What stereo(s) do you listen to? What do you want?

[cb200]

If his online shop is sold out... maybe something is working. Are we talking about him? Yes we are. You have to remember that lots of people haven't heard great audio playback and while he's not offering anything new (High efficiency horns and triodes are old as dirt and came back into interest in the late 80s) lots of people won't have been exposed to anything better than an mp3 on their phone or a nightclub.

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

No WAY those low-powered amps could play to lifelike volume! You need 300 WATTS PER CHANNEL. At LEAST!!!!

 

[Biggskip]

During the holidays I changed out my main system, replacing my Parasound preamp/amp setup with an integrated amp (Peachtree iNova). Felt like there was big boost in the bass.

After the holidays I went back to the old setup and noticed a big drop in the bass.

The sub in the system was being fed by loop outs on the back of my amp. When I switched the feed over to the sub outs on the preamp the bass came back to normal levels.

 

[double00]

No WAY those low-powered amps could play to lifelike volume! You need 300 WATTS PER CHANNEL. At LEAST!!!!

it's true . you won't get lifelike low end at volume with a single output triode .

more to the point why would i want tube compression on hi fi ?

anyways it sounds like you're going to buy / build the kit ? should be pretty easy

 

[Artisan Fan]

Very nice. Are those Puppys?

The speakers are Wilson Audio Alexia Vs in a beautiful Cranberry Pearl finish. Two Wilson LoKe subwoofers add bass down to 14 hz and fire directly into the front corners of the room. Setup was done by Jim Smith over ten days. Sounds lifelike.

The turntable is a Continuum Caliburn with a Lyra Etna Lambda cartridge. The tape deck is a Redox PR99 completely modified by Soren Wittrup.

 

[Artisan Fan]

Update: a new $4,500 tape preamp was unveiled at Axpona. I may be reviewing it soon.

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

Update: a new $4,500 tape preamp was unveiled at Axpona. I may be reviewing it soon.

Do you publish reviews? I'd be interested in seeing them.

The piece I was most interested in from Axpona was the EMT 928 turntable John DeVore featured in his room.

 

[R.O. Thornhill]

My very old Chord Blu CD transport finally gave up the ghost. Decided not to give up on physical digital discs quite yet, and bought what I assume will be my last ever CD transport - the belt-driven CEC TL2N.

Early impressions are very positive. Let’s see once it settles in properly

R-O-T

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

Wow. That's CD commitment! A guy could do worse than snatching up hundreds of lightly-loved CDs, I suppose; I'm doing something similar with BluRay discs and DVDs when they're (BR) not available. But between streaming and vinyl at home and podcasts in the car I can't remember the last time I played a CD. I was dusting my stereo the other day and accidentally hit the eject button on the CD player (Linn Ikemi, 22 years old) a disc ejected. I remember last playing it for my sister who was in town--over two years ago.

 

[R.O. Thornhill]

Well I still have hundreds upon hundreds of CDs. And I prefer the act (and generally the sound) of using physical media for doing proper listening. The act of selecting the disc, and committing to listening creates greater engagement for me. And the CEC defin plays into this with its manual top loading mechanism and clamp. I love my Aurender for streaming but find I will skip around much more. I guess I could just go with streaming and vinyl - but there are so many albums I have on CD but not vinyl (and vice versa)

For Home Cinema I am a massive believer in physical discs (4K) as well. But that’s more a quality question, as well as the whole digital rights headache

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

Agreed on the physical media, 100%. If I sit and listen, nine times out of ten I'll spin a record. If I'm cooking or doing something else around the house, I will stream Tidal. At the moment (okay, for the past few years) I've been considering downsizing houses and wondering if I could live with streaming only.

A good argument for a CD player: A lot of the music I enjoy never had a vinyl release and much of it isn't available to stream either. Smaller label jazz releases from the 90s, for instance. I try to rip them and then Roon sorts them out for playback. But you're right--it's a different experience than playing a disc.

I've always liked the idea of a top-loading CD player but have never owned one. Other than turntables the only top-loader I've owned was a cassette deck I bought new with paper route money when I was a kid. My first 'major' purchase in life was a Kenwood cassette deck and integrated amp.

Edit: I also like streaming for its 'try before I buy' appeal. Especially with vinyl costing what it does these days.