Hi Bob, I'm surprised the usual advocates of room treatments have not yet rallied to your assistance yet.
I offer this based on an untreated room.
Included in 'room treatments' is a set of subwoofers. Acoustic absorbers and a distributed bass array (DBA) go hand in hand. There is much to learn about this so I suggest doing some research.
To try and keep this short : Sound left to decay on its own will add confusion and obscure detail and the bass in particular will have many peaks and nulls and needs to be smoothed out.
Getting this right will be transformational with money left to upgrade cartridge etc.
I can state confidently that no amp nor TT upgrade will do what attention to the acoustic behaviour of your room will do. You can blow your whole budget on a new cartridge but will be unable to hear any significant improvement in an untreated room.
May I suggest you read up on this. Toole and Geddes will cover the how and why and AudioKinesis can supply the goods.
When it comes to room treatment you will get lots of ill-informed recommendations. Some, such as add bookshelves, drapes and wall to wall carpets. The above will do more harm than anything! Take the wall to wall carpet for instance. Being relatively thin compared to the wavelength of sound, will act only as a narrow-band absorber and remember there is lots of it, so a frequency response plot will show a high-Q dip somewhere in the upper midrange. This is music information that is now MIA and you're not getting it back. The target here is to achieve a specific decay time across the full spectrum.
This is a fascinating subject and there are free downloads together with an inexpensive microphone that will allow you to do your own measurements. It will also help you position your speakers optimally for best imaging and stage. The DBA will take care of the bass. Should you decide to get professionals in, you will be able to monitor their progress and prevent being oversold.
State confidently when the pro's arrive that you want the T60 to be at 400 ms over all frequencies. (actual time is dependent on size of room)
I offer this based on an untreated room.
Included in 'room treatments' is a set of subwoofers. Acoustic absorbers and a distributed bass array (DBA) go hand in hand. There is much to learn about this so I suggest doing some research.
To try and keep this short : Sound left to decay on its own will add confusion and obscure detail and the bass in particular will have many peaks and nulls and needs to be smoothed out.
Getting this right will be transformational with money left to upgrade cartridge etc.
I can state confidently that no amp nor TT upgrade will do what attention to the acoustic behaviour of your room will do. You can blow your whole budget on a new cartridge but will be unable to hear any significant improvement in an untreated room.
May I suggest you read up on this. Toole and Geddes will cover the how and why and AudioKinesis can supply the goods.
When it comes to room treatment you will get lots of ill-informed recommendations. Some, such as add bookshelves, drapes and wall to wall carpets. The above will do more harm than anything! Take the wall to wall carpet for instance. Being relatively thin compared to the wavelength of sound, will act only as a narrow-band absorber and remember there is lots of it, so a frequency response plot will show a high-Q dip somewhere in the upper midrange. This is music information that is now MIA and you're not getting it back. The target here is to achieve a specific decay time across the full spectrum.
This is a fascinating subject and there are free downloads together with an inexpensive microphone that will allow you to do your own measurements. It will also help you position your speakers optimally for best imaging and stage. The DBA will take care of the bass. Should you decide to get professionals in, you will be able to monitor their progress and prevent being oversold.
State confidently when the pro's arrive that you want the T60 to be at 400 ms over all frequencies. (actual time is dependent on size of room)