cheers.
: i really do like the sound of my current speakers, but the setup is getting old and getting the upgrade itch, if you know what i mean
sorry if the following is teaching you to suck eggs..
Have you tried setting your speakers up correctly, and by correctly, I mean taking an hour or two adjusting their position in the room for a phantom centre and good balance? Most people don't bother and just plonk them in the corners or something and think it's done with, but by doing that you're missing out on a lot of spatial information - which I mean as on
some recordings the room vanishes and you can hear the room that the record was recorded in. Think VR in audio.
If you want to try it, some basic rules.
Speakers should be equal distances from the L&R walls and you should be seated in the centre between the speakers.
The closer the speakers are to their rear walls the louder the bass will sound due to standing waves. Each standing wave boost will also have an opposite reduction at another frequency. The closer the speakers are to the rear wall, the higher in frequency that suck-out will be. If they're too close to the rear wall then you may get suckouts at frequencies where the main energy for kick drums are and it lack energy but with an excessive boom. Get them too far away and the boom will go but you'll lose the boundary reinforcement and you'll lose your bass.
Steps:-
Find a mono recording or play an audio file through foobar 2000 and select its mono DSP setting.
Place the speakers at equal distances from the rear wall (about 8" is a good start) and at equal distances from the side walls (18" or more if you can or close to a equilateral triangle if you want to do it correctly) with no toe in. Listen to the mono recording.
Move both the speakers either away from or closer to the rear walls until the balance between bass, mids and treble is right.
Once the balance is done then you move the speakers in small steps either away from each other or towards each other until the sound becomes less diffused and you can hear it floating in a spot somewhere in the air centred between the speakers.
Once you have worked out the best spot for the "phantom" centre image, you then adjust the toe in of your speakers slightly to focus it some more.
Lastly, tweak 1 speaker position at a time very small amounts of about 1" in either direction until the sound pops into a small point tightly focused between the speakers. You will know when this is as you will be able to pretty much see an imaginary point where the sound is coming from with your eyes open. This is when music stops being a background wall of sound and becomes something which takes you to another place.
This is where higher quality electronics and speakers make all the difference over budget models, striving for it becomes both addictive and expensive - the Primare I mentioned earlier can do this quite well, which is why I suggested it over getting another pair of speakers.
