Future upgrade path/direction

[Shat_thyself]

Hi, ASR lurker here, first time poster. A quick thanks for the measurements based reviews, I appreciate this much more than the subjective descriptors you find at other forums such as WFH.

Anyway, I usually invest a small amount twice a year in audio equipment (christmas, and mid-year fathers day & anniversary), and having now achieved a complete basic AVR system, I am wondering where my money would be best spent going forward to achieve the greatest increase in audio quality.

My current system:
Music=Apple music lossless from iphone to Yamaha RXV6A AVR via airplay 2 - not engaging pure direct, as this disables the subs.
Movies=SkyQ HDR box to Yamaha RXV6A AVR via HDMI.
2x Arendal 1961 S1 subs
4x monitor audio silver 50 (6th gen) for fr/fl/rr/rl
1x monitor audio silver c150
Subs EQed with UMIK-1 & mini-dsp hd 2x4.
Speakers EQed with YPAO, manually setting GEQ using UMIK and REW for measurements (limited to specific preset bands in YPAO sadly)

I do believe audio sounded better back when i just had a basic stereo setup, KEF Q300 & Yamaha AS500, but the AVR for movie nights does work much better for the family overall, and i currently have nowhere else to set up a separate stereo only system.

So upgrades then, the RXV6A gets a poor review here.

• I had considered getting an external amp (from the AVR pre-outs / HT-bypass) to power the FL/FR, freeing up the AVR to better power the centre / surround channels with less distortion. perhaps a nice class D <£1000, or i am tempted by an older arcam integrated.
• Or maybe the AVR is just not worth trying to improve any further (i already have the minidsp due to poor EQ and no independent sub distance controls. despite this i have limited EQ for the mains), and should be replaced completely. this sounds expensive though.
• Or am i more likely to see a greater improvement by replacing the fr/fl? i do like the look of the R3, LS50, revel m16, monitor audio silver 200 or arendal 1961 towers. Though i guess any quality speaker will be poorly driven by the current AVR.

Any thoughts on how one might proceed / prioritise upgrades over the next few years to end up in a better place?

Appreciated / thanks.

 

[JeffS7444]

Any thoughts on how one might proceed / prioritise upgrades over the next few years to end up in a better place?

Even a "bad" AVR may perform adequately well that it's faults are not obvious to the listener.

You've got an odd setup, with woofers being equalized by MiniDSP, and the rest being eq'd by YPAO alone. Likely some latency is being added by MiniDSP too. What target response did you attempt to replicate?

 

[Shat_thyself]

Thanks Jeff, from memory, I aimed for +6db at 20hz, falling off to flat at 100hz, which is the xover, and flat from the xover otherwise. I will try and include an example image in the future.

Times have been aligned, correcting for sub position and minidsp delays, using rew.