Jacques Fournier's high end on a budget in West Virginia.
[email protected] This system is used for near field listening in my dedicated media room.
The room also serves as a home theater which explains the Athena Technologies speakers surrounding the TV.
Although I used the bargain basement shopping method for most of it, this is not what I would consider a low-end system. Those I invite to listen are amazed at what they hear. I pre-mastered a friend's album using this system. Check out Will Landrum Living Digits.
Swapped out the Adcom Amp and Sonographe Preamp in 2020 for a Marantz PM8005 integrated amp. I'll never go back. Integrated Amps today are truly amazing. The Focal Cobalt S speakers were rated Stereophile class B restricted low range for three years running and I really love how they "disappear".
I've audition many systems with high priced gear but without the proper set up room treatment and component matching they can't touch this system for sound staging and clarity. Moreover, nothing disappears like a monitor speaker.
My basement listening room is room is 20X17 and very quite since there are no windows. My noise floor is very low in this room and I'm able to get up to 96db of clean sound down to 40Hz from my listening position which is 7 feet from the speakers. I've made extensive use of bass traps and wall and ceiling treatments to get that flat response. I have DIY bass trap panels in the back of the room and foam traps in the front.
The Goldring TT is modified quite a bit because I'm a Vinyl junkie. End stub, counter weight, platter and mat, Vibrapods, and a home built isolation platform turned a $400.00 TT into a $2k TT.
As for my vinyl collection, 2,000 titles and counting and over 3,000 CD's.
My CD Player is a very well built Denon DCM-777. Oddly it retailed for $777.00 back in the 90's but I got it for $75.00 on ebay. Nice buy and very good sound thanks to this overbuilt machine. They don't make them like this anymore.
The tape deck is rarely used. I like to copy vinyl to it and bring the recording up to my PC to transcribe to my digital library for parties upstairs or music out on the patio. I use CoolEdit pro to clean up the sound and the end result is actually pretty good. For less serious listening of course.
REL Q108MkII sub-woofers in each corner behind the mains for the last octave really does blend in well with the Focals.
REL Q201E added in 2020 for the rear to further smooth out the lower octaves.
