I want to be moved and have the music touch my soul!

• honashagen sez:

I want to hear inside the music. I want to hear the room and the reverbs. I want to hear the spit on a singers lips. I want to hear 20hz on a 32' pipe of a pipe organ. I want fast transients. Above all I don't want strident cringing top end.

In that case, you should be concentrating on lowering the noise floor of your existing system. Lower it enough, and you'll get everything listed above, except strings on poor recordings. They will always have that cringe factor even with a lowered noise floor.

Frank

I had all that, I am engaged with the music , all my music now; it is of no use to buy other gear; yours is already good.... The problems is the room treatment, the mechanical vibrations and resonance, and the cleaning of the electrical grid of the house and the audio grid system also that is embedded in it...

I know that because before that with the same system I was not in boredom, I was in hate and dissatisfaction, now with the same gear I am in extasy...read about what I speak about... Your Harbeth are better than my speakers, you amp and pre are already good, then the problem is in the embedding and in the cleaning...I wish you the best...

Hifibouncer northwest Indiana

"I want to hear inside the music. I want to hear the room and the reverbs. I want to hear the spit on a singers lips. I want to hear 20hz on a 32' pipe of a pipe organ. I want fast transients. Above all I don't want strident cringing top end."

"Oh yeah. I want depth too."

Then I agree with @hifibouncer. I would try to take placement (and possibly maybe a few other room techniques) as far as all that might go, most of it involves just a little time and experimentation...not that much cost. It will even help with the harsh hi's.

However, if you're satisfied you've done all that and you Still have problems with harshness, then it is not really time to swap out gear, but instead I think Then it's time to start thinking about power treatments. But, working out the problem as much as you can passively (and also with EQ, if you like) with room/speaker interaction First, will go a long way toward preventing you from having to overspend when it comes to power treatments.

My audiophile cousin has been telling me for years to fix the room.