I listen mostly to vinyl. Have collected since 1960's with emphasis on chamber music, piano, 18th C. to early 20th cent. This system, assembled over years, has lots of timbral accuracy, great sound staging and an intimate presence: live musicians playing music in a real hall or space.
Phono Equalizer with a Shelter 411T step up transformer upstream for MY Sonic Lab cartridge with 0.3 mV output.
Air Tight ATM-1
37 Wpc EL34 push pull amp
Brodmann Acoustics F1
Viennese speaker with a refined presence, particularly for acoustic instruments, especially piano. They have been piano makers for many generations, reputed to have made an instrument for Beethoven. Of yeah, I know, he was deaf! HA, HA.
Naim Audio CD-3.5
Entry level Naim CD player with additional flatcap PS.
Singlepower Extreme Slam
Headphone amp
AKG K701
Headphones
J.A. Michell Orbe SE
Turntable with speed control
SME Series IV Tonearm
MY Sonic Lab Cartridge Ultra Eminent Bc
High compliance, semi-line contact with 0.3mV output.
I think we would agree on the necessities of an audio system: it has to make a piano sound believable. People who talk about female vocal being the ultimate criteria for judging a system just don't know that much about music in my opinion. Human voice is probably the easiest thing to get convincingly right on a recording and playback system. The piano however with its hundreds of pounds of wood and metal, and its strings and overtones, make it a far greater challenge. The fact that you actually play piano is I am sure an asset for you in assembling your audio playback system. If it does piano right, then everything else is easy.
I will look into borrowing a digital camera in order to post some photos of my system.
