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PERSONAL GEAR LIST; Your opinion on next best upgrade?

I currently have the following gear list and thought I’d come to the experts at Audiogon forums (shameless flattering admitted) to see your thoughts on which should be my next upgrade....

I’ve read here for a few years but never signed up myself.

I was thinking speakers should be next but thought maybe someone would see something here I didn’t that is worth considering first.

  • Pro-ject Carbon debut
  • Pro-ject phono interconnect
  • Lounge audio phono preamp
  • Monster cable RCAs interconnects
  • Jolida fusion dac/pre
  • Belkin song streamer
  • Generic toslink cable to the Jolida’s Toslink-in
  • Musical Fidelty VDAC (not being used right now)
  • Hand built Balanced XLRs from Jolida and to
  • (2) Hypex NC400 mono block
  • Audio Quest X2 speaker cables to
  • NHT SuperTwo

Thanks for your expert advice!

128x128bad
bad's avatar
bad OP
5 posts
 
 I purposely didn't want to talk about what I think is weak due to wanting uncolored gear focused opinions. I guess I can say that the system seems to have "plateaued". I am after advice on which piece, if all other things were equal, would be considered the weakest link in the current chain.
randy-11
1,913 posts
 
Yes, either speakers, room treatments, and/or improving the source material by finding the best masterings.
2psyop's avatar
2psyop
1,499 posts
 
I think you could get better sounding speakers, not knocking NHT but many, many very good speakers out there...could improve your system.

bad's avatar
bad OP
5 posts
 
Thanks.
I should have added a pertinent condition here.
I’d like to spend up to $4000 on the next upgrade. So I suppose the question should have been "given the current gear which link(s) is the next to upgrade with a max budget of 4k?"
2psyop's avatar
2psyop
1,499 posts
 
Bad, I would like to share another tidbit of info FWIW. I went searching for speakers within 90 miles of my home. I wanted to LISTEN and compare myself. I was advised by a couple of good dealers to bring my own music, to include some music I know very well. While I listen to jazz and acoustical music I had found a couple speakers sounded better with that kind of music, others better with Rock and so on. So I learned it’s not that there are really good speakers or terrible ones, it is moreso what you like for the kind of music you enjoy. I settled on Magnepan for one system and Vandersteen for my higher end system. I made sure to match the speakers to the capability of the amp, running tubes with the Vandy and SS with the Maggies.
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