Best Bang for the Buck Upgrade

I would start with dinner and a TWO nice bottles of wine.

I’d move from there to a second dinner if need be and possibly a male or female escort. Just depends on how set in her ways the wife is.

THEN fix the room, it is 50% of the sound and 1/10th cost to fix. Besides it might make her happy for once, sometimes that’s all it takes.. :-) 3k tops.

Take a few quid and treat yourself to a dance lesson or two.. Put on a G-string and go roller blading.

Buy some chickens..

Re-Roof the outdoor speakers and air the tires.. There Big ones.. :-)

Subs, subs, subs. Added an SVS 4000 just because I acquired it on the cheap and 2 years later I have 3. In my experience nothing has changed my listening pleasure more than adding subs. Every time. Good luck with your search. Ain't it fun?

i owned 1008... get rid of Pioneer soon... you need an ATC 50... or at least Klipsch rf-7

the source is also no good ... but that's later

I recommend the top models Ayon 10 or 5 CD 

if you are happy with your turntable --if you have one--  or other front end, try replacing stock RCA phono sockets for WBT NextGen silver and convert RCA plugs on your front end IC cable(s) to ETI research silver link RCA for a startling uplift in information transmission. Other similarly designed solid silver pin RCA's may give similar results. Not tried all WBT, liking ETI.

+1 @djones51 

@mofojo I went to see a photo of your room but couldn't find it. Audio in a shared space is tough.

After learning how to measure room reflections and SPL curves, I cannot imagine making major changes in some areas without some estimation about what is happening in the room when it's optimized. In other words, I could not have optimized my room without some iterative listening-measuring-positioning work. And without that work, more equipment would risk time-wasting and money-wasting ventures.

That said, power improvements can lower your noise floor, which would be good, regardless of those acoustic measurements. Unless, you already have pretty clean power. If you search back over threads about power, you will find people realizing that thousands spent on power products didn't help because they had quieter, cleaner power than they realized. It's not clear to me how one can assess the level of noise in one's electrical system without a professional. If anyone knows, I'm all ears.