Where’s My Weakest Link?

@otterbein,

As others have pointed out, replace the aging electronics before you spend your money on anything else. Above all, take notes from all the advise here, summarize, research and make your next purchase.

The node 2i is a good budget streamer, it’s performance can be improved by upgrading to better Ethernet / power cord and finally an outboard DAC....this should be your last step after you address the preamp/amp and rest of the cabling in your system. Also look at room acoustics panels from GIK.

Stick with basics before you go crazy with rest of the tweaks.

+1 Lowrider

The Carver pre-amp needs to go no doubt. I had same pre-amp. Replaced on advice of another Agoner at the time with Audio Research sp16 and bingo....huge improvement in every way.

Any good quality tube pre-amp should work well with that amp’s 100kohm input impedance. Or for something SS maybe consider a Benchmark pre/DAC combo unit. That is likely a step up from the DAC in the Bluesound as well.

You don’t mention using a turntable so no need for phono input into pre-amp.

After that, maybe the amp goes too if age/operating condition is in fact an immediate problem.

If pre-amp and amp must go, if it were me, I would strongly consider a good modern hybrid integrated amp along the lines of Rogue Pharoah.   You could then experiment with an external DAC with the Bluesound later if you felt any need.

Lot's of choices but probably time to start seriously considering replacing that older gear.

Good luck.

I thought maybe the weakest link was the wire bringing AC power to the room. So I went under the house and pasted all the 30 feet or so I was able to get at. It was indeed impressive. Then I opened my speakers and pasted the few feet from the binding posts to the drivers. The improvement was so much more I could hardly believe it. 

Clearly the internal speaker wire was a weaker link than the power wire. It was just impossible to know until it was tried and compared. 

Both improvements together cost less than $300. There is absolutely no component on the market new or used for less than ten times that amount that would provide this much improvement. Yet there are guys here who "think" that "probably" the stuff the OP has is "aging" and so they guess it should be the first to go.

By that logic I would have to throw out the speakers I just heard sound so wonderful. They are after all 20 years old and so the caps are "aging" and must be the weak link. 

This would all be hilarious were it not for the fact the OP might actually rely on some of this truly awful "logic".

Anybody who recommends changing the wiring in the speakers before upgrading a low cost preamp that is generations old is giving advice that is not logical. Many advances in technology since Carver's preamp.

I'll agree that adding a dedicated line should be one of the first upgrades to a system.