I am looking to upgrade - looking for advice


So I am the guy who recently asked if a Rotel 1572 preamp would work with a Parasound A21+ amp. So I was asking because I was thinking of upgrading my current amp which is a Rotel 1552. The rest of my system is Yamaha CD player and project turntable (both approx $400 each), Bluesound Node, and B&W 705 S2 speakers. Right now I primarily stream my music through the node. So I was interested in the next step to improvement and I thought it would be what the amplifier. After reading some of the posts on my original question (would the A21 work well with my Rotel preamp I am now thinking that I need to look at both the preamp and amp. Of course that is you agree with my assessment. Here are a few of the amps I was looking at: A21, Vincent  SP-332, and Bryson 3b3. The preamps that were suggested all look outstanding: Benchmark LA4, Backert Labs Rhumba 1.3 and the Audionet Pre 1 G3. It looks like with these I would need to also get a DAC, not sure about the phono stage. Any advice is appreciated. I am knee to this.

tjraubacher

Showing 2 responses by tomic601

Finally…i consider a DAC a convertducer… zero or 5 volts into an AC musical waveform. The Node has a servicable DAC but there are many much more musical in the $400-$1K range….

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there….

As @soix so often asks what sonically are you looking to improve ?…..

IF it plays loud enough and can handle the speaker load , amp is the LAST thing i recommend….. i know… big…beefy… heavy… easy sell …

IF you don’t plan on playing records beyond the currently hip fad, as @ghdprentice points out, don’t invest further. IF you do, then you need to focus on transducers - cartridges …. your table will support and reward possibly up to an Ortofon Bronze ( just an example )…. after that work on the other transducers ; speakers….