Hello, I’m new to the Roon forums. I have been using Roon with Tidal for a couple months now and I’m hooked. But, I can’t help myself from tweaking… and as such I’m looking for some opinions on what components to upgrade first in my system.
I have a very modest set up that was purchased quite a few years back with the intention of using for TV/movies but a couple houses later I now have it set up in my sitting room as a dedicated listening space. My thought is to upgrade one component at a time and move the displaced components to my basement for watching movies.
I have a Marantz SR6008 driving a pair of Polk Audio RTi A1 bookshelf speakers and a Polk Audio PSW10 sub. Audyssey room correction is set up and active.
Originally I was feeding the Marantz with a CCA, but needed the CCA for my patio speaker setup. So being the electrical engineer and tinkerer that I am, I remembered I had a Beaglebone Black in a box tucked away in a closet. So, I dug that out, flashed it with an updated version of Debian, installed Roon Bridge and now its feeding my Marantz via HDMI.
I’m using Roon DSP for upscaling to 24/192 but I’ve also been playing with HQPlayer and like the results, but have not committed to purchasing it, so I’m sticking with Roon DSP at the moment. After playing with speaker positioning, I’m quite impressed with how this system can sound. I’m listening to Nils Frahm - Spaces as I write this and it sounds very good, but there are improvements to be had. The bass is not tight, the highs ring too much and the mids sometimes cause a harsh reverberation in my ears. In complex parts of songs, It sounds like distortions along with a loss of separation between instruments.
So, a long lead into my question. I want to upgrade, but what will give me most bang for my modest buck? Should I be looking at upgrading my transport (the Beaglebone Black)? Or look at an external DAC (using the one built into the Marantz SR6008 now)? Or should I spend my money on new speakers/sub? At this point I don’t think my amp is the weakest link, but I could be wrong.
Current system:
Tidal > Roon w/ DSP > Beaglebone Black > HDMI > Marantz SR6008 > Polk RTi A1
Well, if you got to the bottom of my post, I thank you. And if you have any input or opinions, I appreciate that as well.
Regards
Corey