Your Hifi history

[DaveF]

Tony,
On paper anyway, it sounds that you have a cracking system there. Quads and Jadis are surely a winner. I really must get a listen soon.

All you need now is a turntable! :-)

[Diapason]

Great stuff, gentlemen, I love a good journey story. Like Tony, I don't have a photographic record, but I'll try to remember what's passed through the various rooms. The TL:DR version can be seen in bold.

The Beginning
- Marantz CD52 mkII CD player
- Arcam Alpha 5 amp
- Mission 780 speakers

This was my first proper system, installed in my parents' living room when I was 17. Sadly the Marantz (and maybe the Arcam?) was stolen from my college room while I was living in Trinity. The Missions are still giving good service at a friend's house in London, the speaker cables remain under my parents' floorboards.

My first bout of upgraditis about 3 years later led to:
- Arcam Alpha 6 CD player
- Audio Innovations Series 500 amp
Valves baby, yeah!! This was my pride and joy, and the one item that finally made my friends aware that maybe I was a little bit "special". Spending 600 punts on the wrong kind of glowing bottles as a student was, basically, madness. I, on the other hand, was hooked.

So then it came time to upgrade the speakers, and that's when things started to go horribly wrong. It was my first lesson in how differently the same items could sound in different rooms, and the first glimpse of a lifetime of speaker upgrade annoyances! Myself and Steve, although coming from different musical angles and VERY different amps, were both in the market for new speakers at around the same price range. We made lists of possibilities, discussed it ad nauseam over pints that summer (1996 I think), and scoured every What Hifi ever printed. Anyway, we waited and waited for a new speaker from Linnaeum to arrive, completely convinced it was going to be the last word in everything. We were horribly disappointed when we heard it, just dreadful sound. Then we waited and waited for Castle Harlechs and, once again, were bitterly disappointed at the woolly presentation. Joe Lanigan, as always, came up trumps and wheeled out some floorstanders that were "just a little more expensive". Enter the Epos ES22 to universal delight, I can still remember Steve punching the air in Cloney's demo room with the sheer unbridled joy of it all. They were must-haves.

Sure enough, they sounded amazing in Steve's room and lived happily there for many a long year. In my room, however, they sounded HORRIBLE, genuinely horrible, unlistenably bad, loose, woolly, flat, you'd easily believe they were broken. We brought over Steve's amps and they improved things a smidgen, but ultimately the problem remained. Was it the suspended wooden floors? Was it the completely square room? Was it the soft furnishings? I don't know, but they had to go. (Just FYI they definitely weren't broken, the same pair went to Steve's temporarily and were perfect.)

A parade of speakers wandered through my parent's living room over the next year or so. Sonus Faber Minuettos with the dust cap pushed in, apparently by Ron Wood when he had them on loan, where the first to come close. Lovely sound, but not quite what I wanted, they were just a bit too warm and cuddly with my amp. The rather ugly Proac Studio 100s stayed for months, but after my initial delight at their sound they seemed to lose impact as time went on. This was the only time I'd ever heard break-in make a component sound less appealing! Finally, the rather leftfied suggestion of Meridian A500s hit the spot. They were a kind of compromise speaker, a jack-of-all-trades that had an even-handed approach without really excelling at anything. Still, they worked well in the room and were always enjoyable to listen to.

Somewhere along the line I changed my amp to an AVI S2000 because I felt I needed a bit more grunt. I couldn't bring myself to sell the valve amp, though, so it went into storage to fight another day.

A few years later I bought an apartment, and finally had some space to do whatever I wanted. Or at least, I thought I did, but once again the room curse struck. The Meridians were the wrong style for my new place, and I thought the newly-released B&W Nautilus 804 might do the job. Nope, horrible.
I rang Ivan.
"Did you remove the transit screw?"
"The what?"
"There's a screw on the back locking the drivers in place for transportation."
"Ah"
Much better, but still just too damn bright in my uber-reflective apartment. Wooden floors, painted plaster walls, blinds with no curtains, this was the exact opposite of my parents' living room and a new kind of hell. The B&Ws went back and were replaced with PMC DB1s, followed quickly by PMC GB1s. Nope again. System Audio 1280s finally came to the rescue and really did very well for the price. I still love System Audios for their sheer musicality and usability, they deserve to be better-known worldwide.

Two years later I moved house and entered the current mancave. Before we bought the place I was concerned that the designated listening room was too reflective and far too narrow, but I persuaded myself it would all be ok. I was wrong, and it's easily the worst room I've ever had to deal with. Horribly reflective, dreadful slap echo, a concrete box that would be the ideal place to demonstrate the physics of standing waves and bass modes. Sound treatments from GIK Acoustics improved things but, my god almighty, it remains the most difficult space ever.

Around this time I was reading a lot about hifi on the web and on newsgroups, and had been completely taken in by the hardline idea that CD players and amps (once powerful enough) made no difference. I moved the System Audios into the sitting room (powered by the old Audio Innovations) and fulfilled a long-term ambition by buying a pair of PMC OB1. They weren't always the easiest to get right in terms of positioning, but I liked them. They needed more grunt, so I decided I'd test the amps make no difference theory and I assembled a few different options from Cloney one Saturday. I was gobsmacked by the differences, but when the dust settled the Classé Fifteen power amp was a clear winner. I coupled that with a Bryston BP-25 preamp and was really happy that I was entering new territory. (The System Audios in the sitting room were eventually replaced by Sonus Faber Signums. I decided I was buying those as soon as I took them out of the box and before I ever even listened to them. Luckily they sound utterly gorgeous!)

For whatever reason I doggedly stuck to the idea the CD players didn't make a difference until one day I stuck in an Arcam DV79 just to see if it could compete with a dedicated CD spinner. It wiped the floor with the Alpha 6, and to my annoyance I realised that the player had been a weak link for a while. The Celtic Tiger was roaring and a massive upgrade ensued: the Esoteric X-03 SACD. That was a beast of a machine, a huge step-up in terms of CD playback and my first foray into SACD. I absolutely loved it...until I heard the Wadia 581SE. The Wadia wasn't a massive step-up in terms of performance when used with the pre, but when you took the pre out of the equation and used the Wadia volume control, the improvement in clarity and realism was amazing. The Bryston and Esoteric left the building, and the Wadia has been in situ every since.

In 2008 the recession had started to bite but I was still doing relatively ok (or so I thought) and when Ivan told me that there was a mint pair of Kharma CRM 3.2FE going for a very good price, I jumped at them. I'd heard them in lots of other situations and had always been impressed, and sure enough they were another huge step up from the PMCs. My prior experience had suggested that they worked better with valves than with solid state, so I knew the Classé power amp probably wouldn't be staying, and by then it was starting to look like the weak link in the system.

Then my company basically went bust and I lost my job, with only statutory redundancy as a payout. The stupidly-priced system in the corner started to look like complete folly, and I very nearly threw my hat at the whole thing during that period. I immediately told Ivan that the gear was up for sale and asked for his help. The Classé moved pretty quickly, but given that the world had lost all its money, the speakers and CD player were slower to shift. When I eventually got another job (at a seriously reduced level of income!) I wasn't too sure what to do or where to go with the whole thing, but I decided I'd hang on to the gear I had rather than letting it go at knock-down rates. The venerable Audio Innovations was drafted in once again, but I hardly ever listened at that point anyway. The money spent on the hifi made my stomach churn and took all the good out of it.

Anyway, after a while I decided there was no point just letting the system sit there and I should get back on the horse. I needed a new amp, so the next parade of loaners made its way through the room: Sonus Faber Musica, Kharma MP150 monoblocks, Ayon Spark, Primare I32, Synthesis Shine, Leben cs300. Some (Musica, Shine, Leben) stayed longer than others and were kinda purchased/nearly purchased. Others were very attractive sonically but too expensive for my curtailed budget. All told none of them really hit the spot until the GRAAF Modena made an appearance. It arrived in stereo configuration delivering 20W or thereabouts, and while it wasn't quite powerful enough for my tastes it provided a sound that was just streets ahead of everything else that had been through the room. When I discovered that Ivan had the second one and that they were originally used as monoblocks (consecutive serial numbers!) I had to have them both. In truth, I think the mono'd pair lose a tiny bit of magic over the lower-powered stereo setup, but they have so much more drive and balls in mono form that there was no going back.

So that brings us to present day, and while I'm more or less through the horrible period of late 2009-early 2010, I still feel some of that old resentment at the money spent, so I'm at a bit of a crossroads. The resentment is born of the fact that I'm not 100% happy with the sound I have, and if I'm not happy then all the money spent has been wasted. If I can get the sound where I can enjoy my CDs every time I play them then all will be fine again and I can justify the high-end pricetags to myself. I'm going to see if I can fix that with a speaker change, but if I can't? Well, let's see...

That was long. Thanks for reading if you got this far!

Edit: I nearly forgot about the GRAAF GM13.5b mk II preamp that I bought last year and sold after a couple of months. I also nearly forgot about the Quad ESLs that continue to languish unused in the mancave. I wonder am I forgetting anything else...?

[tony]

This is great therapy keep it coming. I don't feel too bad now most of my madness has only taken place over the last couple of years. Hopefully I am now cured.

[nige2000]

This thread is a bit like confessions from a support group for addicts

Interesting reading though

[Diapason]

This thread is a bit like confessions from a support group for addicts

Having unburdened myself I feel better already.

[DaveF]

Great write up as always Simon. Glad you held onto your system though. When I was out of work for a while I'd say I was about 2 weeks away from having to sell my Ushers/Wadia/Gamut at knock down prices. Managed to get a job just in the nick of time and I was waiting a while. Cloney's were great to me during this period. Fair play to them.

[DaveF]

I've often wondered if the whole effort I went through was worth all that expense. I mean if I were to add it all up god knows what the final figure would be.
Any regrets? Well no, not in the slightest. The upside of it all is that I've learned a hell of a lot about hifi, being able to separate the myths from the facts, its turned me from a cable believer to skeptic but I think at this stage I can judge a system pretty quickly now after being through the mill.

[Adrian]

My first amplifier... Sony TA 343....with led's for output power levels.... wow oh wow...



Can't remember the speakers... or the CD player... but about 8 months later I upgraded to a Denon PMA 350SE, and a Denon DCD 425 player and Acoustic Energy AE109 speakers.

[DaveF]

....... I wonder am I forgetting anything else...?

You never mentioned the Devialet you had on loan. Not one breath. I'm hurt.

[jaybee]

System 1 ca. 1992

A small boy spends all his hard earned

CD Player Philips CD 450
Speakers JPW MiniMonitors
Amp Rotel RA-212


System 2 1994-1998
enter Joe Lanigan, stage left

"a far more organic evolution, beginning with the amplifier, which was a spectacular jump in quality, fabulous smooth, inky black presentation, next up Noel made me try a pair of ES11s in rosewood, now this was turning into a hifi....
of course shortly afterwards he gently enquired as to my degree of satisfaction with my source... he just so happened to have this beautiful American CD player which would marry wonderfully with my amp.... which of course it did!
Thus it remained for a number of happy years until I needed new banana plugs:
"Joe I need new bananas"
"sure call out; I'll sort you out...." did I leave with banana's? In a way I suppose, except they were attached to new Transparent Audio Music Wave Ultra Speaker cables
Mmmm this made a difference... back out to Noel, what have you I could try in interconnect terms Noel? ""ahhhh... I have a lovely very short digital interconnect here""

Exit Johny from Cloney with said interconnect, of course I had had to leave with the Audi Alchemy Digital Decoding Engine v3, Digital Transmission Interface, and dedicated Power Supply Three, seeing as how I wouldnt have had any use for a digital interconnect without a DAC and Jitter Filter


CD Player Audio Alchemy DDS III
DAC Audio Alchemy DDE v3, DTI
Pre-Amp B&K CS115
Power-Amp B&K ST202
Speakers Epos ES11


And there I stalled, happy out for long and many year, the hifi taking up residence in my parents' attic for various interludes abroad

Until one lovely day UPC arrived to fix the TV, and left a stripped offcut of cabled draped across the back of the hifi stand, waiting patiently for me to turn on the amp, and booffff ........

Speakers voice coils fried, power amp banjaxed, tears flowing like there was no tomorrow

System 3 The Present Day

enter Ivan, and the 'wam, and the classifieds here

Amp Primare A20
Speakers System Audio SA1750
Turntable Systemdek IIx900
Phono Stage Cambridge Audio 551p
DAC Arcam rDac
Computer imac/macbook pro/airplay


I am mostly happy now, but…..
..As we have moved new house, 'er Indoors thinks the speakers arent suitable décor wise - target --> Sonus Fabers

...I think I have too many boxes - target --> A valve integrated with a phono stage (PrimaLuna/Copland/Jadis Orchestra) an all singing all dancing amp/dac with phono stage (Rotel RA12/ BelCanto C5)

...Id love a really beautiful turntable (gyrodec/clearaudio)

This all of course is tempered by the fact that we have just moved house and disposable income is at an all time low, what with couches and bookshelves and curtains and light fixtures and...and....and...!!)

Just finding a gap in the day, when I can sit down and listen is hard enough, but I'm enjoying it a good deal

of course Simon hex-ed me back at System 1; whatever it was about my room at that point, the soundstage bloomed out of a dead silent void….
Simon lamented his suspended wooden floor, and told me one day I'd understand, one day……