I have a picture of my wife that is very similar from 42 years ago when we were first married. And another as the background on my phone from a year or two ago. Having a good sense of humor will definitely make it last. Tell her hi for me. 
Vern
Returning to speakers, and the brands listed above, Chris1948 and I both use Harbeth P3ESR (and PS Audio have a pair in their design lab), ideal for that room size, but don’t come in black so that’s the end of that. Going further down the list of brands, I might suggest Dynaudio Contour 20, which do come in black/grey. They have a tremendous pedigree and both brands are used as much in the professional market as in consumer audio. Highly accurate and not fatiguing. The core of both brands is the design of proprietary driver design going back many decades. An other option would be a second hand pair of Focal Sopra 1. Black, white and shiny. Stunning speakers. Add a sub to taste.
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HI JP,
I hope that she is not assessing your IQ 
Bless the woman who understands her man.
Chas
JP,
Very nice looking room.
Don’t know how hanging draperies on your door will help SQ, aesthetically they may add a nice accent to room atmosphere.
Chas
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I’m a speaker guy, but really good speakers will reveal all the warts in the rest of the system, so be ready for more upgrades. There is no perfect speaker, mostly due to those pesky laws of physics, but advancements are being made all the time. Active designs have many distinct advantages. Controlled directivity is another modern advancement that deserves more attention. All speakers start with the drivers, so look for good ones. Some speakers like Harbeths use the cabinet to color the sound, not my favorite in that I don’t want everything to sound like, say a violin. Dipole/bipole/open baffle all produce a “wall of sound” versus discrete images. Vertical arrays are efficient but typically use really cheap drivers and cannot generate a vertically defined image. Single driver speakers have limited frequency range but are sweet for ‘little girls with a guitar’ type of musical genres. Etc., etc…
I’m also a room guy, anything located in the sound stage, like your rack, gear, and TV will block out that portion of the sound stage, in fact for a couple of years I went with small gear and a spiked shelf on the floor (away from the front wall) to hold gear in my audio only system. My purpose built room follows Cardas Golden Cuboid/Fibonacci ratios (8ft x 13ft x 21ft) to reduce bass echo. The room is well insulated and has ten GIK 244 panels for absorption plus three tall bookcases for informal diffusion. My setup is mid-field (a 7ft equilateral triangle between main speakers and listening position). Am a big fan of Floyd Toole and recommend reading his book “Sound Reproduction”.
Toole (and others) would recommend using 3 or 4 subs to reduce in-room bass peaks/dips. So my audio system is 2.3 including JBL 708P (active constant directivity monitors) and three 10 inch subs carefully located around the room, just to give an idea of the variety of solutions out there.
Recommend reading (and filtering out) much. Attend live concerts (hopefully unamplified) to learn what the ‘real thing’ sounds like. Then gather a wide ranging collection of your favorite music and go auditioning. And take notes, which will force you to take your time, critically listen, and fight fleeting aural memory. Limit yourself to 3 or 4 serious auditions per day to avoid aural fatigue. Home auditions are by far the best, show conditions can only provide a veto.
Take care and have fun.
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Are you using any type of power strip with surge protection with your equipment? If so I would strongly suggest removing the audio components from the strip and plugging them directly in to the wall to do an A/B comparison. Paul made a video about this and I tried it and heard a quite obvious improvement. It’s worth a try.
Now is that what they call “politically correct”… Hahahaha…
You have me at your mercy, I did not word that well. I was thinking that draperies on the doorway, opposite the window drapery on the right would help SQ. But I don’t know.
I do like draperies as a sophisticated decoration and thought they would add to an already nice room.
No PC or disrespect intended.
Chas
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Just kiddin’ dude…! I thought it was hilarious… 
That’s all right, I just wanted to be clear. I am not too worried but I did not want to upset his wife.
Confucius: A closed mouth gathers no feet.
Chas
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Keep in mind that absorbers are trying to make the wall disappear, to make your room sound bigger (the wall farther away). So covering up the open doorway will simply fill in that portion of wall with an acoustically opaque material. IMO drapes are useless as acoustic treatments. Too thin to absorb except perhaps at the extreme highest frequencies and not reflective enough to provide diffusion. Quilts might provide some mid/high frequency absorption, but the opening acts more as an absorber than a drape or quilt hanging across the opening.
Nearly all draping is an example of ‘visual’ acoustic treatments, that deceive the listener into believing what the eye shows. There is acoustic draping (absorption) available, but very heavy and expensive. Look for the data. Effective diffusion requires varying the depth of the acoustically reflective surface both horizontally and vertically and because of the size of sound waves can only be effective down to roughly 1,000 Hz (7 inch thickness).
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Thank you everyone for your help and sorry for not replying sooner. Work has been busy.
Ronald - great tip to move things back! That helped with the imaging, but cut the sound stage depth considerably. I’m going to experiment gradually moving things out from the wall and see if I can get a better balance.
Jeff - I really appreciate everything you wrote out and the time you took… I’ll write you a private message.
Steven, I’ve heard great things about Harbeth, Maggies, Tekton, and the new PS Audio speaker specs sound great too. I have to admit that these def techs were a spur of the moment decision, but after hearing a sound stage, I thought they were the best thing ever! Now that I know a bit more, I’m going in two paths. The first, is try out a handful of sets that cost less than 2k a piece… Maggies, Zu Audio has a special, Tekton’s perhaps… But I have a goal of going with “the ultimate setup” that would be more like the AN2 range but that’s more into the future and after a purpose room was built (and a lot of time given to save haha) I have also heard focals and am a fan of those too.
JLM - all great advice! You nailed it on the head too with hearing “warts”. I know that getting more revealing speakers will 1) expose issues with the music and 2) expose issues within my system. I know that my Def Techs are bad for great detail in complex passages, but I think many might be hard pressed hearing significantly more detail when it’s a small band. For example, before these speakers, I thought Jewel was absolute perfection. Now, I can hear every little dip that she has, or strained pitch at times. She went from being pristine to, ALMOST pristine. 
But, hearing Kurt Cobain in his unplugged album revealed SO much more anguish, and background noise than I’d ever heard too. It became immensely more touching hearing it. So it can go both ways. I have also tried adjusting my room to lesson the slap echo, and put treatments in (where I could) at first reflection points. (I know there is debate about that, but I’m willing to try a lot to get better sound.)
Evan-k - I do have two power strips going along the back of my entertainment center. Before that, I have some sort of filter device, and a dedicated, 20 amp circuit to one outlet behind it. I have tried both of plugging it directly into the wall and into the strip, and haven’t heard any change. But I think the dedicated circuit helps that a lot too.
Closing this all out… I want to thank EVERYONE for your input! Even if I didn’t reply directly to you, please know that I have read every post made here, and really do appreciate everyone’s help. Tonight, I’m going to swap in some new power cables that have a lot better shielding, some interconnects that have better shielding, and really toy with moving the speakers, TV stand, and room treatments around. I think with the speakers I have, I can’t achieve really great imaging. But, they can throw out a really great soundstage. I’ll move them around to get that back again.
Longer term, I think I’m good with my Anthem P2 amp, my XSP preamp, and my CXN for source material from Tidal. I’ll keep my eyes open for high quality dacs, transports, and TTs that I can snatch up on the cheaper side, but I think the more pressing thing is for me to get far more exposure and experience to higher quality speakers. I do have one store here in the Akron area I can go to and demo. And two others in Cleveland. I’m going to AXPONA in Chicago so that will at least get me more familiar with some brands too. And finally, I’ll start buying some additional components that I can test in 2 or 3 rooms… (Living room, bedroom, home office) My plans are to purchase:
- A sprout - this will reside in my office - but I’ll swap any speakers in and out between this and my anthem
- Zu Audio dirty weekend speakers - they have a 97 sensitivity and cost 1k that I can return if I don’t like them
- I’ve heard great things about Harbeth - maybe get some of those to sample/ test/ audition
- Tektron or whatever it is…
- Elac, Maggies, this list can go on… I just need to hear more to gain more experience, and finally
- I’d love to hear PS Audio speakers - but that’s long term, BIG BIG room and serious cash outlay that I’m not prepared to do now (Seriously, if I drop 6k for a dac, or even suggest buying 20k AN2s, Ann might begin removing physical parts of me in my sleep…and no… I’m not kidding)
Again, thank you all, so much, for welcoming me here, for making suggestions, and for taking time to write me. I truly, appreciate it! And, please have a FANTASTIC weekend!
Josh
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And if you can manage to add a dedicated branch circuit from your power panel to large consumers like amplifiers this is huge “bang for the buck” at least in my system. Large musical peaks used to dim the lights indicating mains voltage sag. Not good.
I have invested quite a bit of cash on my system, and I have days when it just isn’t as glorious as other times. I sometimes feel like sunlight penetrating my room diminishes the sound quality! Positioning, source material, volume, mental state, quality of electricity entering your home, can all affect your perception of the sound. As another member pointed out, today is 4/20, a great day to try the best tweak of all, modified state of mind! Happy listening
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I can totally relate. Some listening sessions are absolute magic and others are frustrating. Never completely sure why. Atmospheric conditions affect my electrostatic speakers so will be reducing series charging resistors to the DC bias for the membranes. I know this sounds pretty mental but in the long run worth the fuss in my opinion. And will probably run the AC to keep humidity in check.
Everyone of us has to suspend our disbelief, in order to pretend we’re listening to live music. The degree to which we have to stretch our imagination, depends on how good our systems are, and how easily we can or are willing to allow ourselves to be tricked, and allot of that depends on your state of mind. If you go from being relaxed and just letting the music flow over you, to focusing in on any particular aspect of the sound, the spell can be broken, and the curtain pulled back, revealing the nuts and bolts of the system, instead of the musical whole.
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Barometric pressure changes and humidity also affect our auditory system. Sometimes I have to yawn to pop my ears so I can hear properly.
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Sometimes we forget what it was all about… Listening, relaxing, going with the flow… Remember…? Put your music on, go sit on your sweet spot, close your eyes, adjust to your favorite volume as long as it is realistic to the performance and close your eyes…! Listen to the notes, the accords, the harmonies the lyrics. For once do not think about I2S, AES, silver, stage, holistic and all that other crap… Works for me, all the time…!!!
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I find I get to that magic place the less time I spend reading, responding, posting and trolling forums
Currently I’m enjoying very nice tunes via a very low bit-rate internet stream, complete with imaging and nice depth and most of all enjoyment!
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So in the end are you trying to blend something new into your atmos system or thinking about a stereo config?
For atmos/ movies etc … I think the def techs are nice.
Have you ever heard a planar like a Maggie or an electrostatic like Martin Logan? These will give you a completely different view vs a box speaker.
If you listen to mags - it’s just a matter of price point and how you want to utilize or integrate the new speakers. Basically the larger ones produce better bass - but the smaller ones have a very similar sonic signature.
You owe it to yourself to listen to a planar as it will probably be way different than anything you have heard. From there you can weigh your preference vs integration needs vs music preferences. Bring well recorded rock/ small ensemble jazz / classical/ female vocal / symphony / and things you just love to listen to and are familiar with.