What are your thoughts about moving up product line(s) within a Company?

I am of two minds...

1. If I were to upgrade my phono stage I would stay with Simaudio products. My Moon LP5.3 is extremely good and Simaudio’s other phono stages are exemplary - they have earned my trust & respect
2. But for anything else - I will trust my ears and upgrade to components that provides a marked improvement in sound quality regardless of brand.

Having said that there is the approach of staying with a brand for the sake of compatibility between components if you do not want to be bothered with endless auditions to see if a components "meshes" nicely with your other components. However you may find that going this route will not provide "the best" value or sound quality - but it will be very good.

As an example - many companies started by specializing in a specific product (e.g. turntables) and branched out into Phono stages, followed by amps and then speakers.

But no one company can get everything "exactly right" and so some of their other products are not quite as good as their competitors.

If I were to upgrade my amp I will probably go with a Simaudio products, because they sound exceptional - but my Bluesound streamer will be staying

So it can be a bit of a double edged sword.

My Advice - trust your ears and try to get an audition of the component connected to your main system components.

e.g. when I bought my speakers - I took my amp and speaker cables to the store and had them hook them up to the speakers and a source

Hope that helps - Steve

I have upgraded speakers from Vandersteen,Spendor and Harbeth and prefered the lesser priced ones better! You can never tell how a speaker will sound until you try it out in your own room with the gear you use with it!

@yogiboy , "I have upgraded speakers from Vandersteen,Spendor and Harbeth and prefered the lesser priced ones better! You can never tell how a speaker will sound until you try it out in your own room with the gear you use with it!"

That's some of the best advice around here you'll EVER encounter.  Very often with loudspeakers, and normally the case with amplifiers.  As the spend increases for bigger and more complicated, not only can reliability decrease, but even so much more often, sound quality

I guess I'm gonna be the outlier here!

I bought my Vandersteen 2Cs about 25 years ago at a local stereo shop.  Had many satisfied years listening through them.  Then RV brought out the Model 3s.  Met RV at the Stereoshoppe in Selinsgrove, PA as he launched his newest design.  I was seduced by the considerable jump in dynamics with the 3s and bought them.  After several years, RV came out with the 3A and away my speakers went to Hanford, CA for the upgrade.  Richard significantly tamed the high end in that incarnation of the model 3.  Several more years passed and then the 3A Signature was offered.  Another trip for the 3s to Hanford.  I enjoyed the 3A Sigs. until June of 2016.  After reading much about the new Treos and then the Treo CT I decided to take the leap to the Treo CTs sight unseen and unheard.

Why?  Our neck of the woods, which at one time had three fine dealerships now had none at all.  None.  Because of my 30+ years with Vandersteen speakers, and the experience with the upgrades to the model 3s, seeing where RV priced the Treo CTs at in the totality of his line I had a pretty solid sense of what they would sound like.

Fortunately for me, after making a necessary change in speaker cables to accommodate the sound of the Treos, I am hearing a refinement to music that I really didn't know was possible before.  

As so often happens, once you realize an improvement on that scale you begin to wonder how much better it could get if you ....

In many speaker vendors lines, you can upgrade by going to the next model. For me this has occurred with my ushers, and in the past with totem and others. 
But upgrading to the next up the chain speaker might involve upgrading your equipment. For my totem model 1’s, I used a nice 200 watt classes or McIntosh amp. When I moved up to the Mani 2’s, the best sound came from teaming these up with McIntosh 1000 watt monoblocks.
same goes moving up the chain with ushers and revel. You need in many cases more power with a larger speaker