Am I done yet? LOL


Things are sounding pretty good at the moment. The Dynaudio Contour 30i speakers are the latest addition and are working better in this room than the Maggie 3.7i speakers were. 

Usually, when I ask the wife to come listen, she'll sit for a song, maybe 2, then make a "that's nice" type a comment and leave. With the Dynaudio speakers, she stayed, and played song after song. She listened for over and hour and said she really really liked these speakers. Great to know the wife was pleased.  laugh

But the audiophile in me feels like there is more to be had. The amp & pre-amp are on my radar as the possible candidates for improvement. Any opinions on where to head next? (There's always a "next" isn't there?)

traudio

@traudio 

I understand you did your homework, but the dimensions of your room are not close to the Cardas Golden Ratio. 26’ x 13 x 7 is a real problem and perhaps not even solvable regardless of how much money you throw into your room. Cardas Ratio would be 18 x 13 or thereabouts. 

What I am saying is that if you have a carpenter put up a wall at around the 18’ on the long side of your room (cutting out 8 feet of length), then you would have a much more tolerable room that will not have bass nodes that are not going to go away and as you are learning, would require another subwoofer to even have a chance of resolving the issue. My point is that a length shortening wall would be much less expensive and provide immediate results with respects to sound.

I am throwing out ideas as bimmerlover has done and would agree with him that smaller subwoofers would be easier to implement regardless of the room size and allow for easier manueverability. We are all getting up in age and you certainly have chosen "heavies" to deal with going forward. 

Whatever you decide, and you seem to be having fun, but if you jettison any of your equipment (and are on the east coast) let me know! I would be happy to come and pay a fair price for what you don’t want and help you move stuff around. Heck, I have gear (and portable dampening boxes) that would help you understand where your node issues exist. Trying to help!

Enjoy the music!

@goodlistening64 LOL The golden ratio is NOT a fixed size. Key word here is ratio. 
https://www.acousticsfirst.com/dev/rrc.htm
You are absolutely out of your mind if you think I'll have another wall put up to make my room smaller!
That being said, the length of the room is a bit of a variable as the entry to the stairs is a little deeper and contributes to the modes. 

Funny how this began as a possible change in electronics was the question. 

Yes you are done. Now buy some more records. And have you wife make a list of records she wants to hear on the system. TFF

Are you done yet?  The wife sounds like a keeper, but after about 60 years in hifi, I’m currently looking for a different DAC.

Funny how this began as a possible change in electronics was the question. 

Not sure about everyone else, but your gear is not the issue. I did not survey your cables and accessories (I do like the Degritter!) and the choices you have made on gear are sound. No one here can really bash Dynaudio, PS Audio, etc.

It is a well-known rule of thumb that a room makes up 50% of the sound. Every room has natural resonant frequencies based on it's dimensions. 

Yes, it is ratio and 13 x 26 x 7 measurements chime in with these results:

A room measuring 13' x 26' x 7' will suffer from severe low-frequency bass boominess (modal pileups), deep acoustic nulls, and midrange frequency coloration. Because the length is an exact double of the width (\(26 = 2 \times 13\)), the sound waves reinforce each other at identical frequencies rather than dispersing smoothly as they would in a Cardas Golden Ratio.

You could start to believe me by calling GIK Acoustics or ATS and giving them your room measurements and asking them.

You are absolutely out of your mind if you think I'll have another wall put up to make my room smaller!

A 10-foot wall is going to be a lot cheaper than the two subwoofers you are enlisting to try to deal with a room ratio that does not adhere to the Cardas Golden Ratio. You may fight the room 'til the end, and that is your decision, so maybe I should just not bother to help and let you go down that road. 

You started this thread with the claim that the audiophile in me feels like there is more to be had. Hence, you have questioned your own setup. You followed that by asking where to go next? IMHO, a change in electronics is not going to get you there.