I listen to jazz, classic rock, vocals, classical and a bit of new age. I have strived for minimal coloration, not to favor any particular genre.
Almost all of my listening is via digital source - CD's and DVD-A's perfectly saved to a dedicated PC, then played back uncompressed through a very high-quality external DAC.
The performance of the PC system is intended to compare with the highest quality transports. Details are in the comments thread.
Three-way model, significant improvement over the 2.0. Reviews: OneTwoThree
Aspen AKSA Lifeforce 100 Monoblocks
100 wpc
JL Audio Fathom F112
The highly acclaimed 12 inch sealed subwoofer with 1500W internal amp
ModWright SWL 9.0SE Signature
Dan Wright's 5687 triode-based preamp with the optional tube rectified power supply. This unit also has a number of reference parts, including Black Gate caps, Sonicaps, tantalum resistors, DH Labs wiring and Bybees. review
Audiomeca Enkianthus.X
Reference DAC. Amazing lacquer-look finish, very hard to photograph. It uses the superlative Anagram Mk.2 ATF module. review
HTPC Audio/Jukebox
Built into a Coolermaster ATCS hifi style case, with a pleasant brushed aluminum anodized bezel. Zalman CPU fan and Seasonic Super Tornado power supply are dead silent. M-Audio 2496 provides ASIO (bit perfect) S/PDIF output routed directly to the DAC. Music manager is J River Media Center. case review
Viewsonic V150p Wireless Smart Display
The display accesses the HTPC wirelessly via the Remote Desktop (RDP) Protocol. Tapping the display with the stylus selects immediate playback by genre, artist or album. The wireless keyboard is only used for setup and library management, and is made by Gyration.
Shunyata Aries
unshielded, very transparent interconnect cable
Cardas/Belden 89207
Cardas RCAs with Belden 89207. Only .19pf/foot, very passive linestage friendly
Zu Cable Wax
Zu's entry cable that uses the b3 geometry.
Eighth Nerve Adapt Rectangles
Acoustic panels mounted to the wall seams
Balanced Power Technologies (BPT) 3.5 Signature
Balanced Power = no hum! Completely overdesigned and great build quality. review
The Modwright is off to Dan to get the 5AR4 rectifier upgrade in the power supply.
Also, the Belles 350A Reference has been sold to a very nice guy named George. Most of my listening recently has been with the Manleys, and specifically in triode mode.
I think I'm ready to turn the corner and experiment with a new direction for amplification - haven't quite decided, but am still auditioning as opportunities present themselves.
I second that request for your feelings on the gallos + the modwright. I have a similiar setup now, but I'm using a modded squeezebox as my source going direct to an EA Carver zr1600 and I'm very tempted to try the Modwright in there.
The pictures don't reflect it yet, but the system is now running the Gallos in fullrange mode only, with the Belles 350A amplifier upgraded to Reference Cryo status.
The Gallos, while they are full-range and neutral, work better in smaller rooms. My room is very large, and I found the best combination with the woofers "in".
You might consider the Odyssey Stratos or a pair of Khartago mono's, McCormack DNA-1 or -125, CJ MF-2250A, AKSA 100N+ kit, or (being partial) a Belles 150 Hot Rod. I don't care for harsh or edgy amps with the Reference 3's.
The Gallos need high current to create that deep soundstage, not peak power. You'll just give up a touch of bass with amps in the above list.
The ZR has a good following on Audiogon. I haven't heard one, but I know it can handle a much more difficult load than the Gallos. If it works for you, buy one... they can be had reasonably inexpensively and it doesn't appear that they are hard to sell if you move to something else.
System edited: The Placette is sold. In its place is the ModWright SWL 9.0SE preamp, with Reference upgrades. This completes a longer-term goal of transformation from tube DAC/passive attenuator to solid-state DAC/tube preamp. I feel that this particular system is both more musical and balanced with the tube stage in the preamp rather than the DAC, and will offer more consistent signal processing for sources added in the future.
Honestly, the Gallos don't demand a sub amp if you power them with a suitably meaty primary amplifier. If you like the Reference 3 sound, get them first, and then fiddle around with the sub coil... I do understand your frustration that the SA amp isn't around anywhere to audition. Hopefully you're talking about the SA and not the speakers themselves!
dbx is available at most any online pro audio store, they are often on eBay too. I already had it and the A250 in another system, so it was easy to experiment with.
It's not a very hifi piece (and for that matter, the A250 isn't a very musical amp) but it only affects the secondary bass coil. If a Gallo SA comes up for sale I might switch to it, but you never know. I might have new speakers by then :-)
In the pictures, the dbx crossover is under the Placette passive. The Placette's days may be numbered though; I just acquired a ModWright SWL preamp... now back to listening!
I'm looking to purchase the Gallos, too, but was miffed not only by the price of the sub amp, but also by its lack of availability for a listening test at countless Gallo resellers (not many of them!).
I read your list of equipment, studied each piece, as well. Where is the active dbx crossover? Did you consider other options? Where did you get the piece of electronics. I've never used anything like this, but am interested in a Gallo alternative.
Kudos on the PC; I built an A/V server last Fall and STILL can't get enough...2TB of storage and counting!
Prior to the BPT, I used a Liebert full-time sine wave regenerating UPS (commercial genre).
With or without the UPS, I could not get rid of hum, particularly once both amps were configured. The best result was with floating grounds, but floating one of the amps didn't make me very comfortable.
Balanced power allowed me to reground all my equipment -- no hum. The BPT is also practically silent (very, very slight transformer noise, no worse than an amp). The sine wave UPS was much louder.
The BPT 3.5 can easily push out 30a, so I am not worried about connecting all my gear to it. With the UPS, I expected it to enter current-limiting mode when under duress. I stopped using it (and started looking for a BPT) once the bass amp was connected.
So in summary, the hum reduction is dramatic. The classy factor is dramatic. In my system, other sonic benefits are definitely on the subtle side, but it stands to reason that equipment with less robust power supplies might be more revealing with balanced power.
Great info and thanks for the details! CDs will no doubt be around for a long while, but your PC/Jukebox project may be the next "thing" to hit the shelves. Glad to see that your happy with the results sonically, it gives me hope.
I'm happy to offer details on the HTPC, but hope that the critical discussion can extend beyond that. It's only a small part of my system!
Goals - I wanted the HTPC to be 1) silent, 2) attractive and 3) tolerable to listen to.
The case is a Coolermaster ATCS, constructed of steel, and trimmed with a brushed anodized aluminum front bezel. It requires a MicroATX (small) motherboard but accepts a standard ATX power supply. There are push latching doors hiding the CD-ROM/floppy drive, which open using a decelerating pot.
The CPU fan is a Zalman, cooling a Pentium 4 (Northwood 2.4C). This particular combination is very cool and the fan only spins at 1000 RPM. This isn't audible.
The power supply is a Seasonic Super Tornado. It is unusual that it has a 120mm fan, which takes up the whole top of the power supply. It is located inside the power supply chassis, away from the exit vent. It cools this particular system without going above 800rpm - not audible unless you put your ear to the case.
The audio card is the M-Audio Audiophile 2496. It has S/PDIF in and out as well as unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR. I don't use any of the analog connections, because I didn't want to pick up any of the RF noise in the case.
There is a spec that higher end audio cards use called ASIO, which bypasses Windows' tendency to upsample/resample everything and outputs directly to the sound card (in this case, the S/PDIF out). Therefore the music program's output is routed directly to the Musical Fidelity TriVista DAC.
I use a program called Exact Audio Copy to rip Redbook discs. Because it has the opportunity to correct errors and get a perfect rip, I believe that the result is as good as any Redbook transport. See this url for an interesting commentary on the subject: www.audiocircle.com/circles/viewtopic.php?t=15477&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=32
I recommend FLAC for lossless storage of audio. If one must compress, Musepack ("MPC") is without peer.
Since I don't have immediate plans to integrate TV and DVD into the PC, I selected J River Music Center as the audio library management program. It has excellent customer support, a great interface, supports ASIO directly and leaves out the overhead of a Media OS. Oh yeah, it'a only $40.
Net result? I have 5500 tracks in my catalog (yes I own them all). Select Classical for genre, and all my CD's queue up for hours of play. Or type "Dave Matthews" in a general search and get all the tracks from his band, plus his guest vocals on BMG/The Complex and Santana/Supernatural.
With the ASIO output, I can't hear the difference at this point. It's fun :-)
There's more involving a wireless touchscreen, but I'm not quite done with it yet. I'll post on that later.
