D220 or D210?

[David A]

Well, here in Australia a 210 costs $18k and a 220 costs $15K so the 210 is more expensive and you have no future upgrade path whereas with a 220 you can later move up to a 440 if you want or need to. I've got a 140 so my next step up is also a choice between a 210 and a 220. For me  that's a choice between another 210 at $9K and the 220 at $15K less whatever I can get for my current 140. I'd be leaning towards the 220 if I were to upgrade, just for the future upgrade path.

In terms of power 10W will be inaudible, a mere fraction of a dB at peak volume so if power itself is your concern then save money and go for the 220. On the other hand the dual monos bring other sound improvements which you may be chasing and if that's the case then the higher cost of the 210 may be justified, especially if you think you won't need more power down the track.

I don't think one is clearly better than the other, I think both would offer you improvements but they'd be slightly better improvements. If the difference in price isn't a deciding factor you should get a bit more refined sound in some ways from the 210 while the 220 offers a saving in cost plus an upgrade path. It's your money so what is more important to you?

I’m in somewhat of a dilemma myself with a choice of starting out with a 140 pro with a view of going to 210 pro or just getting a 220 pro and be done with it. I don’t use any of the additional inputs the 220 pro offers so it’ll be just purely for the bump up in power. I’m driving Focal Diablo Utopias in a fairly small listening space of 4x3.5m.

I'm driving a pair of Focal Sopra 2s with a 140 in a room around 30 sd. m. in floor area, twice the size of your room. My room has 2 wide archway entrances, one from a hallway and one from a large open plan adjoining kitchen/dining/living area. The 140 delivers all the power I need for the Sopras which are 2 dB more sensitive than your Diablos. Before I upgraded to the Sopras, I was using Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs. a 2 way standpoint like your Diablos, and 4 dB less sensitive than the Diablos, and I had all the power I needed for them. Bear in mind that "all the power you need" doesn't always mean "all the power you want" but at present I've no desire for a bigger amp than the 14-. In a room the size of yours I'd be thinking of sticking with the 140 rather than an amp upgrade.

If you want to spend money on an upgrade, and which one of us here doesn't want to  :-) . then I'd be looking at some good acoustic room treatment first. For the price of a 140 you can get some very good bass traps and a couple of panels for the front wall and the area behind your listening position and I think you'd find that you'd get a bigger improvement than the amp upgrade would deliver. 

In my experience most people are only getting about two thirds of the sound quality their system is capable of delivering. That other third is being lost because of room acoustics, poor setup, and problems with vibration and power quality but the tendency is to look at equipment upgrades for improvement. Yes, you can get an improvement with an equipment upgrade but change the amp and you'll still be losing as much sound quality from those environmental factors I just mentioned as you are now. On top of that, equipment tends to have a short to medium life span for us as new models get released and we get tempted to upgrade the gear once again. Things like acoustic treatment just keep working as effectively as they always did for much longer time frames than components tend to survive in our systems. They just keep on delivering and their effect becomes even more noticeable as you improve components.

If your room doesn't have acoustic treatment and you can treat it (it can be harder to do in a living room if you have spousal approval issues to deal with), then I'd look at treating the room before upgrading the amp. When it comes to acoustic treatments I'd look at bass traps and panels which are free standing rather than ones which have to be permanently mounted on the walls. If they're free standing you can adjust their position easily to compensate for things like moving the speakers or listening position and you can take them with you if you move house.