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upgrade what

Hello

My system sounds pretty good but can be a little bright, forward sounding and sometimes lacks really good instrument separation. I have decent Morror cables and AudioQuest power cords. Just wondering which component would you be looking at to upgrade? 1) Denon 1700NE CD/SACD Player; 2) Rogue "Dark" Magnum lll Integrated Amp 3) Focal Aria 948 Speakers; 4) Two SVS SV2000 Pro Subs. I was thinking of better speakers. Maybe book shelves since I have the 2 subs. Thanks a lot.

Bill

bzawa
knotscott's avatar
knotscott
1,401 posts
 

Adding felt tweeter rings are easy to try.  Or you can experiment by treating various places along the speaker baffle.  Simple, cheap, adjustable, reversible.  Spica and Vandersteen have used that approach.

motown-l
361 posts
 

I’m guessing room acoustics, too. I pretty sure that’s what keeps my stuff from sounding better.

audioman58's avatar
audioman58
4,630 posts
 

Upgrade your digital to a dac and streamer , you can rip your CDs to Flac files 

your cdp is a big part of the problem , your speakers too a bit bright changing the tubes to vintage nos , something warmer , there are custom grade  tubes  out there , one change at a time.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
8,078 posts
 

if you’re looking to upgrade, given the room is treated, look into ATC SCM40 passive speakers. Focals are not bad (I have Aria 906 mostly for movies) but the ATC will smoke them. 

curiousjim's avatar
curiousjim
6,035 posts
 

@bzawa 

Why don’t you give AI a chance to answer. I went to ChatGBT, Perplexity and Gemini and listened all of my equipment. Then I asked what was the weakest part of my system and all three said the same thing, my DAC.

All the best.

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