dcollins wrote on Sat, 21 January 2006 20:09 |
LP-12 TT Homebrew phono preamp Vandersteen 2ci speakers Hombrew amp (Originally a Sumo) Sony XA3es CD player
Whatever cables I had lying around.
DC
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DC, I thought you had poo-poohed the Linn... bad construction and all. But to me, regardless of the cheapo construction, it does sound good.
My business takes up 4 rooms in my home... employees come to work each week day, so it's real hard for me to separate my home listening from my studio except after hours. We have a "relaxed" listening room in the living room that has an unremarkable system in it. During office hours it doubles as an alternative listening environment, but outside of office hours it's a bonafied living room and "party room" with couches, hardwood floor, area rug, fireplace and all.
I've always built my mastering room around an "audiophile" approach. It's very homey. People come in and feel very comfortable. The gear that's in front of you does not have a big presence either visually or acoustically. So you feel you are in an audiophile's dedicated listening room. However, the signal still goes through the Avocet, even my phono, which is also a Linn Sondek LP12 with an Itok arm feeding a Spectral DMC-10 phono preamp. Fortunately I consider the Avocet to be "audiophile-quality".
There has been a quiet revolution over the past 20 or more years, where professional manufacturers have begun to pull away from using opamps or 1950's-style unregulated tube circuits and replace them with custom discrete circuits and low-noise, lower distortion tube circuits. So there is now considerable overlap in the sonic performance and sound of some so-called "audiophile" gear and pro gear. You'll find that in products from Cranesong, Millenia, Forssell, Manley, etc. The overlap is very strong and the main difference is the price tag and lack of a 30 pound custom-machined front panel.
You'll find double regulated power supplies, discrete opamps, minimalist signal chains, balanced or unbalanced I/O in a lot of pro gear now. Add to that a philosophy of far more headroom before clipping than the average consumer gear and it may even sound better than the $10,000 "audiophile" stuff even if it doesn't have a fancy 10 pound machined front panel. The power amp I use (Pass X250) is also a "crossover" power amp that audiophiles would be proud to own.
I guess that's why my mastering room is also my listening room.
BK