What should I upgrade first?

also....I'd say you did a little more than stretch the budget. Aren't the SVS speakers and sub 2K without the yammie?

 

Shhhhh.... lol. The wife might be listening!!

 

SVS is on my good side already! Ordered this morning and all being delivered on Thursday!

 

Can’t wait to get them!

 

OP, did you get everything set up in your listening room? I'm in the same situation and have a dedicated room for 2 channel. Considering the R-N803 as well as it has a lot of cool features and good quality for the money. Do you use the YPAO room correction built-in? I'm wondering, for anyone to answer, does the YPAO room correction become a useless feature if you have treated the room with acoustic panels. Or, is it still helpful even after room treatment.

Would love to hear your thoughts and impressions of the amp and SVS speakers. Cheers!

 

Glad to read that you built the panels yourself. If you look around the web a bit, instructions and advice for room treatment is easily found and most of what you need can be selfmade, which will save you a lot money.
More important than placing your panels is finding the perfect speaker placement, though.
Maybe I am somewhat slow in these matters, but when I last upgraded, it took me about two weeks until I had found the final placement for my speakers. It‘s amazing how much difference a couple of inches can make. (Absolutely NO pun intended here.)

 

I did! Love the SVS Ultra and sub combo!!

I have gone back and forth with using the YPAO and Direct Mode..

My room is a really crappy 10x10 box. Direct mode initially sounds more "full", but turn volume up past a point and it gets resonating everywhere, bass a bit too boomy (even with the sub off).. on the other hand, using the room correction sounds thin at lower levels and better at higher volumes. It's been frustrating...

 

Building the panels was pretty simple for sure. Would def do it again..

 

That's why I think I'm gonna just skip the room correction software and just try to treat the room with acoustic panels the best I can. Mine is 11x12x9. Not sure if those are good dimensions or not for audio.

 

Not the best dimension to start with. Have you tried experimenting with the speaker placement?

Maybe your speakers are simply too big (and boomy) for the room?

 

nevermind ;-)

 

From my experience if your room is not ideal in dimension or shape for great sound then room treatments should be a top priority. Bass traps can really help with defining and bringing out better quality bass. Absorption can help clean up the sound reaching your ears by dealing with those very early reflected sounds and they can trick your speakers into believing that one dimension of your room is longer than it really is for those rooms that are more square than rectangular. With this said, if there is a really lousy piece of equipment in the mix that would take high priority over any sound treatment. You want your components to be balanced and working as a nice sounding system. It doesn't need to be the end game but don't try to treat a room to correct for one piece of bad equipment, get ride of it first, then correct the room. From there start on each piece, more likely the speakers first, then the source, then the pre and lastly the amp. The goal is stepping everything up so that whe you finished no one piece is noticeably so much better than the others. Live with this for a long while. Enjoy your hard work and what your hard earned money bought. Stop thinking about upgrades for awhile. Then when you are ready start the cycle again. It can be an endless game.