@jadislover
Don’t get me wrong.....Rega makes very musical gears at affordable price points.
If you want to stick with using CD player at least you should upgrade to Rega Saturn-R CD player currently retails for $3k here in the US. I know it’s 3x as much as the Apollo but the Saturn-R is a step up sonically from the Apollo. If you could swing for $10k or $11k for the Rega Isis CD player that would be even better if you have the budget for that. Last year I went to listen to the Rega Isis Valve CD player paired with the Rega Osiris integrated amp ($10k) on the Focal Sopra 2 and they sounded fabulous together. I’ve also heard this same Rega combo on different speakers : PMC, Vienna Acoustics Mozart Grand and they performed marvelous. Rega makes really good integrated amps as well as turntables especially for the money.
In regards to a Chord Qutest DAC, I’ve never heard the Qutest but I have heard the Chord Dave DAC ($10k) paired with some Naim streamer in all Naim setup using Naim preamp and power amp on some higher end PMC speakers (can’t remember the model). They were awesome. Chord Dave DAC is very good but pricey very musical & fluid imo and sonically will be a huge step up from the Qutest DAC.
Also your Marantz CD transport isn’t very good imo. Transport is very important. You need to get a very good quality CD transport if you want to stick with playing CD. Bad transport has lots of jitter. Jitter is the biggest enemy in digital audio front end source. It has significant negative impact on SQ no matter how good your DAC is. I advise you to get better transport and get a good quality digital interconnect. Great transport will make huge difference in SQ, musicality, tonal accuracy, presentation, etc etc.
You should also consider getting a good quality digital streamer/music streamer/network audio player such as Naim DS or Linn DS or Lumin, etc so you can download high resolution PCM or DSD materials and so you aren’t limited to CD quality (16/44.1). All music streamers/network audio players come with a built-in Tidal streaming app and are usually Roon ready. Tidal Hifi is a lossless (CD quality 16/44.1) music streaming service it uses FLAC compression algorithm whereas Spotify Premium uses MP3 compression and is lossy. Tidal Hifi is way better than Spotify Premium. Don’t know if you have access to Tidal music streaming service in Indonesia. Recently Tidal has released Tidal Master that enables us to stream hi-rez materials using MQA algorithm. But your DAC has to be able to decode and support MQA. I’m sure you’ve heard of MQA before?
Regarding speaker upgrade, I will add DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O 96 to your list. They will pair well with your Jadis integrated amp. The Vienna, Harbeth, Spendor & ProAc are awesome too.
Don’t get me wrong.....Rega makes very musical gears at affordable price points.
If you want to stick with using CD player at least you should upgrade to Rega Saturn-R CD player currently retails for $3k here in the US. I know it’s 3x as much as the Apollo but the Saturn-R is a step up sonically from the Apollo. If you could swing for $10k or $11k for the Rega Isis CD player that would be even better if you have the budget for that. Last year I went to listen to the Rega Isis Valve CD player paired with the Rega Osiris integrated amp ($10k) on the Focal Sopra 2 and they sounded fabulous together. I’ve also heard this same Rega combo on different speakers : PMC, Vienna Acoustics Mozart Grand and they performed marvelous. Rega makes really good integrated amps as well as turntables especially for the money.
In regards to a Chord Qutest DAC, I’ve never heard the Qutest but I have heard the Chord Dave DAC ($10k) paired with some Naim streamer in all Naim setup using Naim preamp and power amp on some higher end PMC speakers (can’t remember the model). They were awesome. Chord Dave DAC is very good but pricey very musical & fluid imo and sonically will be a huge step up from the Qutest DAC.
Also your Marantz CD transport isn’t very good imo. Transport is very important. You need to get a very good quality CD transport if you want to stick with playing CD. Bad transport has lots of jitter. Jitter is the biggest enemy in digital audio front end source. It has significant negative impact on SQ no matter how good your DAC is. I advise you to get better transport and get a good quality digital interconnect. Great transport will make huge difference in SQ, musicality, tonal accuracy, presentation, etc etc.
You should also consider getting a good quality digital streamer/music streamer/network audio player such as Naim DS or Linn DS or Lumin, etc so you can download high resolution PCM or DSD materials and so you aren’t limited to CD quality (16/44.1). All music streamers/network audio players come with a built-in Tidal streaming app and are usually Roon ready. Tidal Hifi is a lossless (CD quality 16/44.1) music streaming service it uses FLAC compression algorithm whereas Spotify Premium uses MP3 compression and is lossy. Tidal Hifi is way better than Spotify Premium. Don’t know if you have access to Tidal music streaming service in Indonesia. Recently Tidal has released Tidal Master that enables us to stream hi-rez materials using MQA algorithm. But your DAC has to be able to decode and support MQA. I’m sure you’ve heard of MQA before?
Regarding speaker upgrade, I will add DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O 96 to your list. They will pair well with your Jadis integrated amp. The Vienna, Harbeth, Spendor & ProAc are awesome too.

