Seeking more 3d imaging, deeper/wider soundstage

Even a cheap system should image and play depth. More has to do with setup (not just placement of the speakers in the room) than anything else. Many speakers won't play depth right if they are too close to the wall behind them. So you will have to play with them to get depth (if you don't, no amount of equipment swapping will get it for you).

Once you achieve that then you might consider changing components to get more nuance. I am an advocate of tubes (and your speakers are not a difficult load for any tube amp that also has the power to drive them in your room) but despite my preferences you've got some good advice on this thread that will cost you nothing but a little time experimenting.

Thanks for all the comments. My speakers are multiple feet away from both the back and side walls. I have also toed them in toward my seating position. Have also tried crossing them in front of seating position, I don't like that as much.

Sounds here like you may have already done the setup and experimentation that can make the difference between a hifi and a really good musical system. If you are satisfied that the speaker placement is as good as you can get it, it may well be time to look into component upgrades.

Now by my math given your room and your speakers, 60 watts in a tube amp should give you plenty of power. Tubes are well-known for improved imaging, smoother and more detailed sound. But you should consider that what a tube brings to an amplifier, it also brings to a preamplifier. If OTOH the preamp is loosing detail for any reason, there is nothing you can do to recover it downstream no matter the amp or speaker. So you might want to consider a tube preamp first rather than the amplifier.

Naturally while a tube preamp can bring a lot of benefit, if you are driving a solid state amp I don't think you will hear everything its doing. But at least it will let you know if you are heading in the right direction, and tube preamps are much less service oriented IMO/IME.

Of course if it were me I would consider both. I just like tube equipment better :)

One thing that has been bugging me about this thread seems worth pursuing. Realremo- have you tried revearsing the phase on one of your speakers?

If you have the speakers out of phase (which can happen for a variety of reasons) the imaging information will seem confused, and a lot of it might seem to sit in the speakers.

If this has not been tried it might be worth a test to see if this is an issue. If its not, then I would be satisfied that its time for the pursuit of equipment known for better imaging/depth.

Realremo, to check to see if your speakers are in phase, you simply reverse the connections on the back of **one speaker only** - not both.

If this works, you will immediately notice greater center fill and sharp images between the speakers. If it does not work, the images will become more diffuse.

Regarding tube equipment reliability: tube amps and preamps are usually fairly reliable- some more so than transistor equipment- it depends a lot on the manufacturer. The issue is the tubes themselves, which are considered user-replaceable, which is why they are in sockets. When a tube goes bad, quite often it will tell you about itself :) So you don't have to send the product somewhere to get serviced, you simply replace the tube and you are down the road. If it were any other way it would not be possible for tube equipment manufacturers to be in business for decades at a time!

Its important to distinguish between the reliability of the chassis as opposed to that of the tubes. For example in our amplifiers if a tube fails it will not damage the amplifier (although it could blow a fuse); our amps are stable enough that I have a demonstration I do at audio shows where I remove power tubes from the amp while it is playing music. You don't hear any change- the amp continues to play as if nothing happened. Now not all tube amps are like that but OTOH its not really important- they will hold up just fine, hence the existence of used tube amps that are heavily sought after 50 years after they were made!!

IOW don't worry about the reliability. Right now it seems you have bigger fish to fry. Keep us informed of your progress.

Having one speaker out of phase with the other will result in loss of soundstage, poor center fill, reduced bass and overall lack of dynamic punch as the speakers are literally fighting each other.

If you hook one speaker up out of phase, the more phase linear your equipment is, the more the sounds will sit in the speakers. The center will be very diffuse.

Some equipment that struggles with phase shift problems will give you some very odd effects when you put one channel out of phase.

To get low phase shift the equipment has to have wide bandwidth. Our ears don't hear phase shift at all with a single tone, but they can detect phase shift problems over a band of frequencies. If your equipment has low phase shift, you will get a better soundstage as a lot of the soundstage information is presented in the form of shifted phases at various frequencies depending on the room in which the recording was made.

Sometimes bass is tricky to hear on some systems so to test for phasing I select a recording that has a vocalist positioned dead center in the recording. Then I can listen for bass and center-fill.

Realremo, now that you have sorted out that phase was a problem, it is worth it to play with the speaker placement again to get better results. If you were doing that with one speaker out of phase, the speakers will not be placed correctly.

Have fun!!

You should be able to make a tube amp work with that...

Check out audiokinesis (http://www.audiokinesis.com)

Duke makes very affordable speakers that are also easy to drive and very musical.