This is my first real 2 channel system. I have worked for about a year and a half setting it up. I have taken advise and ideas from many people on Audiogon, as well as my extremely knowledgable dad. We have worked together to make this sound extremely well for the amount of money I have in it. My favorite part of the system is the use of my Ibook as a music server. I have a 160gb hard drive with all my music saved in Apple Lossless Format, which I stream digitally to an Airport Express, and convert with a Mucical Fidelity X-DAC. The sound is as close to cd quality I have heard and the convience factor is unmatched. The sound is very dynamic, very open and quite clean. The Wharfedales image beautifully and the Krell makes them just enjoyable to listen to. I think I am pretty much done for right now, but I welcome all comments and suggestions.
Bought this off Ebay, the previous owner did a ton of upgrades, the specs are more like the sep-1se. The combination of this and the Krell is better than I expected
Krell KSA-200
Thanks to a very generous neighbor, this has become the back bone to my system. Never realized how good and amp can sound
Wharfedale MFM-5
A high school graduation present to myself. AB'd these with the B&W CDM9's and they sound almost as good.
AudioQuest Ruby
Great Cables. Made a huge diffrence
Apple 20 gig Ipod
This one piece has changed the way I listen to music more than anything else. I would absolutely never trade this for anything.
Apple Airport Express
Stream music digitally to the Musical Fidelity X-DAC. The most recent addition to my system
If you are streaming Apple Lossless, the sound should actually be BETTER than CD quality, for the reason that the music is stored on the hard drive, then read into RAM, which acts as a digital buffer and should eliminate jitter-based problems. There will be jitter re-introduced into the chain where the airport express is connected through the toslink cable into the X-DAC (ie, reflection of the digital signal back within the cable could cause timing errors). The solution? You could upgrade your DAC to a newer model which is relatively immune to transport and cable introduced jitter, like the to the Benchmark DAC ($995) or to the new X-DACv3 ($999, or in a special package deal with the X-PSUv3 and X-10v3, $1199). I bet you'll have BETTER than CD quality! Not that 1k is peanuts, but pretty cheap compared to the cost of the Krell.
