Description

My listening space. Comments and constructive suggestions welcome

It's in the basement and it doubles as the television room but the wife lets me sort of have my way down here.

The rig won't be changing much for awhile, student loan payments are eating up all of my stereo money I've tried to squeeze every last bit out of performance that I can from what I have. You'll see various tweaks in my system,

- vibrapods under the amp, dac, phone pre and power conditioner

- speakers spiked to 1/2 marble tile because the carpet was so damn thick

- rack about 12" behind speakers, TV about 15" back

- Quick and Dirty bass traps in the corners next to the listening position

Some real diy bass traps are on my "to do" list this summer, as well as a couple more acoustic panels behind the couch. Unfortunately there's no room to pull the couch off of the back wall

All in all I enjoy the system, its reasonably well balanced, decent sound stage, imaging is fairly good as well.

I'm right on 10' back from the speaker plane, tweeter to tweeter they are 8.5'

They're about 3' from the back wall and several more from any sidewalls. I've tweaked the positioning quite a bit and right now they are as wide as they can go with a slight toe-in for focus.
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Components Toggle details

    • Rega P1
    Rega P1 with glass platter upgrade
    • Ortofon 2m Red
    Upgraded cart
    • Cambridge Audio 540p Phono Pre
    Phone pre from Cambridge Audio
    • Tascam DA-20 DAT
    Home DAT deck used to play back my live tapes made from the mid to late 90's.
    • Denon 2930ci
    Redbook, DVD-A and SACD.
    • Bel Canto Design DAC-2
    24/192 upsampling DAC
    • SIlver clad mil-spec custom interconnects
    Custom silver-clad interconnects
    • Antique Sound Labs AQ-1003
    30wpc Class A push-pull amp. Currently running =C= cryoed el-34's and JJ ecc82s
    • SIlver clad mil-spec custom speaker cables
    bi-wireable speaker cables
    • Paradigm Paradigm PDR-8
    8 inch subwoofer
    • B&W B&W 602.5 sIII
    B&W 602 in a floor standing model
    • Furutech ETP-60
    Furutech power conditioner
    • Pangea Power Cords
    14ga on DAC and Denon 9ga on amp
    • Vibrapods vibration control
    Under amp, dac, phono pre and power conditioner
    • ATS Acoustic Panels 24
    3 total, 2 more to be ordered

Comments 12

how do your 602.5's handle the tube power? am I reading correctly that you have 30W in your amp?

I have the 602.5's and have been curious/researching tube amps. have you used a SS amp prior? any thoughts between the two?

chriswilson

Nice......

adam18

Owner
System edited: Some minor changes (power cords, new cart, tweaks) and shots of the new room.

trm

Owner
System edited: Moved into a new place, pictures to follow. Upgraded my cartridge. Next steps are wall treatments and isolation for the phono pre, cdp and dax

trm

Owner
Thanks Chashmal - I'll look into those for sure!

trm

My listening space is a similar in size to your place. You might want to check out the Tetra 205's. They integrate better in my small space than anything I have ever heard.

chashmal

Owner
Thanks for the responses folks.

I've played with my speaker/sub placement a bit and am getting a nice big soundstage with much better imaging. I moved the sub to dead center for starters. I moved the speakers a touch wider and all but eliminated the toe-in.

trm

Nice system, there is magic in tubes to be sure. Getting back into lp's is fun. I too just picked up a cambrigde phono amp and took out my old turntable which I have not played in ten years. It is close to 29 years old. The sound, pretty darn good. Have fun with your very nice components. Glen

glenfihi

You have made wise choices in your components. This set up no doubt is very musical sounding. Wish you many,many years of joy with this hobby.

audiofrik

Owner
System edited: See my update from 2/1/2008

trm

I wouldn't say this isn't hih end. Compared to what most people use to listen to music in the home this is orders of magnitude better. Keep on enjoying!

sdatch

High end is in the eye of the beholder! I'm starting to realize that even though some people feel it is necessary to get the most expensive components because they are bullet proof and have gold-plated everything, you don't need that for excellent sound. If your system does it for you, then you're there!

Great job on the system, looks like a lot of fun to listen to.

-Dusty

heyitsmedusty

Showing all 12 posts