This is the system I have worked for 25 years to build. It is still going through changes although I'm finished for now. My room is 20x22ft and the roof slants up from 9ft to 12ft. There have been some challenges due to the fireplace and the windows but have been worked out. The real challenge has been compromises that my spouse can live with. That and the fact that stereo geeks like to change things. Am I right? My wife hates that!
unique solid state amp that sounds like tubes but none of the drawbacks and all of the benefits of solid state and tubes. S - mod and reground scheme and shielding. This without a doubt is the best sounding amp I have ever heard by a long shot. I've heard most of them.
Jolida Fusion preamp
Highly modified preamp with bybee power rails, time line, cryo'd transformer, furutech IEC, and GEC 12at7's, and bugle boy 12ax7's. Balanced input and output. Dueland caps swapped to take the place of clarity esa caps
Tannoy TS-10
A pair of fully balanced 10" 300 watts/ch subwoofers with fully adjustable settings for phase, crossover point, gain, and high and low pass filters. Fast and dynamic. the foundation that good bass gives cannot be overstated.
VPI Industries TNT HR-X
State of the art turntable with the 12.6 inch arm and the SDS speed control. Adjust on-the-fly VTA. New airless suspension. New main bearing and warp ring. I have modified this table and has resulted in a much better sound. I insulated the warp ring from the platter I also put an insulator on the bottom of the record weight. The result has been DRAMATIC!!!
VPI Industries JMW Memorial 12.7
Two arms, 12.6 and 12.7 one with original wire and 12.7 with Valhalla wire
Benz Micro MC Reference
Benz Micro Ref S giant midrange Holographic Smooooth
Tom Evans Audio Design Microgroove plus - X
solid state phono stage that is absolutely silent. with loading adjustment.fantastic performance
Bybee integrated power charger power cord
You won't believe the increase in resolution on front end components and amplification.
JPS Labs Superconductor 3 - 7 meter
Excellent interconnect. XLR or RCA The best I've heard.
UltraSonic Amp stand
Acrylic amp stand beautifully made with awesome brass and stainless steel spikes.
Ultrasonic Acrylic 28 X 21 X 1 platform
Acrylic platform made for my HRX wide enough for my mono arm on the back of the table.
JPS Labs Superconductor 3
The best I have used. They get out of the way of the music.
harmonic technology AC-11
great sounding cord. reasonable price.
Black Diamond Racing cones
Goes under source components and preamps to calm the vibrations.
stillpoints risers
isolation cones
JPS labs superconductor Q
I could not believe the quality of the sound. From this unassuming speaker cable.
audioquest power cord
The synergy thing just makes a huge difference. How much it costs, sometimes, doesn't make a difference. This thing made a huge difference on my CDP. All my other power cords cost over $1000.00. It didn't have that effect on anything else.
apple Ipod classic 160gig
fourth generation
Wadia I-transport
ipod transport- enables me to play hours of any music I want, uninterrupted. This music is competetive to anything out there.
Wells Audio Milo
Best headphone amp I've had and heard.
Arion Audio Pon-tuns
Isolation devices that had an instant benefit increasing resolution and slam to my amps. A+++
Advanced Cable Tech ACT
Very Good power cable at a reasonable price.sourced from wells audio
Electric Bamboo power conditioner
passive device that made a HUGE difference in my system. It solved so many problems that I can't explain it here.
High End sourced from wells audio power strip
a reasonably priced extremely well made power strip with filtering and phase protection . 6 filtered plugs and 4 direct plugs.
music hall 25.3
beat out my cary 306 D/A capabilities. highly modified with jps wire hard soldered connections, bybee devices and power rails, nos sylvania gold pin 6922 tube
Mr Speakers Ether C headphones
planar magnetic , closed back FANTASTIC sounding. the best I have ever owned!
I love this amp. Scott Frankland gave me a few extra goodies inside to make it even better. I also changed the output caps to multicaps and audiocap theta's in parallel. quiet as the grave. and the single most natural sounding amp on the planet.
System edited: new amp, Wells Audio Innamorata. This thing is a giant killer. None of the big boys are going to be happy about this one. Look out pass labs, lamm, martin logan, krell, even the tube amps. This is not supposed to be able to happen. A solid state amp that sounds like tubes. and for a price of 6500.00. Get one before someone dies. first amp to come stock with bybee devices.
I changed out 2 wima mkp 1.0 mF signal caps out of my nuforce amps. I put in a v-cap oimp and bypassed it with a audiocap exotica tft .01 mF . Sounded like crap at first and then after 2 days wow! what a difference. Still just getting better. more bass, more highs, sumptuous midrange. Just can't get enough. I don't like wima caps. everywhere I have removed them things have gotten much better.
I have now changed caps in the speaker crossover network and the signal coupling caps for the amps. I found that the speaker crossover had a major defect. The treble was reverse phase in relation to the bass which messed up everything. I corrected the problem and I have never experienced anything like it before. Too bad $16k speakers have quality control problems. Thank you Dueland, mundorf, V-Cap, and clarity Cap.
I changed 7 more caps , removing the stock jolida caps and replacing them with mundorf silver/oil and mundorf zn. This is a major upgrade. the hard part is figuring out where to put the new caps. they are much larger than the stock caps. You just have to get creative. the best 350 dollars I've ever spent.
II was given a good idea to change the caps for my Jolida preamp. Which I did and I removed the clarity caps and installed the Duelund alexander copper foil paper in oil caps. Making room for the caps was the biggest challenge due to the difference in size between the duelund and the clarity caps. the duelunds are 5 times larger than the clarity caps. The sound change was nothing short of amazing! extension , smoothness, timing , impact, depth of field, low level detail all improved. These are most the economical caps Dueland sells. At 70 dollars a piece for the .47 microfarad, they are around the price of the mundorf silver gold oil caps. The Duelund cast and the ag cast caps are 189.00 ea and 850.00 and higher. From what I read the cast and cast ag caps are much better than the duelund alexander caps, but the same house sound. After hearing the Alexander caps , I am curious about just how much better it could be.
I picked up an electric bamboo power conditioner and 2 high end audio grade power strips and made a significant improvement in the entire music presentation of my system. The clearaudio stradivari and tom evans phono stage are so quiet, I never knew I had listener fatigue until it was gone.
I started hearing a hum in the right speaker that I had never heard before. I decided to change out my 12at7 tubes that were in there due to the hum to see if that was the problem. I put in a new set and the hum disappeared. I also did not like the sound as much. I had in a set of RCA black plate 12at7's. So I decided to go down to my friends store where he could test the tubes and I could find out which ones were bad . After testing the tubes I found out that 3 of the 4 were completely dead and only 1 was minimum good. So I picked up another set of RCA's. Much to the dismay of my pocketbook. I returned and put in the RCA blackplates and once again was the magic that I had but in spades. My next adventure may be GEC's. If I can get it by my wife.
I have found a wonderful power strip that is dirt cheap and works better than the mega buck units that I used to use, I picked them up from audible arts in campbell, ca. I'll put some pictures of them on my system within the next couple of days. I moved some cords around and improved the sound even more. I use the bybee's on my amps and going into the power strips and then the audioquests on my front end components. great balance of resolution, extension and bottom end .Top end is silky smooth.
I auditioned a pair of nuforce se v3 amps like mine but with bybee rails installed inside. All I have to say is WOW!!! The difference was not subtle.I immediately took mine in for the upgrade. The purveyor of audible arts was kind enough to leave me the sample pair until the amps come back and he is breaking them in once they come back. Thats service.
I wanted to make a correction on the maker ofthe Momentum Monoblocks, Dan D'Agostino is the maker not Tim Paravincini. Dan D'Agostino is the original founder of Krell but was pushed out in 2009. Its funny how these very creative peope found these innovative companies and are eventually forced out.
Well after going to the northern california audio show, It takes a while to process everything you see and hear. my pick for the best sound of the show goes to the Wells Audio room. Hands down it did everything well even in a show condition where the rooms weren't a good environment for a sound room. The worst room was definitely the large wilson/spectral room, a huge ballroom that should be better than the rest. It had no setup. the speakers were sitting on casters 40 feet apart up against the wall, toed intoward the seats. It was 2-d at its worst. no coherence or imaging.
I thought the new magico Q1 speakers were good. the salks were pretty awesome but dry.
I loved the looks of the new momentum monoblocks by paravincini or what ever his name is. They were hooked up to the wilsom sasha speakers and they sounded good.
No giant speakers, cost no object type systems that knocked my socks off. I heard the new sony speakers that were nice but at 27k I can think of alot of other speakers I'd try first. the new magico Q1's for starters. Same price . The small monitor dynaudios with the integrated stands were really great too. they were hooked up to the simaudio integrated and I used my Ipod to play some tracks through a wadia I-transport. Just like home! Those are the ones that stand out most in my memory. I heard the weird looking speakers from south africa. I think they were called VIVID. Pretty nice but pricey. nice workmanship.
Wells audio has a single ended, solid state, class a amp that doesn't get real hot. it sounds awesome. 5895.00 140 watts into 8 ohms and 260 inot 4 ohms / built like a tank and beautiful. The phono stage was phenomenal as well. As good as anything I've heard and silent as the grave. beautiful as well. $3295. I think they had a modified music hall dac that had bybee devices that are new. they call them power rails. the cd sounded fantastic. using a vincent cd player as a transport. the modified dac was 2295.00 with a nos 12ax7 in a tube stage. the speakers were the usher mini dancers with the diamond tweets. 4995.00. Dam fine sounding speakers and beautifully built. I think one reason why the system sounded so good was the speakers fit the room well. The whole system sounded sublime, I've never heard a system that good at a show. I wish I could get him to come set my system up. He used a VPI scout table with a dynavector XX-2. That sounded far beyond its price tag. I think the table/arm combo costs 1800.00 and the xx-2 costs 1795.00. I love audio equipment.
hey desalvo, sounds like you hit the nail on the head. All of that equipment starts working the way it should when it gets the power it needs. congrats!!!
I've got an Allnic L3000 showing up at my home tonight. My system was sounding pretty amazing last night listening to Neil Young's "Prarie Wind" on a new copy of 200gram vinyl. After numerous cuts I felt still something amiss. Call it PRAT. Now I just extended my dedicated circuit to the area of the room where my stereo now resides as I did a complete 180 of my system. It was better but... oh ya, the Pass amp is still plugged into the AC regenerator - not good. Moved the Pass amp over to teh raw circuit and OMG. PRAT was back! I played that album a second time only now I couldn't sit down. I made a complete idiot of myself playing air guitar imitating Neil's performance.
Cannot wait to hear how it sounds with an outstanding pre!
I've got an Allnic L3000 showing up at my home tonight. My system was sounding pretty amazing last night listening to Neil Young's "Prarie Wind" on a new copy of 200gram vinyl. After numerous cuts I felt still something amiss. Call it PRAT. Now I just extended my dedicated circuit to the area of the room where my stereo now resides as I did a complete 180 of my system. It was better but... oh ya, the Pass amp is still plugged into the AC regenerator - not good. Moved the Pass amp over to teh raw circuit and OMG. PRAT was back! I played that album a second time only now I couldn't sit down. I made a complete idiot of myself playing air guitar imitating Neil's performance.
Cannot wait to hear how it sounds with an outstanding pre!
Hey Desalvo, This is my favorite preamp. A friend of mine with a very nice system heard mine and sold his preamp and bought one and is very happy with his. He has a pricier system than mine with VTL MB450's and analysis omega speakers. So for a true balanced preamp with 4 balanced inputs and 2 balanced outputs. Its a sceaming deal.
YS Audio has a new preamp the Reference 1. Very interesting piece of gear with no reviews. How are you currently feeling about your Audio Experience A2-SE?
Hey Ray, Its good to hear from you. Its nice to finally hear everything living up to its full capability, now that my system has the power it needs to drive my speakers.
