Newbie want to improve what I have


I am brand new here already purchased my first system. Probably made some mistakes. So I bought an NAD M33, Focal Sopra No 1 speakers, Tellurium Black II cables with an Isotek EVO3 Polaris. I am enjoying the system but realize I've probably made some mistakes. So as a humble novice I'd love some advice where to start to improve my system. I thought perhaps starting with the cables. Looking too warm this up. 

foxton

Congratulations. Nice speakers. NAD is a brand many people start with. Good start.

If you have just completed assembling this, you may not want to swap boxes yet. You want to become very familiar with the sound but aid with cable choices like you said.

So, it makes sense to warm it up. You want to look at Cardas cables and interconnects. They are specifically designed to be warmest at their most budget oriented levels and to become more neutral as one moves up in their lines. This is what is typically needed as you move to higher level components.

Early on in my audiophile career (~40 years ago) my system was too bright and Cardas Golden Reference did exactly that. These were high end warm cables they used to make. Anyway, years later I made a big upgrade and I immediately pulled them off and moved to more neutral wire. You are thinking correctly. If you can get it sounding warmer, then you can really work to position it correctly and tweak it, and fix up the room. And it becomes your reference for a few years until you choose to upgrade.

When you choose to upgrade. Most of us have individual boxes for streamer, DAC, preamp, and amp. The more boxes, in general the better things sound. Each is optimized and isolated from othe functions. If that simply doesn’t work then a streamer / DAC and an integrated amp. Can work.

Also, setup and room treatments can make huge differences. There is a place to show photos your system and venue. We can be really helpful if we can see your system. They need not be show photos. You can see my system under my UserIDs.

 

Play around with room treatments and with speaker positioning.  Your M33 comes with Dirac room correction. Have you run it?

Do not start throwing money at cables and the like until you have optimized the features in your current system.

Also here is a "guide" for speaker setup.

http://www.cardas.com/room_setup_main.php

Al of of peddlers lurk these pages and will give you a sales pitch, steer clear of those guys.

 

  • built-in Dirac Live room correction with included calibration microphone improves clarity and stereo imaging.

 

 

Welcome to the long road to audio nirvana. Take your time, be patient and most importantly change only one thing at a time otherwise you won't know which change did what. Hence the patience requirement. Unfortunately this is NOT a one time purchase endeavor, it will take years and many trials. All worth it, but I am 68 now lol.

Start thinking about your room acoustics, and also Focals sound better with very little toe-in.  If you are pointing the tweeters straight at your head they are probably too bright and the imaging isn't solid from speaker to speaker.