System advice

I would see how the Pulsars sound with your current amp, let them play together for a few weeks, then your next move might be more obvious. 

I’m having Pulsars for a couple of days. Great resolution, plenty of details, clear and accurate sound, a little on a bright side though. I’m satisfied with the purchase and I think the speakers are the best point to start a process of upgrading the equipment with. With the Pulsars I have this feeling that they are capable of so much more but are limited by the rest of the equipment. For example the bass is kind of weak right now with the Arcams. I can literally hear them asking for more juice.

Anyway, I wanted to share the lesson I learned today - how the SOURCE important is.

Until now I used only a Naim CD player as a source. A friend of mine bought Naim Uniti Atom as an all-in-one and stopped in with it. I used it today only as a Tidal streamer/DAC and connected it straight to my old pre-amp Arcam Alpha9 (which was paired with Arcam Alpha 9 power amp). And... everything was much better than from CD player! The sound was warmed, smoother, more enjoyable to listen and so on. Just wow! I was shocked that it’s so much better. So shocked that I decided to... out of curiosity, bring my Naim preamp and amp from the boxes (this Naim that I was complaining about in my first posts), my old Monitor Audio (same story), take my friend’s cables with bananas plugs (Naim limitations) and.. I experienced also a very nice sound (better) with tight and nice bass and no signs of previous metallic sounds from Monitor Audio (different source and different cables made that).

So, yeah, I’m looking for some conclusion right now. But I’m not quite sure what to do... I spent some cash on Naim set and on Monitor Audio speakers. But having JP I’m not coming back to Monitor Audio. I also have issues with coming back to Naim because they require bananas plugs and I have spades on my great XLO Signature cables and don’t want to change the plugs AGAIN. But I hear that Naim have a lot more power than Arcam, with bass and everything... So the only option I have in my mind right now is buying nice, tubed DAC with preamp that will do even better all the magic I heard today and then after saving up a little buying a power amp that will greatly match the rest of the system. Huh.

And there are those who swear that the front end doesn't matter. . . .

Thanks for the followup!  

I ordered Lampizator DAC Baltic & Poseidon for testing. The factory is near me, so I will have them tomorrow for about a week. It will be great to see the difference between one of the cheapest and one of the most expensive models! Anyway, it won’t be best testing ever because I still don’t have any "final" power amp.., so I’d like to ask ....

Any recommendations for power amp for JP?

Some ppl recommend solid state amps such as Pass Labs and Luxman.

Some other ppl recommend tubed amps like Rogue Audio Stereo 100, Audio Research REF 75 SE or 150 

Small update: 

I was listening to the music all the evening using Lampizator Baltic 4 and Poseidon. 

While Baltic was just fine, Poseidon was awesome. It's hard to describe what was so special about it, but we listened with a couple of friends and everyone said that Poseidon was in another league. The sound was better in every category. I took it because I was told that Big7 has similar "signature" of sound to Poseidon. Hopefully it's true, because Poseidon is definitely beyond my reach.