Improve sound

What do you feel is lacking in your current system? Does your gut tell you something is missing? I am not a fan of AVR’s for serious audio, but the specs are better than average on the Anthem and it should drive those speakers. Still, the Parasound would probably provide a more refined sound. I agree that a decent DAC is needed regardless, Schiit Bifrost or Denafrips Ares are good starts and fit your budget. Ditch the optical connection immediately and get a BJC digital coax. Try ARC of course and room treatment if possible, but also mess around with placement, find what works best, even if it is not feasible.  

I'll second the question re: what you feel is missing. But since it doesn't seem that you're being active on this thread, I'll just generalize.

Since the room is always a feature, re-analyze that. In looking at your speaker specs, I'd suggest looking into a sub (relative to the kinds of things you listen to); if doing that, I'd set your speakers to "small" and let the sub take some of that load off them.

Re: a DAC, I recently retired my Node and switched to a separate streamer and DAC (I'd tried the Cambridge, but their oversampling didn't sit well with me). The Anthem looks like a good piece of gear for what it is; not knowing if it would bypass their own DAC, I'd still try analog and digital versions of the same song(s). One issue would be that the Node has a terrible analog output (there's a mod coming out of Poland, but I didn't want to go through the hassle or voiding the warranty), so unless you connect a USB DAC to the Node and feed its analog output to your receiver, you can't really tell. I'd suggest a vendor who'd give you a 30-day return policy (I used a Topping E50 DAC), connect it via USB to your Node and run the analog output into your Anthem, comparing it to the digital output from the Node. It might be that you prefer - possibly definitively - the standalone DAC analog output to the Anthem's DAC.

One more thing to consider is that (apparently) you're running a stereo setup through a multi (-multi!) channel receiver, and there might be other setups that would do much better for you. There are others here who could better recommend a solution relative to your budget, but I'm guessing you could still get a good price for the Anthem (sell or trade) and better tune your receiver to your equipment unless there's a longer-term plan for a surround system; otherwise you're under-utilizing an important part of your system and, relatively speaking, not getting your investment's worth.

Hi all the comments are great.   I am replacing the opticable for coax.  The biggest thing I hear is some times the music does just no sound  life like enough.  I was concerend it was my hi res player or not enough watts in to the 4ohm speakers. But it sounds like my best options would be a dac, new speakers, or just upgrade amp to stero one.  The idea of a dac sounds wonderful too. The athem does have dac internal.  It's a AKM 4458 DAC 32bit 758. So would a dac still help.  I do apologize if my post causes a well why did you not tell us that moment.   I go to a lot of symphonies and I love violins.  Some times when I playAdagio for Strings Op 11. The high frequency parts sound harsh instead of clear and buetiful.

I would but the ps audio DS jr dac listed at TMR, sell your bluesound unit, sell your optical cable and you will have a better sound than any of the dacs listed above. Use Ethernet to the dac, so you can run Roon or iTunes or whatever you want on your pc or Mac.

If you own this dac, you can make major upgrades to the rest of your system and this dac will not be the weak link, something you can’t say with the other dacs listed in this post, 

…The athem does have dac internal.  It's a AKM 4458 DAC 32bit 758. So would a dac still help.  I do apologize if my post causes a well why did you not tell us that moment.   I go to a lot of symphonies and I love violins.  Some times when I playAdagio for Strings Op 11. The high frequency parts sound harsh instead of clear and buetiful.

The Anthem doesn’t appear to have a headphone jack… but maybe some high impedance ear buds could hook up to the RCA outputs?
If so i would try to see if that is also not great on the violins.

if it is good, then it is not the DAC in the anthem.
And then it must be the speakers or the amp powering them..

Borrowing an amp to go from the pre out to the speakers would be a dandy data-point.

(But my impression is that the Anthem and the speakers seem like they should be pretty good.)

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I do apologize if my post causes a well why did you not tell us that moment.
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Threads evolve. Hence I would not worry.