Seeking more 3d imaging, deeper/wider soundstage

In what kind of time do you life......keep on dreaming!!

I guess this was directed at me for my recommendation of $1k products from 20+ years ago. And why did I recommend these products? Remember the budget is $900-1200 and these products stood out at the time as the top performers; finding something new today for this cost that can compete here, would be quite a miracle. A low-fi $1k Rotel product will be easily destroyed by any of the products above.

what an amateur!!

Thanks again for you response, but my system as can be seen by all, which has slowly evolved since the mid 1970s, would indicate I am not really an amateur. I clearly don't have the breadth of knowledge of component design such as Atmasphere, Steve Nugent of Empirical, Almarg, or a number of other major contributors here. And I am not a system setup wizard like AlbertPorter, Jadem6, Tbg, or other major contributors here as well. But I feel I am at least in the middle somewhere, thank you.

Bo, before you attack people here, you should do a little research on them first .or you make yourself quite the fool in front of everyone.

One thing that has been bugging me about this thread seems worth pursuing. Realremo- have you tried revearsing the phase on one of your speakers?

Wow, great great catch here. The effect here is very clearly heard that something is wrong when the images are all outside the speaker boundaries rather than within. It's quite a wild and cool sound effect!

Tom, I kind of enjoy waiting for the next pronouncement from Bo....I just sit back amazed that some things are actually considered by some people to be normal behavior. He actually thinks he's being profound in each of his posts although I also point out that there are certain unexplainable things that just occur in nature with no logical explanation. Bo may be single handedly killing the bricks and mortar business model in his homeland. I'll bet if he went back and researched his sales volumes, there would be sales spikes that perfectly correlate with his absence on those days.

I'm sure Bo means well but his abject arrogance ticks me off. Until Bo apoligizes to Atmasphere for Bo's completely idiotic dismissal of Atmasphere's earlier advice in this thread to the original poster, I plan on calling his BS on everything however if he accidentally provides some amazing piece of insight, I will give credit where credit is due. I'm not holding my breath.

Jafox great recommendations for preamps on a budget! You are absolutely right I'm sure many of the vintage tube pres from ARC, CJ maybe even an older CAT would be a great alternative to many of the current budget alternatives. It this turns out to be the issue. Something to consider Realremo. Life is short and any audiophile or music lover should at least TRY some manner of tube product before the inevitable. A vintage tube pre-amp is a no brainer. Almost impossible to lose on and better than ANY of the cheap alternative options within your budget. Oh that Luminescence is a nice piece of gear for sure!

I think my DAC actually inverts phase, I think I read that somewhere. So to invert phase - I swap the output cables coming out of the DAC, right? Or do I swap the speaker cables at the speaker end? Or does it matter?
My only concern with vintage tube gear is maintenance. Where can I get that stuff serviced?
I am interested enough in tubes to definitely try them. I have a lot of research to do to familiarize myself with the different brands.
@ Raymonda: Wild Beasts, Proem, Coldplay, Bola, Coppice Halifax, Muslimgauze, Fuck Buttons, Miles' Birth of the Cool, Yeasayer, Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, The Berlin Philharmonic's recording of Holst's Planets, Amon Tobin, Haxon Cloak, various Beethoven symphonies conducted by Karajan, James Blake, numerous Hans Zimmer soundtracks, Moderat, Om, Love and Rockets and even Vampire Weekend, I consider all of these to be high-quality level recordings or artists who produce them.

Realremo - Atmasphere's comment related to the speakers themselves being out of phase not the musical signal itself. Make sure the + and - from the power amp goes to the + and - to the speakers. If one is incorrect, then the images will be outside of the speakers rather then in between them.

Concerning the signal itself being inverted, you could resolve this by inverting the speaker cables at both speakers .but I don't think you will notice much here. I had a DAC with an invert switch and I could flip it again and again and no way would I ever pass a blind test that anything was changing.

Concerning repair of vintage electronics, there are such repair places all over the country. And people here would be able to point you in the right place with a simple query. Some of the companies in my list, CJ, BAT are still in business.

Tubegroover - You will notice that I had no ARC products in my list. And this is because, for me anyway, the ARC magic starts with the SP-8, and this typically sells in the $1500-1900 range which is outside of the budget here.