Need advice for setup upgrades - what to upgrade first?

[Bagi]

Hi everyone! I am new here but I already see there is plethora of useful information.

About a year ago I created a setup for myself with goal of listening to vinyl but also being able to listen to digital audio (apple music, spotify etc.)

Give this was my first setup I bought most of equipment second hand and am now looking to improve on it.

I have Dual 604 vinyl player - I removed old type cable and replaced it with rca + ground as per schematics (all good here, maybe eyeing the denon dl110 too much recently as I saw good recensions of it)

Fosi Audio box x3 - tube preamp with bluetooth connectivity

Onkyo A-9155 amplifier

and custom made speakers (monitors) which specs you can see in the image attached.

Would adding the fosi audio v3 mono improve the sound quality?

what replacement would you recommend for box x3, as that is kind of a “brain” of the setup at the moment since it handles phono input but is also a bluetooth point for playing Digital when I run out of will to change lp sides .

Finally which component of the “system” is the weakest link and replacing it would bring most benefits?

Thank you all in advance!

 

[staticV3]

what replacement would you recommend for box x3, as that is kind of a “brain” of the setup at the moment since it handles phono input but is also a bluetooth point for playing Digital when I run out of will to change lp sides .

A WiiM Ultra

Finally which component of the “system” is the weakest link and replacing it would bring most benefits?

Room treatment, room correction, loudspeaker placement, a subwoofer.

 

[DVDdoug]

The weak link is vinyl. But if you're not bothered by the noise, the other issues usually aren't too bad. A different cartridge will likely change the frequency response and a "better" cartridge may improve distortion on "hard to track" records. But tweaking with EQ or tone controls is a smarter way to alter the frequency response and it allows you to tweak to your taste, or for "bad records".

Of course you can use EQ with digital sources too. Either to adjust to taste or to correct problems with your speakers & room acoustics.

When I listened to vinyl in the analog days, a lot of records had rolled-off highs and I was always foolishly upgrading, or wanting to upgrade my cartridge. I knew the problem wasn't the cartridge since there were a few good sounding records. I felt like I was cheating using tone controls or EQ... foolish! I assume modern records are better and more consistent.

The only time I heard a difference from the turntable itself it was a cheap record player with a plastic platter and I could hear low frequency "rumble". The Dual had a good reputation and it's probably fine as long as the belt isn't slipping.

Tubes can be perfectly OK but they've been obsolete since the 1960s.* It's more expensive to build a tube device, and they eventually age and die. (Tube power amps are even more expensive because you need a transformer between tubes and the speakers and it's not cheap or easy to build a good audio-output transformer.)

Your Onkyo amplifier is probably fine as long as it's got enough power (goes loud enough without distortion).

Different speakers will sound different (better or worse). But I have a feeling you want to keep your speakers. (And speakers sound different in different rooms.)

For $100 USD you can get a calibrated microphone and with REW you can measure your speakers & room. From there you can decide if you want some room correction EQ, or acoustic treatment.






* Guitar players often prefer tubes because of the way they distort when overdriven. And, they usually have their favorite amp as well as their favorite guitar. Good hi-fi amps (tube or solid state) don't have any particular sound and they shouldn't be over-driven into distortion.

P.S.
I would recommend that you digitize your records because they do seem to deteroriate even if you are careful with them. You can use Tape-Out or Rec-Out from your amplifier into the line-input (blue) on a regular soundcard, or if you have a laptop with only mic-in and headphone-out you can get a USB audio interface with line-in. And you can use Audacity (free and open source) as your recording software.

 

[Mikig]

Hi, you have an Onkyo integrated amplifier with MM input, and a Fosi MM phono preamplifier. A high-output MC cartridge that you can connect to the MM input. I would proceed in this way: I sell the two amplifiers and buy a single device that is an amplifier, phono and bluetooth. I would watch some tutorials on how to implement the position of the speakers and the listening point. The turntable is great if you like it. Maybe look for a device that has the newest technical discoveries in terms of EQ, it can always help you customize your system/environment.

 

[Bagi]

A WiiM Ultra


Room treatment, room correction, loudspeaker placement, a subwoofer.

I like what I see about WiiM Ultra!
One thing though, I do not know how its phono stage compares to the FA box x3?

My biggest issue with the loudspeaker placement is the way wall is behind… but the way they are in pic above is not how I listen them, I just brought them together for pic

Room correction seems really interesting, as indeed when I listen over mac and have an EQ turned on it is much better sounding (fuller)

Is there a way to do a preliminary room correction with normal headphone mic? Would it make sense with that mic?

 

[Bagi]

The weak link is vinyl. But if you're not bothered by the noise, the other issues usually aren't too bad. A different cartridge will likely change the frequency response and a "better" cartridge may improve distortion on "hard to track" records. But tweaking with EQ or tone controls is a smarter way to alter the frequency response and it allows you to tweak to your taste, or for "bad records".

Of course you can use EQ with digital sources too. Either to adjust to taste or to correct problems with your speakers & room acoustics.

When I listened to vinyl in the analog days, a lot of records had rolled-off highs and I was always foolishly upgrading, or wanting to upgrade my cartridge. I knew the problem wasn't the cartridge since there were a few good sounding records. I felt like I was cheating using tone controls or EQ... foolish! I assume modern records are better and more consistent.

The only time I heard a difference from the turntable itself it was a cheap record player with a plastic platter and I could hear low frequency "rumble". The Dual had a good reputation and it's probably fine as long as the belt isn't slipping.

Tubes can be perfectly OK but they've been obsolete since the 1960s.* It's more expensive to build a tube device, and they eventually age and die. (Tube power amps are even more expensive because you need a transformer between tubes and the speakers and it's not cheap or easy to build a good audio-output transformer.)

Your Onkyo amplifier is probably fine as long as it's got enough power (goes loud enough without distortion).

Different speakers will sound different (better or worse). But I have a feeling you want to keep your speakers. (And speakers sound different in different rooms.)

For $100 USD you can get a calibrated microphone and with REW you can measure your speakers & room. From there you can decide if you want some room correction EQ, or acoustic treatment.






* Guitar players often prefer tubes because of the way they distort when overdriven. And, they usually have their favorite amp as well as their favorite guitar. Good hi-fi amps (tube or solid state) don't have any particular sound and they shouldn't be over-driven into distortion.

P.S.
I would recommend that you digitize your records because they do seem to deteroriate even if you are careful with them. You can use Tape-Out or Rec-Out from your amplifier into the line-input (blue) on a regular soundcard, or if you have a laptop with only mic-in and headphone-out you can get a USB audio interface with line-in. And you can use Audacity (free and open source) as your recording software.

I like my dual 604, I bought it because I love the whole vinyl listening ritual more than anything else about it. For that reason I kind of went with the tube preamp as I never had one and wanted to test if it sounds “warmer”. I do not know if I would say warmer but it sounds better than the integrated phono stage on Onkyo.
I also removed 99.99% of the hum from the dual by grounding it properly (changing the old connection to RCA) . It is direct drive and works fine.

Onkyo indeed serves the purpose but I believe I would benefit from slightly more capable amp?


The issue with my speakers is they are custom made so there is a slight mistake… they both have cutoffs for the magnet on left side…. and it is annoying to look at sometimes.

Also, High range fq goes through the tweeter and the woofer is doing the rest. Would I benefit from an additional “mid” and if so how would I set it up?

 

[staticV3]

Is there a way to do a preliminary room correction with normal headphone mic? Would it make sense with that mic?

Not really.

If you own an iPhone or iPad, give HouseCurve a try.

Otherwise, it's best to save up for a UMIK.

 

[AnalogSteph]

First off, since the 604 is not a subchassis player, I would look out for a concrete paving slab or similar and some tennis balls. Turntable goes on slab goes on halved tennis balls, should make for some effective vibration isolation. You can go fancy and use polished granite or marble if you insist, of course.

Finally which component of the “system” is the weakest link and replacing it would bring most benefits?

Speakers. Your ATR Monitors appear to be dating from the late 1970s, and while the woofer looks like a very nice Coral of the time (which have a near-legendary reputation), the baffle fails basic requirements by modern standards and could do with a complete redesign. Drivers are not flush-mounted, there's no way in hell that the dispersion of this woofer and tweeter are going to be matched particularly well (waveguides were only starting to appear at the time and remained uncommon for many years) so diffuse sound is unlikely to be very neutral, and the port is not flared and in a less than ideal spot. (Having it near the top of the case would increase distance to the woofer and make stuffing a lot more effective in reducing port resonances.)

A big 2-way monitor should be looking a whole lot more like this (Genelec S360A):

or like this (Behringer B2031A):

If your assemblage of components means that you are in fact located in Germany, I would attempt to draw on the lively local speaker DIY scene for help. At the very least, the baffle could be filled up with modeling clay or something to generate a smooth surface.

Onkyo indeed serves the purpose but I believe I would benefit from slightly more capable amp?

Your speakers are quite sensitive, and the amp is above average by the standards of when they were new. Assuming the 92 dB / W / m spec is accurate, 55 wpc would get you to 109.4 dB SPL peak (1 m anechoic), or roughly that much @2.5-3 m in-room. Seems plenty sufficient to me.

 

[Bagi]

First off, since the 604 is not a subchassis player, I would look out for a concrete paving slab or similar and some tennis balls. Turntable goes on slab goes on halved tennis balls, should make for some effective vibration isolation. You can go fancy and use polished granite or marble if you insist, of course.


Speakers. Your ATR Monitors appear to be dating from the late 1970s, and while the woofer looks like a very nice Coral of the time (which have a near-legendary reputation), the baffle fails basic requirements by modern standards and could do with a complete redesign. Drivers are not flush-mounted, there's no way in hell that the dispersion of this woofer and tweeter are going to be matched particularly well (waveguides were only starting to appear at the time and remained uncommon for many years) so diffuse sound is unlikely to be very neutral, and the port is not flared and in a less than ideal spot. (Having it near the top of the case would increase distance to the woofer and make stuffing a lot more effective in reducing port resonances.)

A big 2-way monitor should be looking a whole lot more like this (Genelec S360A):
View attachment 437042
or like this (Behringer B2031A):
View attachment 437044

If your assemblage of components means that you are in fact located in Germany, I would attempt to draw on the lively local speaker DIY scene for help. At the very least, the baffle could be filled up with modeling clay or something to generate a smooth surface.


Your speakers are quite sensitive, and the amp is above average by the standards of when they were new. Assuming the 92 dB / W / m spec is accurate, 55 wpc would get you to 109.4 dB SPL peak (1 m anechoic), or roughly that much @2.5-3 m in-room. Seems plenty sufficient to me.

Thank you so much for your knowledgable response! I would love to “open” up the speakers to check which woofer it is exactly but the box does not have any “easy access” of course.

 

[A Surfer]

The woofers look very similar to the woofers in my beloved HPM 100s.

 

[kemmler3D]

If you are happy with the sound of the speakers, your setup is really not bad at all. Room correction will be the first thing to do, it's cheap and the benefits are considerable.

@AnalogSteph is correct that your speakers don't appear to be technically up to date, but they don't look like a total disaster to me. Unlike some speakers of that time, the woofer and tweeter are placed close together, which is a good sign. The asymmetrical placement suggests they were also paying attention to details with diffraction and such. Unfortunately it looks like you got two "left" or "right" speakers here since they are both shifted to the left. This isn't a huge problem but you might need to place the speakers a little asymmetrically to get a good stereo image.

You can definitely get better speakers today, in 2025. However, you might need to spend a surprising amount of money to achieve a big upgrade. Well designed and built speakers from 30+ years ago tend to miss some things that are common today, but the fundamentals can still be good.

If you want to get to the insides of the speakers, just unscrew the drivers from the front.

 

[Bagi]

If you want to get to the insides of the speakers, just unscrew the drivers from the front.

Thanks for the response! I feel like a dumbass to have missed such an obvious thing! Thanks for pointing it out! I will check it out tomorrow!

 

[Bagi]

Not really.

If you own an iPhone or iPad, give HouseCurve a try.

Otherwise, it's best to save up for a UMIK.

Hi I did the HouseCurve and this is what I got

I see a big drop at ~2k Hz. How would I remedy that? Just bump the 2k in equalisation? Should I bump down the 125 and lows a bit down?
I cant get much difference from treble/bass potentiometers on my fosi and onkyo. I tried different pairing (direct on Onkyo, loudness, etc. but they are mostly similar) If I bump the treble up it screws the rest for really a minimal increase in 2k band.

 

[A Surfer]

Hi I did the HouseCurve and this is what I got View attachment 437135

I see a big drop at ~2k Hz. How would I remedy that? Just bump the 2k in equalisation? Should I bump down the 125 and lows a bit down?
I cant get much difference from treble/bass potentiometers on my fosi and onkyo. I tried different pairing (direct on Onkyo, loudness, etc. but they are mostly similar) If I bump the treble up it screws the rest for really a minimal increase in 2k band.

Try reducing some other frequency or frequencies. As you seem to be musing about, reducing can result in other frequencies sounding emphasized as they become more noticeable.

Perhaps that will produce a better result than your previous attempts to equalize the treble?

 

[Bagi]

Try reducing some other frequency or frequencies. As you seem to be musing about, reducing can result in other frequencies sounding emphasized as they become more noticeable.

Perhaps that will produce a better result than your previous attempts to equalize the treble?

So I bought the pro version of the app to get the auto eq.
I got these values after few tests and inputed them in garage band Qrange

Here it is in qrange (blue line)

Now… am I a sinner if I apply Apple music EQ additionally on top of that? I basically have a “jazz style” eq preset I like. Both of those combined sound a bit better to me (might be just preference). Or am I completely wrong?

To conclude my speakers sound so much better holy s**t.
I also applied Light LF&HF stereo spread in garage band, I have a feel sounds is a bit more “open”.

Thanks everyone for the insights so far!

 

[MatrixS2000]

As you are finding out…room treatment first, then speakers.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Now… am I a sinner if I apply Apple music EQ additionally on top of that? I basically have a “jazz style” eq preset I like. Both of those combined sound a bit better to me (might be just preference). Or am I completely wrong?

As they say, there is no accounting for taste.

You may at least want to try the room correction "barefoot" for a while, on all kinds of material.

To conclude my speakers sound so much better holy s**t.

That mirrors my experience with measurement and PEQ so far, particularly since I went from discrete measurements to MMM. You may not be able to get it 100% right as long as there is a substantial mismatch between direct and diffuse sound since microphones just don't hear the same as ears do, but it'll be an improvement nonetheless.

It looks like you should have good coverage from ~35 Hz to at least 16 kHz now. As far as music goes, that's pretty much full spectrum.

I also applied Light LF&HF stereo spread in garage band, I have a feel sounds is a bit more “open”.

This may be completely justified if your stereo triangle is a bit on the narrow side to begin with, which it looks like it might be.

 

[RandomEar]

I would ditch filters with a Q higher than ~6-7. Our ears are just not that discriminatory concerning small frequency response errors. Also, audio measurements past 3-4 kHz are heavily influenced by local sound minima & maxima. What you measured in the treble region may look totally different 20 cm more to the left or right of the original position. Concerning your EQ, I would therefore simplify as follows:

• Only correct large dips and peaks (around 45, 60 and 135 Hz as well as 2-4 kHz) with low to medium Q filters
• Either no corrections above ~3 to 4 kHz, or a small global tilt: Something like a +-1 to 2 dB shelf filter
• Don't forget that you need a negative pre-amp with the same value as your strongest positive filter (technically the highest local sum of all filters), otherwise you will run into clipping with full scale signals

Due to handling noise and microphone directivity, any measurement with a phone is also limited to be a rough guideline at best. If the resulting EQ sounds good to you: Congrats and enjoy. If you want more/better measurements, a UMIK-1 is the way to go. Used ones are often availabe at reasonable prices and you can sell them again at basically no loss.

 

[DSJR]

Late reply again -

Changing the Dual's exit cable will change the total capacitance more than anything. I did this on my 601 and 701 decks, leaving the Van Damme Pro Patch cables (plus grounding wire) on the 701 but actually putting the 601 cables back and returning the grounding to factory-fitted. I can't remember the cartridge the 604 came with, but some were Ortofon OM versions labelled as Dual DN and some were AT equivalents (DM242E I have here is audibly similar to the evergreen AT95E)

What cartridge does the Dual have in it currently? I can't remember what ours came with. We had a number that came with a DM 242E cartridge made by Audio Technica and this is sonically equivalent to the venerable AT95E. The cheapest easy upgrade of the vinyl side would be an AT VM95ML which the deck should 'do proud' with.

The phono stage, if a valve one, may well be noisy and the RIAA response may well alter as the valves age. I don't know the Onkyo amp at all, but if it has a phono stage, what's that like? The Cambridge Duo is still top of the tree and if he's able to ship it, the Spartan MM stages by @Michael Fidler look to be superb. To join this and the paragraph above together, there's a YouTube vid of an AT VM95ML playing into a Spartan 15 phono stage and it 'sounds' great to me on the admittedly simple Mark Knopfler music track (forget the AT deck in the vid, as your Dual should be at least as good as that and arguably better...).

Onkyo made some good stuff I recall, but it's decades since I had any experience of the brand. Obviously, I haven't a clue as regards the speakers



P.S. I bloody HATE record weights, which actually increase load and often wear on platter main bearings (you'd be amazed how many Thorens and even Linn LP12 bearings are shagged out, but still in use even without these things, the owners in blissful ignorance and even old Regas aren't immune when the oil dries out). Your Dual may still be okay, but I'd consider not using the weight unless you honestly feel it 'sounds' better to you. Otherwise, it's audiophile fashion.

 

[Bagi]

As they say, there is no accounting for taste.

You may at least want to try the room correction "barefoot" for a while, on all kinds of material.

I will do that indeed.

It looks like you should have good coverage from ~35 Hz to at least 16 kHz now. As far as music goes, that's pretty much full spectrum.

I selected that range in the app to be "fixed". I based the decision on this image basically

This may be completely justified if your stereo triangle is a bit on the narrow side to begin with, which it looks like it might be.

it indeed is a bit narrower!