Hello Friends
TLDR:
1. Should i even worry about using branded Audioquest cables and will they give me improvements vs Dhivis , and if yes is it bass?
2. What could be next focus in short term for improvement is sound staging esp depth/height 3d bubble - spkr position, acoustic treatment?
3. Am i hearing better with 24 vs 16bit(dotn care freq. part) even though DAC might be resampling and i have to turn up volume
4. More pics and overall thoughts coming later this week
Finally, my new amp arrived and replaced with Marantz AVR , i am already loving the sound of new setup and i do understand now when folks say AVR vs stereo separation cleanliness (will post thoughts later)
For now i have a question for FMs to help me decide on following
1. I bought AudioQuest rocket 11(13awg) along with Monoprice 24k gold banana plugs - costed me a reasonable price from my dealer (though is it worth continue to read pls...). I was mainly running this thru AVR until now and i was getting a decent AVR sound with a bit of bass muddiness or overall bass dominated sound, but less clarity perse, esp vocals. Also, the volume that i can play was always less side, i see on display level 30-40. As cables were thick and very visible in my setup just for trial i also ordered Dhivis 13/14awg premade 5mtr cable and cut myself to make 2 out of them (2.5 mtr each). I plugged them and i kind of noticed improvement in clarity and bass being tighter(or lower i don't know how to perceive), but i didn't lose anything, infact i might have enjoyed this sound signature in my room setup, and much more pleasing to eye/setup and easy to hide in bunch of other wires.
2. My amp arrived last night (will write my experience - khatta-meetha later..), and i plugged same cables. As i said my sound signature cleaned by almost 50%, dare i say hifi to audiophile quality level (esp vocals took a bit back seat and allowed all my instruments to shine thru). As this is new Stereo amp(Rotel ras 5000 streamer), i don't know how much it is attributed to amp / dac section, cables and positioning / reflections form my room. Plus somehow i see now i have to raise volume to almost 50% of amps, though it is much more powerful(power watts wise), but this i have felt earlier also as it is now passing a better dynamic range signal thru inputs/dac, so i m ok/happy
Now i want to improve further 10-20% whatever i can and live in bliss for few years for which i spent so much
. And i don't want to spend months thinking what else and go down further rabbit hole. My wife already gave me ultimatum that last few months i have been disengaged from family and busy in phone all the time, and hope my search ends here
, and to be fair she has been supportive of remodeling my space for music
I don't have energy to again change cables and do experiments, but will i really gain anything back?
what can i expect to improve or should i focus on something else and tune my brain to like what i m hearing. Only improvement i can think of is a bit of treatment/positioning and better and better source(on this topic i was thinking i will get hires lossless thru apple music ios/android, but i see weird numbers from ios(24/44.1/48) and android(24/384) when connected thru USB cable)
One thing was clear to me i do like upper resolution of bits from 16->24 and i can identify that more than freq uplift ( as i see more dynamic range i can feel)
I think my dac is up sampling even spotify when doing thru Spotify connect (16 bit) vs Chromecast/Airplay(24bit), which i prefer
Thanks