Does anybody pay a pro to dial their system in?

OP, you sound like you are reasonable. Maybe you should start questioning your gear. Benchmark is very detailed sounding… maybe you are looking for more musical gear. I think Totem is a good speaker to meet your expectation… I own a pair.

The sound quality you get is really dependent on your equipment. It can be anywhere from naked lean and detailed to enveloping warm and organic. I’m starting to think you are a warm enveloping musical guy (like me) as opposed to a lean detailed (Benchmark) guy.

Maybe it is the equipment?

@thomastrouble I have owned two pairs of Totem Model One’s, and a pair of Totem Model One Signatures, both. Along with a good friend who owned both non and signature version too. Hundreds and hundreds of hours of listening to all. Between the four pairs, heard them in five different rooms, powered by three different solid state amps and three different types of tube amplifiers. It’s not the speakers. My high current dual mono MOSFET solid state amp made the Model Ones sing, full-bodied too.

imo, I think it’s partly your room, and components some too. I’ve also owned the Benchmark DAC3B. There was something about that particular dac that never quite settled in with me. Owned three non-tube and one tube dac since, all sound better to me. All not as quiet, yet simply sounded more engaging to me. Always felt that dac was beat into submission and killed some of the musical sound in it, somehow.

Before you move, is there anyone with a different amp/dac/borrow, to try again? All of my Totem Model One speakers (non signature and signature versions) responded well to quality speaker cables and quality interconnects. Lower quality cables will not let Totem Model Ones shine. Spent a lot of time with those speakers with different amp combos in different rooms fwiw. Best of Luck.  

Half the fun is tweaking and dialing in your system. That’s what we as audiophiles do. Paying someone else to do that is like paying someone to golf for you.

@thomastrouble 

It definitely wouldn’t hurt to consult a professional acoustician. Small rooms are difficult but can be made to sound great. Jeff at hdacoustics is very good with small rooms. He was recommended to me by Duke LeJeune of audio kinesis. He designed my room and I am glad I used him. Good luck !

When I purchased new subwoofers from 3ma Audio in Houston, they setup my system. They started with removing my room treatment, room analysis, moving the listening position and speakers. The final steps were dialing in the subwoofers.