Mike: I agree with auxinput that contacting GIK about room treatments, giving them a sketch of your room, could lead to cost effective improvements. I agree about upgrading the cabling too, except:
1) In our own personal conversations, you've told me that when you switched from monoprice copper cable to the Blue Jeans Belden speaker cable, you noticed a significant improvement in sound.
2) The vandersteen 2wq subwoofer uses speaker cable, not interconnect cable. I think BJC speaker cable should be fine for that, though I haven't experimented with better cables for subs.
A reclocker could help your USB feed from the iPad, but if you went to a Blue Sound Vault, I think you'd be feeding a DAC with optical, so you wouldn't need to worry about reclocking USB... I think. You could start with the Blue Sound and the Bifrost DAC, and then try another DAC to step up, choosing one that is easily resold if the difference isn't worthwhile. The Blue Sound could be a gateway to high Rez digital, which can be purchased online and stored on the devices hard drive.
1) In our own personal conversations, you've told me that when you switched from monoprice copper cable to the Blue Jeans Belden speaker cable, you noticed a significant improvement in sound.
2) The vandersteen 2wq subwoofer uses speaker cable, not interconnect cable. I think BJC speaker cable should be fine for that, though I haven't experimented with better cables for subs.
A reclocker could help your USB feed from the iPad, but if you went to a Blue Sound Vault, I think you'd be feeding a DAC with optical, so you wouldn't need to worry about reclocking USB... I think. You could start with the Blue Sound and the Bifrost DAC, and then try another DAC to step up, choosing one that is easily resold if the difference isn't worthwhile. The Blue Sound could be a gateway to high Rez digital, which can be purchased online and stored on the devices hard drive.