New Streamer, DAC or Let it Be


Hello.  I am at a crossroads and interested in soliciting suggestions on a streamer and/or DAC upgrade using your collective experience.  My focus is actually home theatre, with perhaps 20% of the time devoted to music.  The space is my wife's office by day, my home theatre/ listening room by night, and furniture placement, windows, doors, etc. cannot be moved; it is what it is. 

Equipment is a Marantz AV8805A processor, Parasound A51 amp and new Focal Kanta 2 speakers.  My streamer is a Bluesound Node with upgraded internal power supply and external LPS, and Gustard U18 DDC feeding a Gustard X26 PRO DAC with SR purple fuse.  The Node upgrades made a very positive difference, and addition of the Gustard U18 was a noticeable and very welcome upgrade as well.  My frame of reference/ comparison are CDs from a modest collection played on an Oppo BD103, fed to the Marantz via HDMI (I tried Toslink and Coax but HDMI to the Marantz sounded best).  I stream a variety of music using Qobuz and the Bluesound app on my phone.  The app is OK but despite a trumpeted recent upgrade, Bluesound has not yet resolved something as simple as the ability to organize Favorites by Artist or Album; they appear in the reverse order added, which is nuts.  The various digital upgrades have made streaming sound just about as good as the CD.  Here’s the dilemma.

I live vicariously through your experience with the enormous breadth of quality digital equipment out there.  I am not necessarily looking to throw money at something I do infrequently, yet am driven by the unknown: will an upgrade provide added pleasure and justify enhancements equal to the expense for the limited time I listen to music?  Obviously, a therapist could help, but I trust many of you have been down this road and can offer insight.  My questions are, would a streamer upgrade alone take me to the next level?  Is a DAC upgrade instead the better path?  Or, am I chasing unicorns, and is my humble setup good enough, to simply let it be?  I learned never to say never, but the likelihood of an investment now and then further upgrades down the road is unlikely, as the wife has zero patience and appreciation for all this.  As to existing equipment, the Marantz and Parasound aren’t going anywhere, and I am very happy with the Kantas.  Any purchase will likely be via the used market, to mitigate costs.  My budget is in the $3K range (preferably less, usually more), which is what I was looking at for a used/ open box Aurender N150.  I am by no means limiting myself to just that brand or model streamer, and have not scratched the surface on a DAC, should that happen.

Thanks for your time and any experience/ suggestions you might share.

traubr

You don’t say what you run for cables.

my thoughts are that if you are using ordinary cables is the first upgrade should be your speaker cables.

I would recommend kimber kable 8tc for your first experiment.

Make sure you use a reputable authorized dealer for your purchase. Lots of fakes out there.

if you use thecableco.com you can likely borrow this cables for a small fee so you can try them and compare with what you currently have.
if you purchase the cables thecableco will apply the fee to the purchase.

if you don’t hear any improvement then at least you know and have only spent a small amount for the experiment.

@sudnh, my cables are a mishmash, which will no doubt offend many.  I started low and slow and built from there.  Have given The Cable Co much of my hard-earned money and used their lending library, which is great.  I have limited patience for A/B comparisons and find that differences can be subtle and confusing.  I had Cardas Clear Sky speaker and IC cables, yearned for more.  Heard the Cardas Reflection, then Silnote Anniv II Master speaker cables (one down from their top of the line) and found the Silnotes a touch better and cost less.  I have since added their IC cables as well.  I have a huge bowl of spaghetti in back of my setup (13 channels of HT speakers will do that), with a wide variety of manufacturers represented: Audience Au SX from DAC, Shunyata ethernet and power cords, SR power cord, Grover Huffman IC and PC, Cullen and Wisdom Technology power cords, Morrow subwoofer cables.  Were I to do it again (not happening), would do it differently.  It has been an expensive learning curve.

@traubr

Ahh... then you are well experienced with cables.

I would agree with the comments suggesting the Marantz is now your bottleneck.

Marantz was good enough to hover at entry level high end for a good part of their history. Though I don't know after the denon take over if it was good for denon or negative for Marantz.