It's taken about 8 years to put this system together. Many changes, upgrades, and modifications--but finally I feel it's complete. Two very important aspects of this sytem were the modifications to the bass drivers in the Martin Logan Monoliths and the power conditioner. The Bass drivers were replaced with Focal Audiom 12 inch drivers. Because I'm bi-amping and using an active cross-over matching was much easier (an engineer at ML helped me out a bit as well). Now, I have no complants on the bass or the integration with the panel (the Focal's are much faster and a better match--they should be for their price). The other very significant aspect was the power conditioner. It is of my own design using a toroidal transformer to take a 220 balanced line down to 110v. I then have 4 separate circuits that are independently filtered and grounded. If you are building an audioroom, I would highly recommend putting something like this in. Tubes in the Sonic Frontiers phono stage are NOS Siemens and Telfunken. I went through a lot of tubes including Mullards, Brimar, and Amperex and finally settled on this combination. While the tubes are expensive--they are definitely worth it--but what's really expensive is trying all the stuff that doesn't work. Fortunatly, I also found a great dealer that is more expensive than most, but takes anything back and is great to work with--to me it's worth the extra dollars. Cables--another hot topic--in my view do make a difference. Sometimes the "higher end" cables (more $$) are not necessarily the best sounding. I tried quite a few cables, but have found the Audioquest Lapis X3 to be the most synergistic in this system. In the last 6 months I really have not bought any equipment (besides the SDS unit). But I have been buying a lot of software. Time to just enjoy. Comments, suggestions welcome.
You have a monster system! Great work! Can I ask you, how large is your room? I am assuming quite large. Also, is everything listed as the brand "Abstract 7" of your own design? Very creative and custom. Also, are you still making tapes? I also have a CR-7 and just recorded a couple of mixed sides the other night. I played the tape back last night and it sounds like a CD, really. I am impressed with your ability to find a lot of the older Levinson stuff, which I always found to be of superb quality and sound. I couldn't afford to get it when it was new.