Answered Buying advice needed - a few questions!

Kennyn1980

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Hi, I am hoping for some opinions on possible upgrades.

I currently have a Marshall Woburn active speaker, with a Marantz CD6006 and a Teac TN-300 turntable connected to it. I make occasional use of the speakers in-built bluetooth functionality, but it isn't essential to my needs. I am also using the turntables onboard pre-amp.

I listen in a very small room - approx 2.5 x 3m. The main types of music I listen to are metal (including black & death metal), rock (such as AC/DC), some country (Johnny Cash) and Synthwave artists (such as FM-84, Pertubator, Dance With The Dead).

I have been looking at replacing the Marshall speaker with a separate amplifier and speakers, and ideally an external pre-amp for the turntable. Due to lack of space, I would need to use bookshelf speakers which would have to be placed on my desk about 1m directly in front of me (either side of my PC monitor). The Q Acoustic 3020 speakers look ideal.

So my question is, would this be a worthwhile upgrade over my current setup, or would it be money wasted with using it in such a small room? How much of an audio upgrade should I be expecting to get?

I can post photos if required.

Many thanks in advance!
 
It wouldn't be wasted.

The q acoustics are very nice speakers. You could pick up a marantz pm6005 for 200 open box in superfi at moment, i think that be a very nice set up but i reckon you need some kind of isolation between speakers and desk.

To be honest you'd probably be as well off with the Q acoustics 2010i which are cheap in RS at moment due room being small
 
Also with the marantz the phono preamp is built in
 
You need at least £70 per half metre speaker cables and buy a bigger house to start with , your listening room should be about the size of the albert hall. Now is it carpet flooring if so it should be pure mongolian yak wool if you want these cables to really show there worth.
 
Thank you for the advice. I have gone ahead and ordered a Marantz PM6006 and a pair of Q Acoustics 3020 speakers.

I do however have another question regarding connecting my PC up to the amplifier. I use Tidal for streaming, and have a Creative Sound Blaster ZxR soundcard installed in my PC which has optical out. Would this be the best method of linking my PC up to the amplifier, or do I need any other equipment?

I'm sure these seem like dumb questions to a lot of people, but I am new to this as you can tell and the advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again!
 
There's no dumb questions, just dumb answers.

Amazon sell a usb to optical converter. This may be the easiest way, it's like a usb one side, optical out other side. This could go into one of the amps optical connection.

If you have wi-fi I'd consider buying a Chromecast audio, allowing streaming tidal to your amp
 
Thanks, I will look into getting one of those.

I currently have an Echo Dot, which is pretty good but it doesn't support Tidal. A Chromecast audio does sound like a more flexible option.
 
If you do buy a CCA I'd advise you buy a digital optical cable with a 3.5mm jack one side. It's output is both digital and analogue but if you get the digital your amp will use it's rather excellent built in DAC. Enjoy your new setup, it's a nice one
 

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