I got the Magnepan 3.5R at good price and I can say this is my best purchase over the years even compared to B&O Redline.
I think those who have listen to them need no more explanation on how good they sing. With bi-amping, the performance got to another level. As my amp for bass is a integrated, it allow me to adjust the bass volume and this compensate for it's slightly mellow bass.
I tried to Active bi-amp it and it should be the way to go. With the DSP equalization, I can adjust for the dip and bumps in the response curve to make it perfectly flat response.
Everyone come to my home feel like the singer sing in front of them. Bass in Bob Marley's song was slamming the door!
Simply magic for about 4K total I spend in the system.
This 300-disc changer features an 8x-oversampling digital-filter circuit that combines excellent phase linearity with superb suppression of aliasing noise to yield better stereo imaging. The four Hybrid Pulse digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are designed to place the DAC and digital filter on a single integrated circuit. A digital servo-control system maintains stable tracking, laser focus, and disc rotation--all with high precision and low radiated noise. I use it with MFA324DAC
Musical Fidelity A324
Great DAC - 24Bit 192Khz or 96Khz.
Magnepan MG-3.5r
Extremely good and much better value if you can find good one at 2nd hand
Jolida 1051RC
100W Hybrid AMP using 12AX7 as Preamp Tube. Extremely Powerful and musical at an unbeliveable price.
Opera M100
1.Class AB,push-pull design delivering 40 watt output power. 2.A pair of EL34 output tubes running in ULTRA-LINEAR mode per channel. 3.6922 and 6SN7 dual triodes for input stage and drive stage(one 6SN7 drive pair of EL34). 4.Little negative feedback with precision RC circuitry for more linear output. 5.Four bias regulators ensure all output tubes work optimally.
System edited: Being a computer audio guy I just try my first turntable. Pro-ject 9.1X with Sumiko Pearl and a 70's Luxman Pre-amp. Took me 2 nights to re-arrange all gears as well as calibrating the cartridge. It's quite an interesting experience. I was preparing for the worst as I heard many story of broken cartridge or bad quality if not setup properly. Well it's not too difficult after all but did took me hours to setup the cartridge. The first time it sings the feeling is so good - the great sense of achievement is amazing! Sound quality wise I feel it's better than my Linn CD! More micro-dynamics even at low volume. Bass and details are excellent indeed! What a revelation! Guess it's never too old to learn new stuff! Now I just need to stock up those vinyl.
System edited: I just acquired another pair of 3.5R as I cannot found the Tympani in local market so I decided to create my own version of Tympani. I studied the different versions and advantages of Tympani(in case you don't know, it's a 3-4 walls of magnepan for each speaker and used to be the flagship). The orginal 3.5R is very good(if you do bi-amp with some adjustments) but bass and soundstage wise is still not comparable to larger speaker like MBL 111/101. Also, if you have a wide room over 18ft, the middle soundstage tend to not as expansive as some other design. Magnepan's solution to this seem to be adding more "plane" of speakers as in the Tympani's case or increasing the size as in current top 20.1 case. My approach is similar yet the tricky part is how to angle them so that they produce co-herent soundstage and image. Using Magnepan's recommendation on angle of the tweeter to the listening position with tweeter inward and outward, I calculated the crossing angle should be 5 degree for a listening position of 2.5M away. The image cast by the outer 3.5 should be slightly in front of the image cast by the inner 3.5 to form a 3D image where a single pair is difficult to achieve. Also, such arrange benefit from wider soundstage and much co-herent bass enveloping the room. For the total cost of about 80% of 3.6 this setup blows 3.6 away!! If I add in the cost of the bi-amp then it's about the same. Anyway, interesting experiment worth trying!!
I think spending $ wisely and getting good return is very important. Some rich people can built $1M home theatre but they will not be happy because they don't get satisfaction this way - at least not for a long time.
Getting super value for minimal $ is the challenge. There are some many 2nd hand gears at a fraction of the original cost - take time to find the gems.
