Inhave a friend who changed his speakers fronts and center from Salk to Focals. He went with Sopra 2 and matching center.
When he packed up the Salks he moved the big amp for the fronts and center to between them from the side rack and changed monster to Panamax on the center stage as well. He also bought shorter blue jeans speaker cables, xlr’s and some non stock mower cables. Nothing fancy just Amazon Chinese 10ga nicer than stock. The rest of his system is 5 year old Marantz processor and sunfire amps. Again not low end and he knows what he is doing. He also have a Rythmik dual 15” sub.
Now that he had this new set up ready he got the new Focals. Played with it for weeks trying to find the right spot and sound stage. Well that never happened. He was super disappointed in the sound. To the point he did not want to even use the room. He has heard my Focals so it was not that he did not like them.
Well last week during the Xmas east coast storm he lost power for over 5 hours. A few days later he got some new tunes he really wanted to hear in his room. Mostly the bass hits as that was still working for him. It was the mids/highs that were not having a good 3D soundstage. Well after the outage poof soundstage to die for.
The only other detail I can put in is that he used iDevices that shut power off to his amp and subwoofer when not in use
His system is pretty simple. Uses Marantz with music on USB thumb drive and Helos app to control. Then just to amp and sub for music.