Bought this amp used for $1650 on audiogon. Has plenty of juice for my speakers.
Krell SBP-32x
Bought used on Audigon
Cambridge Audio AZUR 640C
Used as a transport.
Tyler Acoustics Linbrook Reference
I like these speakers for the money.
Tyler Acoustics Taylo Bass
Bought this used for $750. Smooth bass...not at all boomy or overbearing.
Audio Power Industries Power Wedge Ultra 115
Paid $750 for used.
Maple Shade Sampson
Purchased a custom rack with 6 shelves and an oversized amp stand with Isoblocks. All wood is 2 inch thick as the 4 inch was too pricey. Purchased B-stock shelves for rack to keep cost well under $2,000
Harman Kardon Early 1960's Citation II
Paid $900 in 2003. Sounds good for an old time product. I think these went for around $350 back in the 60's when they were new. Rarely plugged in but it's nice to have a tube amp for some music.
Jolida JD-402
Tube tuner
Music Hall mmf 2.1
I bought this a couple years ago. If I stick with vinyl, I will buy a better table.
Parasound Halo P3
Used for the phono section into my other pre-amp
Signal Cable / Audio Quest miscellaneous
Power cables and speaker wire are Signal Cable brand. Interconnects are Signal Cable and AudioQuest.
System edited: Moved into a new house recently. Managed to convince my wife to let me have an extra room as a stereo room. It's nice to have my own space in the house.
Your room isn't too small....from your photo and description I thought it might be "bedroom size". Now I get a better picture. Hey, don't get me wrong, I was not questioning your speaker choice at all. Ty has a great reputation, both for putting out fine products and as a great person to deal with. My guess'd be you have a pair of keepers there. Sounds like a pretty good deal on the Cary. I've not heard one. You could still save money with going with a DAC, and yes, the old tecnology DACs did see a steep drop in resale, you are quite right. I think the same holds true with the standalone units, and there's more to go wrong since they have older transports (presumably with more use). For less than you'll invest in the Cary, you might also consider one of the newer technology DACs: Benchmark DAC1, BelCanto DAC2, either of which can be had for $800 used. Not quite a sexy as the Cary, being little more than a black box, but performance should be right up there with the Cary if not surpassing it, and you'll have $500+ left over to buy some music. Hey, sell your Rothko and you could replace your whole system with SOTA stuff and move to a bigger place! Anyway, if you get the Cary I'll be curious to hear what you think of the differences may be between the newer technology, albeit much cheaper, Azur.
Marco...I followed your advice and faced the speakers more straight ahead. The soundstage has improved. The room is 15 foot X 20 foot. The reason that they don't over power the room is that my ceiling is a 14 foot gabled ceiling which really robs the bass. It would be better to have a traditional 9 or 10 foot ceiling but the bass gets lost overhead in my room. I chose these speakers after visiting Tyler's factory in Kentucky. For the money, I really don't think I could find any other full range speaker that is better. I have looked alot in the $5k range as that is all I can afford, and I haven't found any speakers that I like as much. I'm sure if I had gobs of money to spend, I could find something better but the cost / benefit of these suits me well. Last night, I received an offer to buy a Cary 303/200 cd player for $1350. I may not be able to pass on that, but I will keep the external DAC in mind. Nice thing about these DACs is that they don't seem to hold their value, so there's alot of expensive units on Audiogon at reasonable prices. I checked out your system. I would love to hear those Klipsch speakers someday. I have read great things about them. I believe they have been around for a long time with great success.
I'm just a man young Firecracker...no more, no less. Sometimes knowledge can be dangerous. If I've learned anything worth passing on in this hobby, it would be to trust your own ears above all. Anyway, I enjoyed your post and the thread that resulted regarding the "Future of this Hobby", which is what brought my attention to your system page. So yes, consider as just one additional option to buying a new standalone digital front end that you could use your Azur just as a transport. For this purpose you would use either the coaxial or optical outputs on your CD player to run to a DAC. Doing so would bypass the DAC in your player and leave all the conversion duties to the external DAC. An additonal benefit from going this route is that if you should choose to pursue PC audio in the future, which, IMO and in my experience, has tremendous potential, you could use the external DAC you choose. Just something to think about. If you are stuck on Wadia for some reason (I presume you've heard them and liked what you heard), I believe they make good DAC's too. I don't know their product line well, and haven't heard their stuff, but they do have a good reputation. There are many other DACs available that would be worthy of consideration as well. Wow, that's a whole lot of speaker for such a small room...doesn't it get pretty bass-heavy in there? I'd have guessed a speaker capable of moving that much air would overload a small room. I've not heard those speaker though. Did you arrive at the toe-in from listening? Have you tried them facing more straight ahead? You may want to play around with that a bit. I'd imagine that that kind of toe-in would really compromise your soundstage (narrowing it down a bit). I could be wrong, and you know best since you are there, but speaker positioning and listener positioning can make a big difference sometimes. Ah, the illusive and under-appreciated Ikea Rothko! I should have guessed by the fact that it wasn't on a 7X9 foot canvas! Damn those Ikea folks are clever ;-)
Jax2, thanks for the feedback. After looking at your systems, I see that you are a man who has great knowledge. I could pick up a used Wadia for $1600 maybe if I'm patient, but your transport suggestion using existing equipment is something I had not even considered. Thanks for that as I like learning about something new...I know nothing about DACs but that will change now. I have the speakers toed in alot based on the smaller room and the close distance...less than 8 feet to the listening position. As far as the Rothko, it's a cheap IKEA print that looked nice when I had little money upon graduating college.
Nice start! If you plan on investing anytime soon, I'd address the front end. I don't think you necessarily need to drop large coin on a Wadia to be happier. You could use the Azur as a transport and bring in a better DAC for a lot less $. Just a thought. Man, that's a whole lot of toe-in for those speakers. Are they positioned that way for the photo, or do you listen to them at that angle? If so, have you tried playing around with angle and positioning? Like the Rothko too.
hello no. that's actually my tv. it doesn't have a proper stand, so i am using a speaker stand for now. i'm moving in 4 months, so it's just a temporary fix for now.
