Advice request - Which hardware to have loudness control and improve setup?

[Premier]

Hello Community,

I have been silent for a few months given some time consuming and annoying issues, but before that, at the end of April I was finally able build my first own hifi setup. Thank you all again for your appreciated and knowledgeable input and comments!

I would like to collect from you some ideas or advice for my current setup (bought at attractive prices) which consists of:

Wiim Ultra > Power Amp Apollon Eigentakt-2 > Goldenear Triton One.R (hybrid full-range)

Before that, few more additional infos:
- The music I listen to is only in streaming. No phono, cd, tapes or NAS.
- The system is placed in the living room (Surface: 21 m^2 = 226 ft^2; Volume 52.5 m^3 = 18.540,2 ft³)
- The apartment I am living in remains a “temporary” solution, so I am not intending to do any room-treatment in the living room or to hang any diffusers or absorbers on the walls, after which I incur in additional costs to restore everything how it was. What I can do would be to buy a wool-carpet or some stand-alone element for the acoustic treatment.
- I bought a minidisc Umik-1 for the electronic room correction to be used with REW, but so far not had the time to use it.
- geographic area: Europe, it this matter for the purchase of any services or goods
- I also have the philosophy “buy once, cry once”

Now I have 2 purposes and a budget of €2000-2500.

• Obtain general sonic improvement to unfold the full potential of the chain, especially in the soundstage, holography and detail retrieval
• Obtain a loudness control and an analog volume control in order to avoid detail loss, as I usually listen in the evening or at night at very low level (-40dB), normally jazz, classical, rock, pop, latino, acoustic, a few electronic.

Recently I have started thinking on the following addition options for the system :

1. DSP + high-end DAC ie: Wiim Ultra > Minidsp Flex > Gustard R26 > Apollon ET2 > GE Triton OneR
2. High-end DAC with extended functionalities, ie: Wiim Ultra > RME ADI-2 DAC FS > Apollon ET2 > GE Triton OneR

My questions to you:
1) How do you see these options?
2) How do you see the addition of an analog preamp, like the Ladder Bach, even if redundant, as the function is covered by other device
3) Not for now as, but for an hypothetical day the future, how can I manage in case the basses from 2 separated subwoofers? Only with option A) or also with B) + 2 subwoofers with HPF?
4) Is anybody aware of planned new devices to be introduced in Q4-Q1 in to the market?

A heartfelt thank you for your opinions!

 

[DVDdoug]

Obtain general sonic improvement to unfold the full potential of the chain, especially in the soundstage, holography

That's difficult. With the sound coming from a pair of speakers, soundstage and holography are obviously illusions that are impossible to measure and hard to control. Floyd Toole says, "The important localization and soundstage information is the responsibility of the recording engineer, not the loudspeaker."

Room acoustics can make a difference and dipole/bi-pole or omnidirectional speakers, or surround up-mixing (which I like to use) can create a more 'immersive" experience, but I believe that's at the expense of an accurate soundstage.

and detail retrieval

It depends on what you mean by detail.... I was surprised to learn that more distortion is sometimes heard as more detail!

Obtain a loudness control and an analog volume control in order to avoid detail loss, as I usually listen in the evening or at night at very low level (-40dB), normally jazz, classical, rock, pop, latino, acoustic, a few electronic.

Quiet details are harder to hear when you turn down the volume and they get too quiet to hear. That's just how the ear works... Sometimes you have to turn it up to hear the details.

You do lose resolution with digital attenuation but you don't hear the loss of resolution unless you re-amplify. You get the same loss of resolution during quiet parts of the program or with fade-outs, etc. You get similar "problems" if you attenuate the analog and then re-amplify. The analog noise gets amplified and becomes more noticeable.

 

[Premier]

Thanks.

Does this mean that the R2R technology generate distortions?