I have been building on this system for three years now and will never consider myself finished. It started with a Denon 1800 receiver and a Energy Take 5 speaker system. I then upgraded to all Paradigm Monitor speaker system. They sounded really good for movies but just lacked something for music only listening. I had Magnepan MMG's in my upstairs office system and one day I switched them into this system and found the sound I was looking for. Never one to be satisfied I then slowly started to upgrade the rest of the upstream gear. All the stuff I have purchased has come from Audiogon members. The tube pre-amp was a big improvement and I have my eye on a Sonic Frontier unit as a upgrade for the future. The Magnepans do very well for home theater use and of course, excell on music. I am very pleased with this system even though the small size of the room is a barrier.
Hey Doug thanks for looking at my system. None of my friends or family is into the hobby so I turn to Audiogon to share. To answer a couple of your questions, I have upgraded all my power cables with Signal Cable magic cords which I like very much. I use Signal for most of my interconnects even though I do have some Mapleshade and MIT stuff in there as well. I have the speakers bi-wired and have tried them bi-amped with a Threshold 200A amp I had but really didn't hear a great difference. The Counterpoint amp is a hybrid amp producing 220 watts and has plenty of juice to make the 1.6's sing. It's a great older amp that I would suggest to anybody but they are cranky and prone to meltdowns (happened twice to me). I did try a cary tube amp, 22 watts a channel, and loved the sound it produced, very lush and a great midrange but the lack of power killed any long term enjoyment. At some point I will invest in a all tube amp with enough power (ASL Hurricanes?)to get back to that sound. I noticed no difference with the acoustical treatments installed! Maybe I have a tin ear with this kind of stuff. I do have two channels on my Outlaw amp doing nothing, maybe I'll try bi-amping again, what do you think?
