My stereo isn't doing it for me. Need advice

So how is nearfield sounding at different volumes and with various music genres?

SOund Anchor are nice stands.

If those are sounding good 24" off the ground, the Isoacoustics I mentioned might be worth a try. These are less expensive pro stands and very effective but are short stands designed to be used with pro studio monitors. Can be used on floor, desk wherever needed. Three sizes available. One of those would likely fit the smaller Dynaudios or ls50s.

Which speaker are you talking about now that you are hearing better results with different stands and nearfield? The Dynaudios, KEFs or both?

http://www.amazon.com/IsoAcoustics-1004209-ISO-L8R155-Medium-Pair/dp/B008GOP79G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432133841&sr=8-1&keywords=isoacoustics

If you need a pair of inexpensive but effective isolating speaker stands for smaller speakers in a small room, you probably cannot go wrong with these. They were one of the most unique and effective tweaks ever for me in my wife's small and acoustically challenged 12X12 sunroom.

Sound Anchors also makes equipment stands. I have one built custom for my preamp and turntable, each sitting on an anti-vibration platform; it has 4 shelves so the CDP is taken care of as well. I've run it this way for years. It was a nice improvement.

It would seem that even a cursory reading of the responses indicates that you have a room that is your main problem. The speaker/room interface is, BY FAR, the most important arbiter of good sound quality.

The folks who are advising that you run around throwing equipment at your problem are way off base. Adding an AC power conditioner isn't gonna do jack sh!t for you. And neither will expensive speaker cables and over-priced AC cables.

You *must* improve your speaker/room interface. The best ways to do this are:

1) Carefully "tuning" of the room/speakers to eliminate early reflection points and peaks/nulls caused by standing waves.

2) Employing the use of "room correction" software (RCS). Surely you've heard of Audyssey, Dirac, Trinnov and other such systems? If not, time to get on Google and start getting educated. The better RCS systems can do an astonishing job of taming problem room/speaker interfaces.

In fact, your best bet is to combine 1 and 2 above. Read up on how to "tame" your room with acoustic treatments and employ the tricks learned there. Then get an RCS system and spend a coupla days or so dialing in the room using the RCS.

I flat guaran-damn-tee you that if you do these two things your system will sound *worlds* better!! And the knowledge you gain from this exercise will allow you to setup any future system much more quickly, easily, and accurately.

Feel free to contact me off-list if you'd like some help or advice....

-RW-