Upgrade path for family room. Green light thinking

[kauai82]

With my temporary demise of my Fusion 8100 AVR receiver, now in Franklin, Tennessee Emotiva repair facility , I have had to change up my family room audio set up.  To bridge the gap I purchased a Monoprice 50w hybrid tube amp for $200.  You can check out the thread on what I think about here on the forum. This thread is about all the possibilities that I am now thinking about in upgrade paths for my family room system.  With the Fusion I had used it mainly for 2.1 sound. We watch very few movies and now that it is in the shop I don't need to have an AVR in the system. I like the sound of the Monoprice, but it has opened my ears that my family room SQ could be improved greatly over what I been listening to in the past.  I have been with the Monoprice using the family room system for more critical listening than before. My family room is an acoustic pit. Tile floors --open concept to kitchen and very reflective. Wife wants no acoustic treatments in the room so I am stuck with a poor acoustic environment. I have in the past made several speaker DIY speaker kits and been very happy with the results. In the family room bookshelf speakers work best on 24" fairly highly quality stand. Little floor bounce and good sound stage. Some reflections but not as bad as floor standers. 


I have a very limited budget of $350 to $500 for this upgrade path. Most of it will be financed by the sale of either a Denon AVR-X3200 or the Fusion 8100 depending on which AVR sounds best in the upstairs 5.1 system (see signature ). With this in mind, my main goal is to cut down the reflections on the high frequencies that I noticed were much better when I used the Monoprice  tube amp.  My current speakers in the family room, the Tangos, have an aluminum tweeter and aluminum mid woofer and sound great in my other systems, but I think in the family room they have a tendency to reverb the higher frequencies more than I like.  I switched speakers from my main system, the Jasmines and they improved some of the reflections in the family room, but the have a Fortek ribbon tweeter and it sounds great upstairs, but it is a little too beamy on the high end for my tastes in the bigger room.

So here are the different paths I have thought of to improve my family room system. Any thoughts or recommendations would be welcomed.

Plan One, Change out the DIY Tango speakers with a newer Mandolin speaker kit.  This kit has fabric and paper driver components and I am hoping that would tame the reflections in the room. Cost $375 for the pair. I could gut the Tango's and use the cabinets thus saving money. The downside to this plan is that if it does not sound that great I am stuck with the speaker that I can not sell for much money on eBay to recoup my cost of upgrade.

Plan Two.  A few years ago I heard the Airmotiv line of power speakers at Emo on the Road held here in L.A. and was very impressed with the sound quality. I could use the Monoprice tube amp as a tube preamp and power the Airmotiv. Any thoughts on the difference between the Five and the Six models ? I probably should go with the larger size because of the room size, but my budget  likes the $400 price of the 5s . Positive upside is if the Airmotiv's don't sound good in the family room I can send them back.   

Plan Three. Same as above but I also sell the Monoprice and use the Emo XDA-2 as the preamp for the system. Not sure how good the preamp section of the XDA-2 is. I like the sound of the Monoprice so I would have to experiment. Still could send the speakers back if I don't like the sound.

Plan Four.  Sell both the Monoprice and the XDA-2 and the Fusion or the Denon and buy a PT-100 and the 5s Airmotiv and hope that the high end reflections are tamed by the AMT tweeter on the 5s.

So which one would you go with ?
  

[kauai82]

Well I will have to rethink my upgrade path with the price increases on the Airmotiv 5s and 6s.  That puts them out of reach for my small budget. Back to the drawing board.

[jackpine]

You might be able to bring the tweeter level down by adding resistance in the crossover. You would to need ask someone with crossover design experience. It might change the crossover frequency or slope too, depending on the design.

[knucklehead]

If you want to use the Fusion in your family room learn how to use REW. If you don't want to go that route use the Denon. It has Audyssey XT - a much better room correction than anything else you have. IIRC the Fusion has EmoQ- not the best room correction IMO. I owned two different UMC-200's - I ran EmoQ on the first one - didn't bother to use it again after the results I got sounded weak and unbalanced and a sub that was probably 10db hot. I tamed everything with REW with excellent results. Especially in the bass where I have a house curve of as much as 8db rise in the 45-70hz area. Really hell on the ears and anything not nailed down.