WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Supply chain problems taught me a lot about acoustics and sonic performance.

I just did a project converting an unused room to a 2 channel listening room.  Hegel integrated driving Focal towers.  Electronics were in place first then had to wait for the room treatments to get through the supply chain slowness.  First impression was that the sound was too bright in the untreated room.

Side panels arrived and were installed, nice improvement, less bright, soundstage better side to side.  Then some weeks later the ceiling panels arrived and were installed, big improvement, sound stage better front to back and the brightness was gone.  

The lesson learned was don't underestimate how much the room affects the sound do don't frustrate yourself swapping equipment before you get your listen room optimized.

+1 @rick_n 

Your room is a big factor as well as sepaker pkacement. It could be both the amp and speakers need changing? A tube intergrated, speakers and sub  very doable if you sell gear. But but but starting with a sub could very well “get you there.” with your beloved speakers. 

Smaller speakers akways benefit with a sub as do larger ones. 

@jili12

around 25 years ago I bought a bunch of vintage NOS tubes from someone who most on this & other sites hold in high esteem. At that time he did not sell interconnects, and I don’t know for positive, but I don’t think that he does today, either. I asked him about mixing & matching brands of tubes:

he told me that was not his favorite thing, but not as bad as mixing & matching interconnects.

To oversimplify his explanation on that, if interconnect pair-A from source to preamp do sonic-thing#1 quite well but lack on sonic-thing#2 and is matched with interconnect-pair-B from preamp to amp and those interconnects lack on sonic-thing#1 but do sonic-thing#2 well, those two pairs of interconnect cables are cancelling each other’s best attributes out. Meaning that his advice was to stick with one brand of interconnect from source to amp. At the time, at least during that conversation, he did not have any skin in the interconnect game.