In need of advice. I have been into audio for about 10 yrs and I read all the audio mags(stereophile,audio,what hifi) I just can't make a dicission in reguards to anything. That is why I have such a low budget system plus I couldn't justify spending a lot of money on something I wasn't sure would please me. I , chose to go with Adcom because it's afordable and the audio stores always spoke highly of Adcom and the research I did on Adcom components made me feel confident about them. My complaints are that the music seems closed in ,too bright, and to harsh for my sensitive ears. Any advice on what I should upgrade next would be appreciated. I haven't been to this website in a while but i would like to add a couple of things. I had auditioned a Acurus RL11 pre-amp several years back. I didn't like it because i couldn't handl'e the forwardness it seems to produce.
After reading all the reviews at audio review i thought that it might be to truthful and that either my front end or amp(the piece of crap that it was)was the problem and that if i changed one of these i would be very happy with the Acurus. At that point i got very frustrated because I didn't have the money to buy a new amp or cd player. If anyone has any advice on what i should do next your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
I havent been to this part of audiogon in about 4-5yrs but I just purchased a Rotel Int. amp and I am displeased with the sound. I was reading reviews for it on audioreview and saw one review that said the sound seemed distorted at anything above a fourth of the way up on the volume. This is one thing I noticed too. It also seems to have a slighty to moderately forward presentation.Not as ear fatiguing as the acurus RL-11 but enough to notice.
Enough of me complaining, this is what I do want. I want good tight bass, mabye slighty sweet treble,a noticable midrange without being too noticable. It can't be lean or thin sounding and it can't do what the rotel does when I turn up the volume. Also I'd prefer not to get anything with tubes.
I listen to all sorts of music with rock being primary although I do like some classical.
My budget is $600 and $900. Ive been looking at the Sim i5080 for a few days now. Some people say the MFA3 or 3.2 is a good choice too. Also the Plinius(various different models) but I don't think those are in my budget. Anyways any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Either that, or get a great vintage tube preamp. If you don't need remote, there are killer deals ($400 or less) on Sonic Frontiers SFL-1's out there, and that is a great upgrade. Or a Melos SHA-Gold (probably set you back 700 or so) -- which has remote. I've owned both of these, and they are tremendous sounding pieces of equipment. I've always run them with solid state amps and they really smooth out the sound.
