Potential upgrade path…

@backdoor , I don't think you need to spend $35K to get a nice upgrade by addressing your room. You don't need to replace it either. I would recommend getting a room kit from www.sonitususa.com. Easy peezey, lemon squeezy. The owner is Anthony Grimaldi and he is an authority on acoustics. The kits makes it so easy a chimp can do it. I followed Anthony's acoustic "recipe" before I knew he had kits, you can see the pics in my system. If I were starting over it would have been easier to just get the kit. He has kits for 2 channel as well as HT:

Once you have your room treated you can use DSP to dial it in, DSPeaker has a new unit for this purpose that looks intersting if you don’t want to get a new preamp with room correction built in:

https://www.dspeaker.com/anti-mode-x2

@kota1 

while room treatments can make a great improvement in the sound.....i think  you have to look at the bigger picture here when it comes to this and this is the OP better half.     I highly doubt she is going to let him do this.

there was a time ( at another house ) where i had the system in the living room and i told her that members talk about room treatments and how it helps the sound, and she was perfectly fine with panels on the walls......it was when i mentioned hanging panels from the ceiling is where she drew the line.       

my other half is ok with panels on the walls....but how many times have we all read on here that panels are not allowed on the walls due to the other half not accepting them ?              honey, its ok if you want to be in this audio hobby and spend all this money on equipment to listen to music, but heaven forbid you do whats next.   to me, it just doesnt make sense.

Room treatment can be a good thing. But you’ll never get decent performance from any system with the speakers less than five feet apart. Room treatment won’t solve that issue.

Speaker placement is key too, I use the Dolby specs of L and R speaker 22 to 30 degrees angle from the MLP. If you can't move speakers wide enough you have to bring the MLP forward.