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

He said that he is happy first...and he called it the upgrade BUG...😁

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.

Then he added MAYBE...

Maybe I could use a little more depth (left right is fine and speakers truly disappear), and maybe a touch more dynamics.

The word choice "Maybe" reflected an uncertainty from someone who throw a fishline dreaming an upgrade from a satisfying situation anyway...

That explain my advices of caution and my advice about SYNERGY and the triple EMBEDDINGS controls as more fundamental that any unnecessary or marginal upgrade because they must be investigated BEFORE any upgrade race when the customer does not even know about the necessity of an upgrade himself ...

Upgrade is if not a disease symptom an error which come to the detriment of learning about these acoustical, mechanical and electrical embeddings BEFORE upgrading ... especially when it seems not so necessary for the person to begin with as his choice of words indicate clearly..

@mahgister @mahler123 These are a couple specific things the OP said he’s looking to improve.

 

"I’m quite happy with what I have"

NOOOOOO, buy more content, a better coffee maker, wine cooler, better wine, other worthless life improving gizmos!

If you visit a friend, and come home every time thinking, his system is much better than mine, well, then you’ve got work to do. Let's be clear, different is not better.

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.

Leave it alone and enjoy the music. You'll be miles ahead of 90% of the people on this forum.

Redo the room. If the ceiling is low (hope it's not), use GIK diffusor/absorption. 36' long by 25 wide. Study up on ideal wall construction. Stop fighting this if you will be in the home for a while. Bring in a EQUI-TECH balanced power wall unit and run a couple of dedicated lines. Accomplish this and you can begin to consider components. Believe me, quiet power gives something no component can deliver.