Confused as to where to go next...looking for warmth

Another factor is that we are probably building a new house next year, so doing anything too crazy to this one is out of the question for now..  The new house will have acoustics in mind when we design it.

Hello again...Domestic harmony takes priority over the audio kind.  For experimentation purposes though, can you move them out temporarily?  I'd start as little as 5 feet apart inside wall to inside wall.  If you don't hear something significantly better there, try gradually moving them apart.  When you hit "the spot" the change for better in SQ should jump out at you.  Even if you can't leave them there long term, you'll know what they can do when optimally placed.  Meat on the bones and a real "palpability" to sound is definitely something you should be getting from the Forests.  

Yes, I will give that a try, even if temporary.  Thanks again.

Thanks everyone for the advice.  On of the reasons I was looking at the Freya was to get the AVR out of the loop, but sounds like overwhelmingly that getting it out of the system is critical.  

It sure is. Back when first building my system the AVR thing cost me dearly. There's a huge marketing push behind AVR, and HT in general. In the process of buying my first one I went around listening to a lot of them. Along the way I would sometimes listen to an integrated. Or bring one home to audition. They never came anywhere close to my ancient Kenwood integrated.  

So I tried better quality processors. Because, we must have surround! According to all the marketing.... Better and better, even some really expensive ones, yet none could match my ancient 1970's Kenwood! Not because the Kenwood was so great either. It wasn't. But surround, its just not for audiophiles. Not for music. Not even for movies. Not really. Not if you care about sound quality. 

The minute I dropped the surround requirement boom! Now there's all kinds of great sounding options! Integrateds are the most cost effective, best performance for the dollar. You can get an incredible high quality sound from a good integrated. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Read the reviews. Notice the most recent one, his reaction is due to a system so much warmer than he ever heard - yet it was detailed enough so when he went home he found himself longing for that nice round warm full sound. 

One way you get there is simplicity. The more stuff crammed into a box the harder it is to keep noise from one thing leaking into another. Power supplies are critical, and more things means more demands on the power supply. Also its quality matters more than anything else and the fewer things you have, the easier it is to have them be high quality. This goes whether its speakers  where $5k buys you two awesome speakers- or 7 mediocre ones- or even all the way down to parts where a few really high quality caps sounds way better than a box stuffed with hundreds.  

The sound quality you're looking for, warm, is a balance between the detail of the initial attack of a note and the round warm tone of its fundamental. Cymbals in real life go tinnnggggg, its cheap power supplies, caps, and noise that make them sound like they go tisss. The sound you want is the difference between a guitar where you feel the string plucked and then the body of the guitar resonate full and warm, and the sound of some guy running his fingernails over a washboard. Which sad to say is a lot of systems.  

This obviously is all very general info. But its the kind of info I have found to be very useful over the years.

@andy727
Part of the added grain and lack of finesse you are hearing starts with the Node2i itself, using it's own native 24/192 Burr Brown internal DAC. 

It's a fair throw-in DAC for what you pay for the 2i platform, AND there is a COAX out on the back for a reason, an option so you add-on a much better DAC to get you closer in the smoothness direction you are looking for.  See other Node2i threads.  Start at the source before changing downstream.