Using the great room which is centrally located between the floors and
where, certainly in the late hours the family gathers, I felt this place
is ideal spot where one enjoys music, as background or for more serious
listening if the wife is not on the piano.
The custom made
cabinet, designed for my AV needs in the mid 90s and placed directly
against the wall, makes any change cumbersome so most tests are done in
the HT system. The allocated space for audio gear is also limited,
causing over crowding, certainly after the installments of the mono
blocks.
Looking at modern and aesthetically pleasing integrated like the Devialet d-premier, one wonders if less is more.
The core data:
Room: located at mezzanine level, measuring 21' x 30' with a half
sloping cathedral ceiling (from 7' up to 14') and an open staircase to
the 1st and 2nd floor. Hard wood floor; two ASC bass traps are setup as
well as heavy curtains in lieu of too visible room treatments.
Application: 2 channel only and likely to remain so.
Music genres: mainly Classical (mostly strings and vocals), modern Jazz, some classic rock
System/history:
After going through the bulk of full range speakers, some on
Stereophile's top list within my budget, I concluded that I preferred
time and phase aligned designs with soft dome tweeters and settled, for
now, on a pair of Duntech Sovereign 2001s that complemented two other
Dunlavy designed speakers. My favorites being the 2001s and the Black
Knights, a dance of two.
Amplification was changed from ARC,
Krell to Conrad Johnson. Their gold plating fronts "forced" me to stay
in their family so I gradually moved up the chain, from tubes to solid
state and now back to tubes. Now I am a happy camper with these LP140s.
The two above mentioned categories are pretty important and, IMHO,
apart from room acoustics, the prime determinants as one does not know
which sound one likes and only frequent visits to concerts, show rooms,
classified sites and the occasional sanity checks ensure one is still on
the right track and within a (somewhat) justifiable budget.
As
for source, I intentionally and emotionally detached the analogue part
as I am sure digital is closing the gap (there is still a gap) and it is
so much easier to shift through the albums and tracks on your mobile
device or whatnot without the addition of plops and cracks each time.
Hence I have canned most of my CDs onto FLAC files and my collection of
hirez digital is growing by the day.
As expected, electronics
have their quantum leaps - and painfully experienced as I sold the then
ground breaking high end receivers of the dot com era for cents on the
dollar in the sobering up years of the dot bust - I remain on the
outlook for the next DAC "du jour" and expect to have found a new love
when I have more DSD files than the FLAC files on my server. The AMR
DP-777 does a tremendous job, acting a pre and DAC. No DSD yet as hirez
24/192k files serve me very well.
Isolation is an interesting
discipline where one needs to experiment a lot. Luckily, changing
footers is easier for my back than swapping amps (except class D ones)
or, heavens forbid, replacing heavy speakers. It is also a very mature
industry segment with a finite number of players, unlike the next
category. The European Cherry cabinet is far from ideal so I need to
address the resonance issue some day.
Finding suitable cables,
let's start with interconnects and speaker cables, is an adventure that
requires patience and tenacity. After reaching the first important
relays in this marathon quest for sound, I ran a bit out of power but
retained a good amount of brands for the short list and settled on
Audience, NordOst and Purist Audio Design in alphabetical order. I have
tried full looms of NordOst and Audience but have not detected any
special magic.
Adding High Fidelity Cables was very beneficial, not to my wallet though. Almost full loom HFC from digital, over IC to SC.
Power and power conditioning has really made me go bonkers as they do
make significant difference so I have spent the last year searching for
the nirvana/greener grass, first with a set budget until I lost my mind.
It is not an easy undertaking: the diverse approach in type and
composition of conductors, isolation, shielding, magnetic control, etc;
the fact that PC are system dependent, and lastly that investment of a
full loom of cables is not a trivial matter. I needed a firm nudge from
my better half and a look in the mirror to halt the craziness, it did
not. This contagious disease has not stopped and probably won't. My
latest change of IC and SC to High Fidelity Cables has probably put a
damper on future experiments in this area, for one the budget is pretty
much gone and for the other these HFC are game changers that took my
system up a big notch.
As for power conditioning, I will
probably add a power regen unit but am now very happy with my Adept
Response 12TS, upgraded from the non teflon version.
My short
write up is incomplete but I could not pass the opportunity to post my
system on a date like 11-12-13 so the "controlled" insanity will go on.
Thanks in advance for all your comments! Just don't forget to listen to the music.
