My audio journey began nearly 30 years ago, when with a group of 30 students of my engineering school we fully designed an integrated 2x80W analog amp + radio tuner with a 2x16 char. LCD display, menus, options, etc.. We produced a series of 50 to 100 units that we sold to the other students. Since then I got involved in various audio projects with people that were way more knowledgeable than me.
In the 90s I was on the "audiophile" side, being fooled many times by snake oil professionals. I bought a 1500 € tube amp (Jadis Orchestra) with custom tube voltage tuning, various cables (Siltech power cable, Chord speaker cable, Audioquest Ruby interconnect...), and even a supposedly magical filtered multiple socket (HMS Energia).
At that time my "dream system" would have been something like this :
- Source : Wadia CD player
- Amplifier : Mark Levinson
- Loudspeakers : JM Lab Grande Utopia
- Cables and magical stuff
But that was a long time ago. In the 00s I questioned everything I
thought I knew, saw through the curtain of lies, and started from scratch on the "hi-fi" side, believing only what could be supported by scientific evidence. I went much further on the DIY side. So 10 years ago my "dream system" became this :
- Source : dedicated fanless PC with a PCI professional studio soundcard and 6 analog outputs (Lynx TWO-B)
- Amplifiers : a tri-amp with a DIY 6-channel high-end mosfet amplifier that I was involved with at the time (A6AM)
- Loudspeakers : DIY 3-way loudspeakers with a 38cm (15") Beyma 115/N, an Accuton C90-T6 ceramic midrange, and some fancy tweeter
- Digital crossover : IZotope Ozone
Today I'm 50 years old and my vision of the "ideal" system has clearly evolved and is now much simpler and straightforward while keeping an optimum and measurable performance level :
Loudspeakers :
- Room 1 : a dedicated room of course, acoustically treated, possibly underground. But still cosy and enjoyable with my beloved one.
- Source 1 : a dedicated fanless PC/server, with local lossless music storage (FLAC) and foobar2000 as player. There is nothing arguably better. I could go for Roon and its fancy interface, why not, but I'd be just as happy with foobar2000.
- Audio protocol : no need for ASIO/KS as demonstrated recently, we just need a bit of headroom (-4 dB) in Equalizer APO for bit-perfect results.
- Destination : a pair of endgame digital amplified cardioid monitors, such as Dutch & Dutch 8C (or Genelec, or Kii, or Buchardt, etc.). You can feed them a S/PDIF signal straight from your source PC, no need for DAC, they do everything internally... for 10.000 € of course.
- Equalization : probably using REW and a microphone, generating a corrected response file then feeding it to a convolution plugin. But maybe by then the speakers will do everything themselves.
Headphones :
- Room 2 : a nice living room, no need for any acoustic treatment here
- Source 2 : a different PC, connected to source 1 via a high-speed LAN
- DAC : any transparent DAC. Currently settling for a Topping E30, and I don't feel the need to go higher.
- Headphone amp : same criteria. Currently on a Topping L30, and I would only change it for hypothetical extremely hard to drive HPs.
- Headphones : my current collection for sentimental reasons (see my signature), plus maybe some fancy expensive headphones "just because" : HD800S, Focal Utopia, etc.
- Equalization : EAPO + Oratory1990 presets + my own automation software
- Virtualization : HeSuVi (with ooyh_0 preset) or Out Of Your Head.
- Bonus : maybe a Realiser A16 or some equivalent, just for fun, to improve on what HeSuVi already brings.
If you think that this system can be improved in any way, then I'll be happy to hear any scientific arguments.
The good news is that I expect to fully realize this "dream system" within the next few years. Fingers crossed !