minimalism
1: a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity.
In engineering we had another term that was loosely related to minimalism, elegant. An elegant design is one that works perfectly for the intended purpose, yet has no extraneous component or complexity. It lacks for nothing for its purpose, and has nothing beyond exactly what is required to perform its purpose.
My system isn't quite at the level of elegant, but I'm slowly easing my way in that direction. As for electronics, I'm essentially there. My audio room lacks some sound treatment, but I'll get to that when I know exactly what is required and nothing more... Even as it stands today, I'm astounded with how incredible this all sounds!
As a kid, many, many years ago, I used to frequent an audio store back in West Palm Beach. It was there that I first heard what were then called Magnaplaners. Standing there, hearing what I did, and looking that those elegant speakers has stuck with me all these years. I remember being enveloped in the beautiful sound, the amazing details in the music that I'd never knew existed, and wanting those speakers as bad as I did Roxanne F from 1st period English class in 8th grade.
40+ years after my teenage exposure to Maggies, my wife (not Roxanne F) and myself have bought a house with a "bonus room" over the garage. The rest of the house can be hers, but this room is mine... And she told me I can "buy those new speakers you've been researching." Those were the newest, little Magnepans, the LRS's.
For months I was powering them with an old Onkyo AVR that I had bought many years earlier from a Russian gangster (for real) from a Craiglist ad. That Onyko did ok, but I knew there was much more to be had sonically. So the search was on.
The first thing I ended up buying was a subwoofer to fill in the sub 50Hz area that the LRS's just can't dig down into. Costco was running a special on the Klipsch R-12SW, and after reading the spec's on it, knew that it would fit the bill without creating a big bill. And it was good. And still is. This sub lacks for nothing in my room, with the LRS's.
The search for a new amplifier started with figuring out the real requirements are for me, in my space, with my preferences. What what is the maximum SPL that I really ever listen to? A simple, free phone app told me that I never listen above the mid to high 80dBs. Step one complete.
In my listening seat (cheap plastic Adirondack chair) my ears are roughly 3 meters from the speakers. Step two complete.
Looking the impedance curve for the LRS's, they have a relatively flat impedance across the audio spectrum of slightly under 4 Ohms, with a little dip down towards 3 ohms in one place. Their phase across the audio range barely changes. These things are about as close to a resistive load as one could get without having the Yellow, Black, Black resistor color code painted on them. Step three complete.
The LRS's sensitivity came right from the Magnepan specs. It's rated at 86dB at 2.83V. The normal convention for speaker sensitivity is to rate the speakers 1W. I like the way Magnepan does their rating as it accounts for speaker impedance, whereas other mfr's do not. Regardless, at 1W the LRS's are 83dB. Step four complete.
Using the Crown Audio calculator and plugging in the above "known" values, I determined that something capable of 80 "clean" watts meets all the requirements, and of course capable of driving ~4 Ohm loads. Step five done.
Can any of you ASR'ers think of an amp that meets those requirements? Yeah, you're right, I bought the amp that no one would ever expect or image would work with Magenpans, the Aiyima A07, and work well it does! Even at the highest levels I ever listen to the amp barely warms to the touch. It's an amazing little piece of gear. Sonically, there's nothing it seems to not be able to bring to life.
Next up was to get a DAC so I could use the optical output of my Onkyo CD player (another Craigslist purchase from yet another Russian) so as to be lossless and also be using a more modern DAC than is in the Onkyo CD player. The MiniDSP 2x4HD does that and oh so much more.
So in my case the MiniDSP is a DAC (from the CD output), a PEQ with amazing flexibility, and performs a great job with subwoofer integration. It's another piece of gear that I'm blown away by.
That's it in total. For now. Room treatment is eventually in order. Then maybe an Amazon Fire tablet to use as a USB streamer to the MiniDSP. Maybe... But nothing more than required. Elegance.
