WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

@treynolds155  

+1 for SVS inexpensive for what you get.  Ditto

Hi Jili12 ...

Room treatment / speaker and room integration first and foremost.  

Bon chance, Pin       More Peace

Jili12,

I auditioned a Hegel H120 and H190 integrateds, and found them to be neutral to just a touch warm.....so I wouldn't think that would be an issue.

If you haven't treated your power, I'd definitely go there.....it's inexpensive and pays dividends no matter what equipment you end up with. Dedicated 20AMP line ($300), audiophile power outlets ($100), and a nice power cable.

As many have mentioned, better room treatments

I suggest you compare side by side at a brick and mortar Hi end store that will let you bring in your Fritz speakers. They look very nice.  Compare a Primaluna to the Hegel. I compared the integrated EVO 100 with a Hegel H390. Both were great but the Primaluna won in my case with detail in Jazz, Orchastra music. I guess it depends what you like. I got the Primaluna and thrilled with it. I removed the EL 34s installed KT 77s and it was an amazing upgrade in sound. It was great before. If speakers are real bright EL 34s are forgiving. If you do not want a tube system, you could compare on Hegel or other high quality components.  Nothing like direct comparisons. Good hunting!

I believe it's mainly the room.. and also possibly speaker placement. You can try toeing your speakers out slightly. Imaging may lose some focus but it should balance the HF response. You won't be able to effectively 'roll' equipment until you have these things right.

You may then also try DAC or streamer filtering settings, if it has them. This will be subtle, but can help somewhat with fatigue.

I did insert a tube preamp between my Class D monoblocks and DAC (which works great driving an old Aleph 3 direct, but my DAC driving the monoblocks direct with no preamp.. while detailed was quite fatiguing). The tube preamp worked wonders.. midrange bloomed, the soundstage gained depth and coherence.. and this made the system listenable for long sessions with very little fatigue. It took a lot of experimentation rolling expensive 6SN7's before I found the right ones however.

That said.. driving a Pass Aleph3 directly with the DAC sounded the best.. the most coherent and organic, and with the lowest noise floor.. none I could hear basically. My DAC's output stage was designed for this.

Back to the room, one thing I have also done (& my room is a disaster.. very asymmetric with boundary issues on the right and open to the left and behind), was to fabricate stepped speaker baffles out of lamb's wool panels to crop the dispersion of the midrange and tweeter and also mitigate cabinet reflections and diffraction. Basically the same thing Dunlavy used to do with his SC series speakers. It was quite effective at cancelling reflection issues and improved the sound stage immensely, and this perceptively gave the sound a more believable, more organic presentation. I could listen 'deeper' into recordings, suppose I could say. I've read these baffles should be made of actual lamb's wool, and not synthetic or felt. I used "1/4 panels for the base layer, and "3/8 for the top layer. This is great if you listen primarily in the sweet spot, but if you wander around the room while listening, large plants, curtains, rugs, etc, might be preferable.