Thanks to all of you for the kind words! Really appreciated! To be honest: yes, it does sound great, and I enjoy listening very much! And how did it come? All the hardware upgrades have made decent progress to the overall result. But in terms of "musicabilty" the first major move was from CD to Vinyl. I have listened to only CDs for at least 20 years. I always thought Vinyl (which I new from the 70s) contains the same music, just with a lot of noise. I had a very simple system these days, and I guess this impression was actually not so wrong. But some 15 years later (a few years ago from now) I had a chance to connect an entry phono and turntable to my system and listen the very forst time to an analogue medium on my system. In terms of music I was blown away in comparison to CD. It was so natural, the music was no longer reproduced, it was simply there, all over the room. I really could not believe it. It did not take long until I was looking for a proper (meaning: matching the rest of the system appropriately) turntable, tonearm, pickup and phono. I was in heaven then, purchasing all my favorite music again, this time on vinyl. Some day I heard that there is a chance to purchase copies of a few mastertapes (till then I thought this is impossible). I could not get the idea out of my head that I had to listen to such a tape. If only once. But it had to be. I wanted to know how music COULD sound at the very best level possible. I owned a Revox B77 (just for fun, I admired it when I was young), it was in perfect condition, but no high-speed version, meaning it could only go up to 7.5ips (19cm/s). Mastertapes are mostly run with double of that speed (seldom even quadruple). So if I wanted to hear the absolute best sound possible, I had to have a proper machine. After learning A LOT about reel to reel I purchased my (first....) STUDER - an A810 MkII with Console and VU-Bridge n great condition. And I purchased my first mastertape copy: Zarathustra from Strauss. It was the exact recording which I had as vinyl record. The move from CD to vinyl did not change the "technical" quality of the music significantly, meaning the level and quality of bass, treble, dynamics. But it did increase the reality level into a different world. With the move from vinyl to tape it was the other way round: the musical impression already WAS great with the vinyl, simply because it is analogue. And the tape is not "more" analogue. BUT the tape does not have a lot of the physical difficulties that vinyl pressing and reproduction has. The tape improved the (I call it) "technical" qualities of reproduction, in all perspectives, and by far: more bass in volume, depth, clearness, brighter highs, more details, each instrument and voice can be identified seperately, and last but not least: dynamics practically without limit and effort. Hearing  a full blown classical orchestra going vom ppp to fff on a tape is like being in a concert hall. It is incredible. All my beloved vinyls sound really poor when directly compared to a copy of the corresponding mastertape. But there is always a downside: there are millions of CDs available, and you can purchase them today for a few bugs. There are (newly pressed) I guess tens of thousands of different vinyls available, ranging from some 20 bugs up to 70, or 100, or even 200 and more for selected audiophil pressings. And tapes: hard to find, expensive. But if you hear one, you know it is worth all the efforts! I prefer ONE 300 USD tape with top quality to a million free MP3 downloads. But that's a personal decison.... Thanks for reading! (Sorry for the length....)

ozatschek December 20, 2019 16:56

Hi mjcmt, thank you for your nice words! It took a lot of tests and upgrades over nearly 20 years! It was a lot of fun and learning, and I am very happy with the current system - and I feel lucky to have the luxury of a dedicated listening room!

ozatschek November 28, 2019 10:25