upgrade is back

[David A]

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On the other hand have Roon now and everything just works perfectly and honestly I can’t even imagine things sounding much better. Everything just well from ergonomics standpoint as well. I just don’t see what I will gain for 3500 euro. I won’t sell mine so 2nd hand value don’t mean much and infact I may lose out if I upgrade as the upgrade will not 3500 to the 2nd hand price no matter what anyone says. 

I bet 500 in room treatments will go a lot further than 20 Watts or core infinity.
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I bought an Expert 130 Pro last year before the introduction of the CI board and it received the CI upgrade (free to Expert Pro owners) earlier this year. Like you I use Roon and Roon worked perfectly for me before the upgrade and just as perfectly after the upgrade but I did get an improvement in sound quality with the upgrade which doesn't involve just the CI board but also a new operating system and firmware. I believe the improvements I got are partly hardware related and partly software related. I'm impressed by that improvement and since it was free it was definitely value for money. Whether you think the improvement you will get by going from a 200 to a 220 which involves a bit more than was involved in my upgrade is going to be worth the cost of that upgrade is another thing and cost benefit assessments are personal, no one can make that assessment for you. I would recommend taking the opportunity to listen to a 250 with the CI upgrade before making your choice.

My system is in a room with acoustic treatments (see my signature). Acoustic room treatments can make a big difference but there are a lot of different treatments out there and not all of them deliver on their claims nor do all offer the same value for money. I don't know where you are or whether your "500" referred to US dollars, UK pounds, or Euros but I'm in Australia and $500 US is currently around $700 Australian, 500 US pounds is closer to $900-1000 Australian, and 500 Euros is around $750 Australian. Here in Australia we don't have the range of treatments available overseas and our prices are dearer than the overseas prices based on a straight currency rate conversion. I can tell you that the Australian equivalent of whatever your "500" is would definitely not buy me anything in room treatment which would go close to what the treatments I have are delivering. It would not even buy me one of the 4 bass traps I have in my room (1 in each corner) and bass traps are probably the most important part of room treatment for most rooms. Without knowing anything about your room I can't say how much treatment you would require to deliver an improvement you would consider reasonable but I can tell you that the cost of the room treatment in my room was more than the cost of upgrading your 200 to a 220. I can also say that treating my room delivered a bigger improvement than the CI upgrade for my 130 did BUT it took a lot of experimentation and time to find the best arrangement for that treatment in my room. Room treatment is likely to be a lot more expensive than you think if you want a really good improvement and getting that improvement may be a little more difficult than you think. If you want to add room treatment there is one piece of advice I will give you. If you are going to treat first reflection points then I would recommend getting treatments which are moveable because if you change the speaker locations or the listening position at any time, the location of the reflection points is going to change and that creates problems if you have used treatments which are glued or otherwise physically attached to the walls as many of the available treatment products must be. The ideal placement for bass traps is in the corners and corners don't move but the location of first reflection points depends on the location of the speakers and listening position and they will move if you change the location of the speakers or listening position. If you can't move the treatments to the new reflection point locations then not only will those treatments become less effective but the sound you get may become worse.

I won't dispute your assessment that the amp upgrade may not be value for money to you but I will say that I think you won't get what you think you can get for 500 spent on room treatments, whatever your currency is.