Over 40 years of assembling systems. I have finally achieved what I’ve desired since the start. This system is amazing at what it can do, the energy that it produces, the soundstage is wide, deep and tall, from the smallest detail to the tight solid bass, every note is detailed with texture. The silence within the music is mind blowing, never imagined how black the background could be to reveal every little nuance in the recording. It’s been a fun ride to this point and now I can listen to the music as well as the system.
The room was built for such a system. The walls are over one foot thick with heavy insulation in between them. Double 2”x6” walls on the interior and exterior of the room. I doubled up two sheets of 5/8” drywall that is screwed and glued to the wall studs. The subfloor is raised off of the main floor 1 1/2” and has a dense foam padding between the riser boards and the 3/4” plywood. I left a one inch gap between the floor and the walls so the floor does not make any contact with the walls. There is one window in the room but I have two windows in place, one in the interior wall and one in the exterior wall, this helps keep out outside noise. The walls are treated with rugs and curtains. I installed a sub panel in which I have four dedicated circuits but I’m only using two at the moment. The Powercell SX and the Powercell 10 se mkll are plugged into their own Synergistic Research purple duplex that are on their own circuits. All fed by 10 gauge wiring with one of the four circuits being fed by an 8 gauge wire, just in case I decide to get a little crazy with the power requirements.
A little about the system setup. I tried taking advantage of the Synergistic Research SRX and Galileo Discovery power cables so that every piece would benefit from them. The Powercell SX(w/the SRX power cable) feeds the cd player, preamp and dvd player and the Powercell 10 se mkll(has the Galileo Discovery power cable feeding it) feeds the amps. This setup yields the best performance I’ve heard from the system. I am a firm believer of Synergistic Research products and have always had great success with every product of theirs that I’ve installed. I credit the SR products for giving me the blackest background noise.
It’s a dream system that I love to listen to. I feel there are no weaknesses to this system and I can easily see myself listening to this system for a long time to come.
The wall treatments are basically hallway runners and door mats. There is a dense foam rubber backing and they’re about 3/4” thick. They help tremendously. They help Absorb wall vibrations and high frequency reflections. I also have larger decorative carpeting on the back wall.
Upgrade bug bit me…removed from the rack, the Audio Research Ref 6se and the Mcintosh mc1.2kw’s, replaced by Merrill Audio Element 118 mono blocks and the new Rose QX preamp. I have no regrets. Merrill Audio is just on a whole different level. Now I get to learn my music collection all over again ; )
Also upgraded from the Synergistic Research euphoria sx power cables to the Galileo UEF power cables for the amps and preamp. Wow!
These upgrades have elevated the system to a much higher level. Hard to turn back now. Love the improvements.
Jacqueflash, thanks for you comment. The maestros are toed in by about 3 degrees. This gives a nice wide 3d soundstage. Toeing them in any further creates more of a central image that’s not so desirable.
Steakster,
Thanks for your comment. Synergistic Research products are absolutely amazing and have always made great improvements in any system I’ve introduced them into. The higher up the chain you go the better it gets. Just sayin
Congratulations! Your arduous audio journey has reached a wonderful destination. Time to sit back and enjoy. 😎 My modest system has almost a full loom of Synergistic Research Atmosphere cabling - after trying several other brands. Somehow SR makes the listening experience more immersive. The music kind of floats in the air.
Wonderful listening space. Looks very inviting, and well curated. No doubt the music is immersive. If you don’t mind me asking, is there much toe-in to the Maestros? I have the Electra 1028s (similar driver configuration) and have them slightly angled, maybe 10 degrees. I find the soundstage to be at its best in this position, bringing a three-dimensional quality to the sound. Just curious about your experience. Enjoy your excellent system.
I want to thank everyone for their kind comments and I’ll try to respond each of them.
-Ghdprentice: thanks for your kind words. It is a great feeling when all the time and investment pays off. I’d gladly swap my amps for your amps from your main system tho. ; )
-Sunshdw: your comment has me thinking maybe I just need bigger speakers ; )
-Cohicks4: Thanks for your kind words. Each component was carefully considered and sought out when I was in the market for each piece. Sorry to disappoint any TT fans out there but this just isn’t the proper setup for a TT. I’m thinking of building a second system in the bedroom that I might build an analog system to entertain vinyl. I spend a considerable amount of time in this room with no regrets. The outside world is a lil crazy and this is my escape from it all.
-tak1: thanks for your enthusiastic comment. It’s an awesome room even when I’m not listening to music the room is dead silent and it’s a great escape from the outside world.
-baylinor: the monkeys are absolutely cool and keep things rocking, thanks.
-vinylgroove: the jammin monkey band absolutely helps with the soundstage but not quite so much with the detail. They’re not too concerned about the tuning of their instruments ; )
-gaylelee60: thanks for your comment. I’ve never really had any noticeable issues with the ceiling. The ceiling has a textured surface and a few coats of a dull flat white paint. If anything I notice the soundstage opens up about 6 foot to the left of the left channel and only about 3 feet to the right of the right channel. I sit slightly off axes to correct for this but it doesn’t help that the room opens up to 14’ wide on the left just in front of the left speaker, I feel this assist the soundstage more to the left side. The Focal maestro’s also help since the midrange driver is pointed downward towards the listening position and not straight out into the room causing reflection off of the ceiling. The speakers are tipped 3 degrees forward to help aim the tweeters slightly downward towards the listening position as well, more so just due to the size of the maestro’s.
Really beautiful set-up but one question , how do you address the slope of your ceiling ? Perhaps it makes no difference in your room but I pretty much have always had to address ceiling reflections with " clouds " and I would expect this to be far more difficult with a sloped ceiling .
