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The kit we bought, our current setups

Sal1950

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A bedroom system I put together recently, that I lovingly refer to as "The Opium Den"... :cool:
Sounds like a great system to make all your sources sound quite intoxicating. ;)
Thanks for the post to "The Kit", I really enjoy seeing our members share their systems and the great variety of implementations they bring to the hobby.
Welcome to ASR!
 

watchnerd

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A bedroom system I put together recently, that I lovingly refer to as "The Opium Den"... :cool:

Integrated Amplifier: I.AM.D V200BT, is pretty much a cult classic amongst the underground, DIY, audiophile community in Europe - they like to make various modifications to it, but I've not as I've found it to be just fine running stock.

https://m.aliexpress.com/item/32594479261.html

Speakers: Infinity Reference 152's, I got a huge discount (~50%) on them as the line is being discontinued - they're highly recommended by the no nonsense audiophile review sites, very clear, with a good sound stage, and surprisingly good bass response for their size; I backed them up close to the wooden window frame to boost this a bit and it does. And it doesn't get boomy as the curtains in front as a trap/diffuser.

http://averagejoeaudiophile.blogspot.com/2015/12/infinity-reference-r152-infinitys-high.html


Sources: Windows 10 Professional PC, running MusicBee with the iZotope Ozone plug-in (Room, Tube EQ, and Tube Amp simulation), running at 24/192 via USB Audio 2.0 into the amp.

Huawei MediaPad M2 8 Android tablet, running Poweramp, streaming Bluetooth into the amp, although I could run it USB if desired. I've an Android phone I stream from as well when I can't be bothered getting off the bed.

Chromecast Audio, running optical into amp for various streaming services.

I'm about a add an external, wifi enabled, SSD enclosure to the mix as well, which will mirror the music library on the PC - I'll use it to stream DLNA to Chromecast Audio into the amp when I don't wish to power on the PC.

All the best... :cool:

View attachment 15871

P. S. As for my musical taste, I tend to like downtempo, mellow stuff, with a mix of Punk/Hardcore (Bad Brains), Psychedelic Rock (Hendrix), wild Drum & Bass (Goldie), and Free Jazz (late era Coltrane, Albert Ayler) thrown in just to keep it interesting.

The purple fabric makes it.

Have you heard Kamasi Washington?
 

Sal1950

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Have you heard Kamasi Washington?
Just gave a quick listen to a couple youtube vids.
I rate it a 60, the beat is erratic and I couldn't dance to it. :( ;)
 

BillG

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The purple fabric makes it.

Have you heard Kamasi Washington?

The fabric itself isn't purple - I've remote controlled LED bias lighting on the back of the display that'll glow at whatever color I dial in.

As for Kamasi, I sure have.


Kind regards... :cool:
 

BillG

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Sounds like a great system to make all your sources sound quite intoxicating. ;)
Thanks for the post to "The Kit", I really enjoy seeing our members share their systems and the great variety of implementations they bring to the hobby.
Welcome to ASR!

Yeah, it is quite intoxicating.

You're welcome, and thanks for having me... :cool:
 

watchnerd

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The fabric itself isn't purple - I've remote controlled LED bias lighting on the back of the display that'll glow at whatever color I dial in.

As for Kamasi, I sure have.


Kind regards... :cool:

Nice. I just got some smart LED bulbs that have music visualizer capabilities, just playing around with them, not sure if I like it as a permanent feature or a party gimmick.
 

watchnerd

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My current gear:
View attachment 16248
View attachment 16249

My current system is my second system ever had.
The gear of my first system was:
B&W N 804 loudspeakers, Benchmark DAC1, T+A R1230R integrated amplifier and a T+A CD-player.
I have had several headphones before the current ones, including Beyerdynamic DT770, DT990 and DT331, and Sennheiser HD800.

Nice.

What are the strange things on the floor in front of the rack?
 

cjfrbw

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I like the plant resonators. Are they audiophile grade?
 

Sal1950

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gvl

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I guess I'll check in too. Currently a bit of a weirdo vintage-ish setup JRiver -> Metrum Acoustics Pavane -> PS Audio 4.5 Pre -> Denon POA-4400 monoblocks -> Klipsch Forte Speakers. Big 20x20 room, speakers are 12 feet apart and about the same distance from the listening position. Likely sub-optimal all around, but I like how it sounds :)
 

Sal1950

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Likely sub-optimal all around, but I like how it sounds :)
Why? Looks like a rig with highly transparent electronics driving a very efficient pair of quality horns. Should be a very detailed sounding kit with dynamics to crush most other systems. People can talk and criticize on tonal balance, etc, all day long, but that's why there are literally hundreds of very expensive speakers on the market that each have their fan boy club.
After running a pair of LaScala's for 32 years I got a damn good idea what your system sounds like and I would venture to say it is excellent.. Good room tuning can add greatly to the SQ.
Sal
 

gvl

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Why? Looks like a rig with highly transparent electronics driving a very efficient pair of quality horns. Should be a very detailed sounding kit with dynamics to crush most other systems. People can talk and criticize on tonal balance, etc, all day long, but that's why there are literally hundreds of very expensive speakers on the market that each have their fan boy club.
After running a pair of LaScala's for 32 years I got a damn good idea what your system sounds like and I would venture to say it is excellent.. Good room tuning can add greatly to the SQ.
Sal

I was kind of hinting at the NOS R2R DAC ;) Also a big room with high ceilings and not much furniture in it. The rest should be solid. The speakers are in fact pretty good, when I first got them I thought I'd hate the horns but in the end there isn't much horn coloration at all. In fact they shine whatever I throw at them, rock, jazz, classical, electronic music, you name it.
 

Sal1950

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Also a big room with high ceilings and not much furniture in it.
Yes I would tame those room acoustics if you can. A large room with a lot of slap echo is a recipe for bleeding ears with your K-horns. ;)
 

gvl

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Yes I would tame those room acoustics if you can. A large room with a lot of slap echo is a recipe for bleeding ears with your K-horns. ;)

I don't have too many opportunities to crank them up, so listening is typically done at low levels, which is not too bad.
 

rajapruk

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My current gear:
View attachment 16248
View attachment 16249

My current system is my second system ever had.
The gear of my first system was:
B&W N 804 loudspeakers, Benchmark DAC1, T+A R1230R integrated amplifier and a T+A CD-player.
I have had several headphones before the current ones, including Beyerdynamic DT770, DT990 and DT331, and Sennheiser HD800.

The amps looks so small here, like matchboxes :)
 

SchwarzeWolke

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Hey everybody!
Thought we might share good or not so good pictures of our current or past listening stations/rigs. Might be fun to see what type of hardware everybody has and how it looks like in its natural habitat.

This is my current setup:
DAC: Topping D10
Amp: Massdrop THX AAA 789 and PMillet Nutube Hybrid
Übersicht D10.jpg

D10 frontal.jpg

D10 Detail.jpg
 

Ilkless

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My setup is simple. A Fiio X3II functioning as USB DAC, line out to a Marantz PM6004, which is hooked up to a modified version of the SEAS Idunn (which has the fantastic DXT tweeter, similar to what the Kii Three uses). No subs because we live in an apartment. Great thing with the apartment is that the living room, where the speakers are, is extremely open. No significant modal resonances, only some early reflections from a very small stub of sidewall.

I commissioned the Idunn build from the local SEAS distributor. Interesting story behind it. Had to insist the crossover was not extensively-revised because he was a design-by-ear proponent. By that I mean he runs the magnesium SEAS Excel with a huge metal breakup peak with a 6dB/octave first-order low-pass (and without a notch filter even!) He did take the liberty to make some changes to box tuning (22L from 20 originally) and baffle size (wider and more squat), which irked me. The crossover parts were all Mundorf - mainly because those were the cheapest he had on hand (huge Dueland fan he was). I did however specify slightly more padding resistance on the tweeter (-1dB at most), which was within the original crossover circuit parameters.

Think it was a decent price all-in though. I paid $1200, which was much lesser than the overly-bright KEF LS50 I had considered. Simmed his changes to the box on VituixCAD. Got lucky there (could have been a disaster given the propensity to design-by-ear, though he did have measuring equipment), baffle diffraction and baffle step were largely similar, with the sole significant difference being a dip at 2kHz that evened out the mild 2kHz peak with the original baffle. Box tuning wasn't crippled either. So I left things as they were.

My amp history is more colourful. Previously owned a Dayens Ampino for 2 years. Ticks a lot of the audiophile buzzwords (contrary to my inclination towards evidence-based audio). 25wpc/8ohms, 40wpc/4ohms integrated amp handbuilt-to-order by a small family firm in Serbia. Mundorf power supply and output caps. ALPS potentiometer. Oversized custom-wound toroid by an artisanal manufacturer of audio transformers in Serbia (Trafomatic), known for their tube amp transformers. Nice steel casing with acrylic faceplate. Sturdy flip switches that would flip with a satisfying click (which I had an irrational love for). Simple class AB circuit - a German mag measured the power amp version of the circuit and it hit specs exactly so I figured it wasn't going to be a disaster. There was more than adequate heatsinking and venting too (see the German mag link; the integrated amp has the exact same heatsinking scheme), which meant the amp never ran more than pleasantly warm to the touch even after 6-7 hours of continuous use, while located on a shelf next to a side wall (the back of the shelf was open to the air).

Thought it affordable (like around $450; US pricing from the distributor is currently $672) given the parts used and boutique assembly in a European country - think of the street cred in subjective audio circles! - when I bought it as the euro hit rock bottom with Greece. Service was exemplary and congenial as one might expect. Much to my embarassment, wire transfer and forex fees (transfers from South-East Asia to Serbia aren't exactly common) ballooned beyond what I had added onto the price of the amp. So they lost like $60, which they very very graciously and kindly waived. They didn't have to. It was a significant amount relative to the amp price.

As for why I chose what is arguably a highly-esoteric amp especially given my views on audio reproduction... I had a very specific application in mind. I had intended to build a very sensitive yet accurate passive speaker from a kit using the SEOS waveguide (Jeff Bagby's Tempest) for its controlled directivity. There wasn't space to place a full-sized amp anywhere, but the affordable half-width class D amps back then seemed to have rather marginal measured performance (eg. Virtue Audio, Nuforce). And I knew I needed something that wouldn't hiss with speakers of high sensitivity. I would never need that much power either given the 95dB+ actual measured sensitivity of the speaker and my living circumstances. This meant any option had to be fairly affordable, half-width, class AB, proven 4ohm performance, reliable, cool-running, just enough clean power to hit 105dB peaks for extreme high-sensitivity speakers, low gain to minimise hiss. You'd be surprised how short the list is.

Would I recommend it on pure utility? No, unless you require a very specific gain structure, want pain-free cilass AB, have placement limitations, or if the story behind the amp simply intrigues you. As March Audio's DAC pricing discussion on ASR suggests, some of us (even on ASR) would pay a reasonable premium for close, direct personal support instead of faceless call centres. I will also say (only half-jokingly) that it is a stunning amount of subjective audiophilia street cred/social capital per dollar for the reasons I've laid out above. And I did get an amp that was a pleasure to use, which didn't use cottage industry manufacturing as an excuse to price gouge for mediocre equipment, as often seen in "hifi". I sold it on and only lost 25% of the price I bought it for. Which meant I was essentially less than $150 out-of-pocket for two years' use.

The amp before that was a Marantz PM-17 (the original one, before the Mkii and KI revisions) from 1997. I also loved that. I have a soft spot for amps made by Japanese conglomerates during the bubble economy (though technically this amp was released well after the bubble burst, but much of the groundwork was laid nonetheless in the bubble era). It meant a specific confluence of factors that might scarcely be repeated: high consumer demand from an increasingly-affluent population, it was pre-home theatre (and stereo was still a popular aspirational good), extremely high engineering capability, extremely high economies of scale, great manufacturing capabilities, low cost structure. Put all that together and you get stunning build quality even for mid-range pieces, amazing industrial design (I still dream about those rounded corners, tapered knobs and even anodisation on the PM-17; the entire modern series is nowhere close to as well-built or finished - I detest my PM6004's mushy source selection rotary encoder), fantastic ergonomics, lots of features. My favourite example is the Marantz PM-15. The PM-15 of 1994 and the PM-15 of the 2010s were a world apart.

Bought it off its second owner, a nice upper-middle class civil servant who put it in an air-conditioned audio room, for $270. Power supply caps gave out (as one might expect given 15 years in a humid and hot equatorial climate, despite the care of the second owner) a couple of months in. Sent it to the official Marantz master tech in my country. An old guy that trained at the Japanese HQ back during Marantz's heyday. Billed me $60 for cap replacement before he even started the repairs. But a cascade of niggling electrical gremlins (I think mostly the toroid) apparently appeared after he replaced the caps. He somehow managed to ship in Marantz official replacement parts from Japan to do an overhaul. Best part was he honoured the $60 bill we had already paid for just the cap replacement, refusing any further payment from my dad, who collected it for me.

I used it for a happy 2.5 years until I couldn't take what the first owner had done to the PM-17 before selling it to the guy I bought it from. Idiot had drilled 4 more holes on the back to install a second set of binding posts to the right of the beautiful knurled brass binding posts, right where the Marantz label and model number are. Won't be surprised if he used it for bi-wiring. Worst thing was he used those crappy nickel ones with plastic caps you find at Radioshack. The amp was working fine, but it was an horrendous eyesore (remember I said I had shelving exposed at the back?) that grinded my gears. At this point, I'd spent $270 + $60 = $330 on the amp. Made an easy profit of $100 selling it on. The current PM6004 was given by my uncle, who didn't have space for it. Not like it'd be massively different in sound, but the user experience is somewhat less special.
 
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