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

jax2 January 14, 2006 10:42

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
;-)

Marco

jax2 January 13, 2006 22:15

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.

Marco

jax2 January 13, 2006 18:45