the cart or the horse?


I currently own a Parasound ZAMP, Denon PRA-1500 preamp, and Omega 7's speakers. I stream through a Bluesound Node 2i.  All this resides in a home office of approx 15x10. 

I am not happy with the sound and do not know which component to attack first. There is a lack of presence and body and the sound is well.......boring. I listen to jazz at low volumes and would like your opinion on what to work on first. 

Replace amp,preamp, or speakers? The cart or the horse? My budget is very modest but am willing to go step by step. 

All my best,

Andy

wavendon

i would suggest a used hegel 95 (integrated amp with built in dac, feed it with the node digital output) for great jump in sound quality

or a lesser improvement, though still much improved, would be a nuprime ida-8

no affiliation, not a seller, just advice to help you....

I would get rid of the cart and horse and look into active nearfield monitors for an office setup. 

Personally I would start with the preamp and get one that has a good DAC in it to bypass the DAC in the streamer.

You could try a different streamer for cheap too  these guys seem to think the ifi zen is better  I have not heard either  

 

i don’t agree that efficient speakers need low power. Look at what JBL does in the pro market. They put large efficient horns with silly amounts of power. Low power amps don’t sound better they just have less power. Unless you love tubes and need to keep the cost down there is no reason for low power. 

@wavendon

Without question you’re going to receive a multitude of different suggestions, so I may as well offer mine. IMO the best part of your audio system are the Omega speakers, I’d keep them. I believe that you’ll get much more involving and emotionally engaging jazz playback with a tube amplifier.

Fortunately you don’t need high power and I disagree with the the comment above with regard to low power amplification. The Omegas allow you to to focus exclusively on the quality of the amplifier rather than getting more watts.

For example (And there’re numerous good ones)

Luxman SQ -n 150

Coincident Dynamo el 34SEP/300b SET

Dennis Had Fire bottle SEP

Decware SEP several model choices.

Anyone of these choices would sound "much" better and involving than your current amplifier/preamplifier chain. Your jazz recordings will spring to life and pull you in deeper to the music. Your Omegas are not the problem. After improving the amplification I would next upgrade to a higher quality seperate DAC connected to your current music server.

Charles

I agree with @charles1dad. The Omegas are the jewel in your system.  Tubes or perhaps SS class A would probably work great. 
 

   I used the internal DAC on the Bluesound for a while. It was adequate,but a decent external DAC will most definitely be a large improvement. 
   Enjoy the journey.