The room is in the basement, size about 13 x 21 x 8, dedicated.
Love the sound of the Mastersound/Triangle combo, wife says it has "soul". Huge soundstage and lots of dynamics too, thanks to bi-amping, and insertion of Zero Autoformers improved a lot bass control and definition.
Found out most of my fun comes from vinyl, so I recently added a 2nd tonearm to the HRX with a custom armboard, I know a turntable with provision for multiple arm mounting would be better, but for the time being this will do.
The high compliance VdH Colibri is on the low mass JMW 12.6, and is amplified by the Lehmann Silver Cube into a line input of the HP100, the low compliance Phase Tech P3-G is on the high mass Ikeda, and, through the Yamamoto SUT goes into the phono input of the HP100, that's been modified by Hovland to accept external plugs for cart loading, so I can play with 2 different approaches to vinyl reproduction, the european and the japanese.
Postscript- Cpatz, I apologize. Sophia is indeed selling Shuguang 845 tubes now. Those are not branded "Sophia Electric" as their new 845's will be this spring. The 845's they sell from Shuguang now are at a significant markup- you can find the same 845B tubes for as little as 149/pr, far less than the 225/pr Sophia charges. Finally, they state the the Shuguangs are RCA replicas. I think if you read Ed Sawyer's treatise on 845 tubes, you'll see that these are actually replicas of the old Amperex 845's. Sophia's new 845, not yet available, is supposed to be an RCA replica, and RCA was the "gold standard" for these tubes.
The Sophia tubes do not come from Shuguang. They're from a different Chinese manufacturer- at least their previous stock was. I'll have to check to get the name. I would expect the Sophia tubes to be substantially more expensive than the Shuguang tubes, on the order of 400 or so per pair, perhaps more. When talking drivers, I asked the Sophia people- they suggested using their 300B Princess tubes as drivers. Don't know that this would work without a significant change to the amp's circuitry. For what it's worth, and I don't know how this will translate to their upcoming 845 stock, but their 300B Princess tubes were very well received. Again, watch it with the 845M's- I'm pretty certain that there's a plate voltage issue. I'd check with MastersounD before installing those tubes on your 845 monos.
Can't speak for Cpatz, but I use Shuguang 845B's with my MastersounD. That's about all there is out there. The KR's are not recommeded for the MastersounD's- something about the plate voltage, I believe. You can find NOS RCA 845's, but expect to pay about 1000/pair. The new Sophia Electric 845's are due out this spring- they're based on the old RCA design, while the Shuguangs are based on the old Amperex design. I think the driver tubes on my Compact 845 are different from the ones on the monoblocks. I use NOS RCA JAN VT-31's- they're the grey bottle tubes. Quite nice. A friend who has a Reference 845 uses Bendix 6922's for his drivers, and he absolutely loves them. With the 845's, we're all kind of stuck with the Chinese made tubes for now, but the Shuguangs are pretty solid, especially the 845B's. Avoid the 845M's made by Shuguang- again, an issue with the plate voltage.
I love the Compact 845. Great amp. My first experience with tubes was a modded and rebuilt Golden Tube SE-40, and I loved it. Replaced a Jeff Rowland amp with it. The person who sold me the Aliantes recommended trying a quality tube amp, and at that very time, the Compact 845 came up for sale. Great amp, very detailed, and as I'm sure you know well, they have tremendous headroom. Just got the Ayon CD5 today. Mastersound is apparently bringing some new products to the States. Waiting anxiously to see what they are. Their products definitely fly way under the radar in this country. Some people are leery of buying amps run off the 845 tube. They can be hard to get, but you can find them. I got two pairs of 845B's recently, and Sophia Electric is coming out with a new 845- modeled on the classic RCA 845- this spring.
