What to upgrade?

No doubt room acoustics in a loft can be tricky. Might wreck havoc on soundstage and clarity with perceived dynamics more the victim.

DEfinitely always a good idea to assess and get a handle on teh room acoustics before making a major change. That's often the biggest determining factor regarding what will or will not work. Good sound from gear heard elsewhere may not matter much.

The sub idea might still be the effective boost needed. Placement options with separate subs to compensate for room acoustics might be easier than just replacing with all self contained larger speakers. Corssed over correctly, existing amp should be able to perform more optimally as well at higher volumes with low bass offloaded.

Take a look at some of the audiokinesis Planetarium speaker systems that leverage up to 4 separate subs to help compensate for room acoustics. This might be a fantastic approach to consider in your case. I have not heard these but love the innovative approach and thought processes that go into Duke's stuff to wean out performance for reasonable cost.

Thank you for the response.

Mapman - The dynamics seem to be ok at higher volume but the highs and midrange get a bit lost with no separation of instruments. I have given subs a thought. Just not sure how placement would work and not sure how one goes about connecting them. Any ideas of a sub that would match my system?

Lak - I have also thought about room acoustics and have researched but just have no idea of what I would need. Noted below is some additional information about the speakers and amp and room:

Daber Audio Monitor 3 daberaudio.com
Features/Specs
8 inch Magnesium/Aluminum woofer
2 inch Aluminum dome midrange
Planar Tweeter
Satin Nickel binding posts
Hand built crossovers using hand selected parts
150 watt RMS power handing
91 db efficiency
35-21k response
8 ohm nominal impedance
Rear facing port
32 pounds each
22" H X 9" W X 14" D

Portal Panache portalaudio.com
The Panache Integrated Amp by Portal Audio combines a completely transparent passive line stage with a high gain dual mono Class A/AB amplifier on one chassis.
100 w X 2 @ 8 ohms
200 w X 2 @ 4 ohms

Room
One speaker is in a corner, Back wall, side wall, cabinet, the other is open on the left side, back wall, cabinet on the right side.

Rover,

If bass levels and dynamics are good at higher volume, and all is well at lower volumes, then indeed likely room acoustics, possible treatments, speaker placement are the things to look at. Switching gear alone may accomplish little or nothing until these fundamentals are addressed.

To what extent have you played with what you have to get things optimized? Definitely do that first. Nothing wrong with what you have I could determine as described to prevent that.

Is there echo in the room when you speak? That's a good test to determince how lively room might be and how sound echoes within. A lively loft with lots of echo might be a difficult beast to tame fully unfortunately, but I'd be willing to bet playing around with things a bit might help significantly.

I read your speakers are rear ported.

First thing I would try is move both speakers 2-3 feet out away from walls minimum, more if possible and play around with different locations and see what that does, especially if rear ported. Bass may be affected negatively or not, but other current reported problem areas like detail and imaging/soundstage should improve. Adding subs if needed at that point might help.

Use a good mono recording and make sure speakers are close enough to produce a solid center image from your prime listening position or preferred sweet spot., not too far apart as to leave sound muddled and spread out with no center focus. Then try some stereo recordings and see what happens then.

You can also try toeing speakers in or out as well along with placement to help tune things. Might require a lot of experimentation to determine what sounds best at your preferred listening position.

I would try a position with speakers well out from nearby walls so that distance sound reflected of any nearby rear or side wall at each primary reflection point travels from speaker to your ears at your primary listening position or preferred sweet spot is at least twice that of sound that reaches you directly from speakers. This will help address timing issues between direct and reflected sound that will muddy the detail if not within certain tolerances.

If within the tolerances, as determined by relative distances direct and reflected sound travels to your ears, 3-D soundstaging and imaging and associated detail will improve. Try that first and tweak accordingly from there to fine tune.

Room:
There is a small echo if I raise my voice or clap.
I have moved the speakers around, Best location is about 6 ½ ft apart toed in.
Also moved them out from the wall as far as I could, about 2 ft. Interesting part is the further I moved the speaker in the corner out the bass became muddy/boomy.

having this much to upgrade, you can upgrade everything you have except DAC.