2. digital
  3. 186581-130

Does an upgrade make sense?

I may be coming down with the upgrade bug, and I’m open to suggestions. I’m quite happy with what I have—excellent imaging, musicality, dynamics. Maybe I could use a little more depth (left right is fine and speakers truly disappear), and maybe a touch more dynamics.

Almost everything I listen to is Qobuz streaming or hi res and flac files from a NAS (hard drive). My system:

Cambridge 851 Streamer/DAC

Bel Canto Pre5

Bel Canto Ref 500 monoblocks

Dali Mentor 6 floorstanders

Everything sits on maple plinths, Gaia iiis, or pucks.

Cabling is mid range Morrows. I previously had Kimber KS1116s but sold them as the Morrows sounded just as good, on the current set up.

What do I need to get more of everything? Speakers? DAC, Streamer? Amp?

tomaswv

Showing 1 response by jallan

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jallan
256 posts
 

I’m going to ask for consideration of another perspective re subs. I lived with two subs for more than 20 years (double Dahlquist DQ1Ws with DQ10’s). The subs added a lot in terms of dynamic range and weight, but always compromised the imaging, especially in terms of depth. The complexity of the setup was also leading to issues, with more things to go wrong. When I changed my speakers (to ATC’s, I found I never missed the lowest frequencies as the image and sound was more coherent.

 I would suggest your streaming setup is the area most profitably improved. Finding a used Aurender N10 if you want a single box or else an Aurender N150 combined with one of the Yggdrasils would be nice.

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