The details you’re looking for are not going to be easy to digest via a forum. Additionally, I wouldn’t make a speaker purchase without listening to those speakers which requires you find a Hifi shop you can spend some time in. Your budget is good starting point. Most people say start from speakers and work your way back. In your case you’ve already got Roon and the Chord so “working your way back” is going to be speakers, amp, pre-amp, Chord (or use Chord as pre-amp). You can get “powered speakers” which will incorporate those 3 things into 2 boxes (Left and Right speaker) or truly go for separates.
I’ll leave this post here. Feel free to reach out if you’d like more details but this is an excellent opportunity to go find a local Hifi shop and start building a relationship. The decisions you make at this point can last a very long time and provide years of enjoyment. Or they can cause you to continuously chase the upgrade. It’s a fun hobby but it can be complicated with all the available gear out there.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
22
Might spend a bit more time looking to see if there powered speakers which do not digitize the line-in input. I’m sure they exist. Might need to use the Chord DAC as the preamp in that case.
Frankly, I’d just sell the Chord and get new speakers which incorporate a DAC. Depends on whether you want to spend your time listening to music, or engaged in pointless fiddling with equipment. And that’s just a point of view.
I recently bought a pair of used Dynaudio focus 20 XDs for less than you have budgeted. In addition to an amp, they have DAC built in. I have ROCK running on a NUC as my Roon core, and a Rpi running Ropieee with a Digi hat that connects to the focus 20 XDs (Dynaudio are not Roon Ready). ROCK connects to the Rpi via wifi. The system sounds fantastic–it’s basically a hi endish system that takes up very little space and has very few wires as the focus XDs are wireless, with the exception of having power cords.
anyway, i agree with what someone else wrote–choose the speakers you want and then decide on whether you need to keep the chord and buy an amp or get rid of it.