way to do it. Anyone have any ideas how I could do that? Thanks

Until I can figure out how to post my photographs I should just say that right now my speakers are up against the 12 ft wall and my chair is along the opposite wall. I guess that you would call the crosswise configuration in my 12x9 room. If I rotate it everything 90 degrees I would be listening in the lengthwise direction of the room

A very reasonable question that I’m not sure I have a defined answer. Over the years as I’ve bought better and better equipment and I listen to the songs I’ve been listening to for decades and I hear more detail and more things that I didn’t know were even there. After each significant upgrade I think "I’m there, I don’t think there is much more to get out of that music" then I find out I was wrong. This goes for both my stereo room and headphone listening. My big breakthrough this year is how I can pinpoint the location of each instrument or vocalist since I added the ATC amplifier. Had no idea an amp could make that much difference. I would say as of now I find acoustical instruments and vocals near perfection. I think when there’s a lot going on with a lot of instruments and vocals at the same time, at high volume, I lose a little clarity compared to a live performance. I’ve done a little research trying to find out if that’s unavoidable no matter how good the equipment is. It seems there’s different opinions on that subject. There are some high-end audio shops within driving distance I think in metro Detroit. I think I should visit a couple and say let me listen to the best you’ve got. Once I know how good it can get I can then figure out how close I can get within a semi-reasonable budget. To sum it up I guess it’s a case of I don’t know what I don’t know. Thanks for the advice on running my set up 90° from my current configuration

Appreciate the advice. I guess I thought a floor stander in that range would be overkill for my small room but it sounds like it wouldn't. I did almost buy a pair of pre-owned SCM19's a few years ago. Do you think they would have been better than the Ushers I ended up buying? Maybe kind of their equals? Unfortunately ATC just had a big price increase across the range. The 19's went up $800 and the 40's went up a thousand. I likely would be looking pre-owned anyway but I imagine those prices will be up also a bit. Just curious do you agree I would want to run them lengthwise in my room, in other words put the speakers along the 9-ft wall with the sound traveling down the 12 ft length of the room? Thanks

Since I first posted this I've made a few changes in my system. Upgraded my preamp to a Violectric V281 preamp/headphone amp and added better interconnects and power cables. Very pleased overall with the sound. As far as the speakers go, I've done a little research and it seems my Ushers are considered to be great cabinets, good drivers but less than optimal internals. Thinking about crossover upgrades and upgrading the internal wiring. One other speaker I considered when I bought these was the Canton Reference 9k stand mounts. At the time Canton's presence in the USA was in doubt but that has been settled apparently. Does anyone have any experience with these. Sounds like build quality is out of this world. Of course I kind of think that about my current speakers as well. One concern I have is the Canton is rear ported and the fact that I'm less than a foot from my speaker to the back wall makes me wonder if I should rule this out, and for that matter rule out all rear ported speakers. Opinions?

Sorry rb, it was only today I noticed your response to my post. Thanks for your input. From what I can tell it would be well worth the effort to replace the internal wiring and silver solder them in rather than using the push on connectors. I think upgrading the binding posts at the same time will be a good idea. After that perhaps I will use these as my endgame speakers for my small room. Thanks again