I just finished building a dedicated listening room in my new apartment. It took me one year and a half to complete, but it was well worth the wait. I simply love it.
The room size is 14 x 19 x 8 feet.
The room was designed by a company that specialises in acoustic design. Not the popular Rives Audio, since I live in Europe and that would increase the costs of the Level 3 project well past $10k mark, but a reputable local company.
The room acoustics was was first designed in a digital domain and then improved upon with the real world measurements taken during all stages of construction work.
The room is soundproof and - among other things - features soundproof windows, double doors and 11" thick double walls. The measured noise level inside the room is 26dB during the day (measured during rush hours, at 16:00), so it is almost dead quiet.
The room has two dedicated lines, each rated 20A @ 230V, one for analog and one for digital gear. All cables, circuit breakers and mains outlets are of audiophile quality.
MSB DAC IV Signature with Diamond Power Base - replaced the dCS Scarlatti, which served me as my reference for the past 3 yaers.
MSB S200
Fully balanced 200 Watt stereo amplifier. Class A, Zero Negative Feedback design. Fluid, palpable, a bit on the warm side of things. An amazing piece.
Magico S5
New addition to the system. Replaced Wilson Sasha speakers.
MUSA S21T USB
Computer based transport with SOtM PCIe USB card, SOtM sata filter, fanless PSU, fanless i5 CPU, SSD, 8GB RAM and Synology 2x2TB NAS. Running Win 7/64 with Jriver and Jplay.
AudioQuest WEL Signature
Replaced Tara Labs The RS-1 interconnects.
AudioQuest Diamond USB
USB cable.
Shunyata Anaconda Z-Tron
A new model from Shunyata. Replaced van den Tara Labs RS-1 cable.
Shunyata Anaconda CX
I have two of those, powering Dart and dCS.
Pure Power 2000
Battery powered AC Regenerator.
Finite Elemente Pagode Master Reference HD09
Top of the range component stand from Finite Elemente, with their resonator technology (3 used). I favour those over a 4-tier Pagode rack, since they do not interfere with soundstage when placed between the speakers.
Finite Elemente Ceraballs
I have two sets placed under my speaker cables. Very unussual location, I agree, but works a treat.
Finite Elemente Cerapuc
I have two sets placed under my speakers. A simply stunning improvement in low-level detail retrival and microdynamics. Worth every penny !
HMS Energia SSDB mains outlets
Two of those finish off my two, 230V/20A, dedicated power lines.
AHP Klangmodul 3+
Audiophile circuit breakers. Gold plated, solid copper contacts. Each of the two dedicated power lines has his own breaker.
ACS Diffusors
Diffusors made by german company Acoustic Control Systems. I have 3 sets of those, one on the rear wall and two on the side walls. As you can see on the pic, the whole part of the rear wall, to which the diffusor is attached, pertrudes 12" into the room.
Custom absorbers
The whole room is fitted with custom absorbers, tuned to specific frequencies. The pic shows one of the six absorbers fitted to the front wall. If you look carefully, you wil notice, that there is an MDF plate with lots of small holes fitted inside, which divides the internal volume of the absorber into two smaller chambers. The sound enters the traps by the front gaps, goes to the first empty chamber and then through the holes to the next chamber, where it can dissipate in a mineral fiber (not fitted on this pic).
Custom diffusors
Set of 5 custom diffusors fitted over the listener's head.
RT-60 curve
This is the RT-60 curve of my room. Black trace is our target curve, blue one is base curve (empty room, no acoustic treatment, no floor), red curve shows how the room responded after ACS diffusors, wooden floor and sand stone were added. Green curve is the most recent one. It is still not perfect, but we are working on it.
Room Frequency Response curve
Room Frequency response. Quite nice if you ask me :-)
Daikin ultra quiet A/C unit
Daikin A/C split system replaced McQuay unit. The difference in noise levels generated by those two units is staggering. Daikin is so quiet (22dB) that you can barely hear it from the listening chair. There are CD-players that generate more noise than this ! The other outstanding feature of this unit is that it can work when outside temp drops to 10'F - so it can be used during winter too.
Yes, that's the one, very dedicated and committed. IMHO people who claim "by far the best and more reliable" is as useless a comment as they come. Try out yourself and make your own opinion. And if you like tube sound, good for you, then you can build around that. If you are open to other technologies used, all the better to form a wider opinion. As they say, there is no one best sound, its all subjective.
I listened to ARC pre and CD5, KR poweramp on SF Guerneries last weekend. Not out-of-this-world sound but pleasant enough! Enjoy.
Check out www.audiofast.com the DartZeel distributor for Poland (in Todz). I met the fellow at CES this year, I'm sure he can arrange an audition, very nice guy to deal with.
Adam, if budget is an issue I recommend trying the DartZeel integrated ... its 95% of the magic of the separates at ~50% of the price with more power to boot!
Elberoth2, here a review you should check out. It compares the Wadia 861SE with the Esoteric X-01 and Emmlabs CDSA-SE. When I read this it pretty much spot on with my personal experience.
Mert, you are right about the DAC's... its per channel. But the ratio is the same, and the sonic difference between the DP-77 and the DP-78 was slightly better at best on the Accuphase house sound. That wasn't just my ears but approx. 120 combined years worth of other audiophile listening experience next to me at the same time. And believe me when I say that we re-listened several audiophile tracks several times to agree on what differences, if any, we heard. Again, you may be right, I don't claim to have golden ears, that's why I also rely on others that are more experienced to teach me how and what to listen for. Its been a fun, but sometimes tricky, road to travel.
One of my original justifications for getting the Accuphase was German audiphile magazine Stereo ratings were very favorable ... what a mistake that was. You have to get your own listening experience going on high-end gear.
But to each his own way of evaluating what's best and making a purchase decision!
Dgad, I've never even had my CDSA warming up for a full day ... maybe worth trying. Though my appetite for digital is shrinking by the day, the more I listen to vinyl ...
Thanks Mert for your perspective. I have no intentions to sell my CDSA in Belgium. As a matter of fact there has not been one offered second hand in Belgium. The Benelux importer just started a few months ago with the CDSA, retail EUR 11000! There's one on sale from the UK -> EUR 7800 asking...
As for Accuphase being hot in Europe, good for Accuphase, their products are very good, just IMHO not the best (not heard their DP800/DC801 though). The CDSA sounded better to my ears than the DP100/DC101 combo, which I though at first sounded very good. I sold my DP-77 to a Danish audiophile for $4000 last year. I count myself lucky as it didn't read some of my SACDs, and I got it as a demo for $5000 the year before! It retailed in the US for $8500 before the DP-78 took over at $10000 with 3 instead of 2 DAC's on each channel. Still I couldn't hear the difference in my system with my ears. Somebody else could very well differ in their opinion from mine.
In any case for those people you refer to in your last sentence I say: go find yourselfs another hobby. If you look at your system and think every time about how expensive it is, then you are probably not listening to the music!
Elberoth2, I have absolutely no clue about what below-average-above average PRAT means, or how to hear that. Sounds like if PRAT if wrong, the whole musical experience doesn't sound good at all! If my Emm has below average PRAT, it still beats ALL of the Accuphase CDPs that I owned and auditioned before (my conclusion together with the handful of audiophiles that were with me at the time, including an Accuphase dealer!). That's the only reason I changed from Accuphase to Emmlabs... because it was so blatantly obviously superior. More micro detail, increased and more clearly defined soundstage, increased realism and immediacy. If Meitner did use the Mediatek chipset to turn it into his own MDAT, it works beautifully.
My 2 cts worth of experience, to each his own obviously. I'd say, bring it over, I'd love to re-check my ears . . . maybe I was mistaken!
Elberoth2, funny you should mention that, I think RBCD playback on the Emm often exceeds that of SACD. In the SE upgrade Ed Meitner paid particular attention to increasing the playback quality of RBCDs, hence the upsampling to 5.6 Mhz of CDs too.
Maybe its because I have many more fantastic sounding Gold CDs, XRCDs, HDCDs, K2HD CDs than SACDs (and I have about 200 SACDs). Bass impact and weight? No problem in my system with the Dart's & MM3s.
Maybe a silly question, but what does PRAT stand for?
When I purchased my first good CDP I auditioned all the Accuphase CDPs: DP57, DP77, DP78 and DP100/DC101 and I chose the DP-77 because I got a very good deal on it, knowing it would be the weakest part of my system. The only improvement of the DP-78 over the DP-77 is the slightly improved D/A converter. My dealer said that was a small change, and frankly I didn't hear the difference as I did compared to the DP100/DC101. Now Ed Meitner of Emmlabs is MR SACD/DSD himself as he was the pioneer of SACD for Sony back in the beginning of this hi rez format. The best sound studio's work with Meitner gear. The Emmlabs D/A conversion technology is the best available today, upsampling CD and SACD to to 5.6 Mhz. Maybe 32 bit technology is next best, depending on manufacturer, and its relatively new. But the sound is second-to-none. I'll bet you that if you were to connect the DP-78 and compare it to the Emmlabs, the Emmlabs would win handsdown on sonic qualities. The two areas of significant improvement over Accuphase that I noted were the much higher resolution (more microdetail) and wider, deeper, higher and better defined soundstage. Ofcourse back then I was listening through the ML32/33H and SF Stradivaries connected by NO Valhalla, all of which were not as good components versus what I have today...
But if you like built quality over sound, nothing beats Esoteric P-01/D-01 or P-03/D-03, bar the NAIM CD 555. Accuphase is up there too. And yes, the built quality of the Emmlabs is not its strongest point, to say the least!
I don't understand your preference for the Accuphase, I had the DP-77 and although a great player (didn't read some SACDs though) it was blown away by my current one box Emmlabs. You need to ensure that you audition fully broken in units, and with your personal reference music. Powercords and interconnects also paly a role here.
Also try the Spectral if you get the chance, did you consider the Metronome Kalista or any of the good Esoteric and/or DCS stuff?
None of the above can compete for sheer palpability with my GPA/Dynavector vinyl rig...
Good luck and drop me a note if you want to drop by for the MM3s.
