Replacements for Dynaudio Floorstanders

I posted on your other post.. There's a couple of ways to go. If you want to go the speaker route I'd heartily recommend Harbeths, natural, warm'ish but not lacking in detail, work well with Krell. If you want to stick with the Dynaudio's I'd definitely look at warmer cables.. Cardas would be a good choice try a set of Golden Cross, speaker and interconnect. As far as AC power, that can have a Huge affect. I'd replace all of your stock cords with something like the very good and very inexpensive Shunyata Venom 3, these are a bit warm'ish and only $99.00 each.. Lastly a Shunyata Hydra would make a nice improvement, you get away with a Hydra 4 since you're only hooking up Dac and Int Amp.. maybe even a Hydra 2, they come up here for sale pre

Sorry I was going to say, the Hydra's come up for sale pretty often here on the 'gon.

Also if you are using the iMac for a source playing I assume ALAC, or Aiff files? Then using Amarra or Pure Music may also help with musicality..

Pubul57 I'd have to sort of disagree with your last statement, all speakers are essentially inaccurate to some degree or another. It's a matter of finding the speakers who's inaccuracies most closely agree with ones tastes.

I agree. Revealing speakers, Krell amp and a Benchmark Dac, with AQ cables and stock power cords.. sounds bright just sitting there...If it was me, well not the geared I'd have put together, but if it was me I'd replace the Dac with a W4S, or Lavry, replace the AQ wires with Cardas, and replace the stock power cords with the Shunyata Venom 3..

Well you ended up answering your own question didn't you.

"As for my Benchmark DAC, I'm going to stick with it for the immediate future because it's my newest component at less than two years old. It DRAMATICALLY improved the resolution in my system, though I'll admit it left my sound a bit thin and definitely trending on the bright side"

I'm curious, why would you "stick with it" if you've now come to the realization that the Benchmark is bright, and don't like the way it sounds, and it's causing the issues that you have with your system? Keep it cause it's 2 years old?? Not to be rude but your logic doesn't really seem to make any sense. Just sell the thing and move on. You can probably get $700-$800 for it. pick up a new W4S Dac1 for $999.00 that will crush it, across the board.

As for the Levinson 383 I'd think hard on that. The 383 is long discontinued, no warranty, and Harmon is known to have terrible support for older Levinson products, just poke around in the discussion forums about Levinson customer service issues.

A great choice in an amp that would match up well with your Dynaudio's would be a Plinius 9200 plenty of power great sound, excellent match.. They typically sell for $2500.00 -$3000.00, less than a 383 and pretty much bullet proof build quality.

Good luck young Padawan.. Lots of speakers out there that are warmer and that are higher performance than your 1.8's but the Benchmark is always going to be bright and dry sounding, choosing speakers to compensate for that seems a bit ass backwards you might find that replacing the Benchmark with a Dac that isn't bright dry and sterile sounding will have you loving what you have and costing you less $$. But hey half the fun of this hobby is the learning curve, why should anyone spoil it for you :-)