Audio Equipment I Have Owned

[tmallin]

This post updated 9/19/23:

I am now 70 years old and retired. Audio has been a hobby of mine for about 57 years. I got my first component stereo system--AR-4x speakers, AR-XA turntable, Dynaco SCA-35 tube integrated amplifier, Shure M91E cartridge--for the discounted package price of about $250 around 1965-66 when I was 13 or 14 years old. Before that, I had one of those suitcase-style stereo record players with detachable speakers (each with a 6" x 9" oval driver) from Voice of Music and it cost at least $70. The component system was hugely better sounding.

Looking back over the years at my parade of acquisitions is very pleasantly nostalgic. It's been a lot of fun.

Sure, it's also been very expensive, but no more so, I suspect, than many other hobbies. My first wife used to say that she was glad I had a hobby that kept me home at nights and on weekends and not interested in sports, so she wouldn't be a tavern, golf, or football widow. My second wife takes the same view.

I have never been much of a hoarder of audio equipment or anything else. For awhile I had my "audio graveyard" storage area in the basement for things I was not currently using in an active audio system, and that reached its peak when I was seriously collecting and restoring vintage speakers. That audio graveyard is mostly gone now, however, despite my having suddenly down-sized from six to two active audio systems three years ago when I moved to a new home. I sold or gave away most of the extra items. I have no spare large components like speakers or amps. What extras I have are some accessories, wires, and extra diffuser and absorber room treatments, all of which all fit in a small closet in my upstairs stereo room.

That said, here's the list of the speakers and other equipment I currently own or remember owning.

Speakers (yes, this is a long list)

AR 4x speakers (my first component speakers, and I later had another pair in my office stereo)
AR-2ax, AR-5, AR-3a (at least two pairs of each, all acquired when these were 40+ year-old vintage speakers)
AR-303a (from 1995 or so, balanced much differently from the vintage ARs)
Rectilinear 11 (replaced the AR-4x back in college)
Rectilinear III tallboy (acquired as a vintage speaker--I'd like to get a nice pair of lowboy IIIs someday, as well as some Rectilinear 12s)
KLH Model 12 (twice as a vintage speaker--I've finally learned my lesson about those)
EPI 100 (modified with Human Speaker tweeter, upgraded wiring and capacitor, and five-way binding posts)
Human Speakers Model 81 (these are basically modernized clones of the EPI 100 speakers)
Large Advent (4, stacked or in Dynaquad arrangement in college, later stacked with Micro Acoustics Microstatic tweeters atop in law school and later)
DCM Time Window (the original one reviewed by Peter Aczel in The Audio Critic)
Snell Type A Improved
Thiel 03a
Thiel CS3 (the two Thiels were complemented by warm-sounding Grace and Grado cartridges and Linn Sondek turntable I owned concurrently)
B&W 801 Series II Matrix (both stock and later modified per Van Alstine to smooth the highs and extend the bass without the need for the B&W electronic equalizer)
Carver Amazing Platinum Mk IV (would have kept much longer than I did if the ribbons hadn't kept burning out)
Siefert Maxim III (long-term in bedroom system, mounted high up and not angled down so that the 12 kHz treble peak wasn't really audible)
Sequerra Met 7 Mk II and Mk IV (den system)
Totem Dreamcatcher mains, center and subs (7.2 home theater system)
B&W Acoustitune woofer (den system--very nice flexible passive sub for a small space)
Cello Stradivari Premier
Legacy Whisper
Legacy Low Frequency Extreme subwoofer
ACI Titan II LE subwoofer (2)
JL Audio Fathom f113 subwoofer (2)
Ohm Walsh 5 Mk III
Linkwitz Orion 1.3
Harbeth Monitor 40
Harbeth Monitor 40.1
Harbeth Monitor 40.2
Gradient 1.3
Gradient 1.5 Helsinki
Sanders 10C electrostatic hybrid
Gradient Revolution Active + SW-T subwoofer towers
Spendor SP1/2
Stirling Broadcast LS3/6
AudioKinesis Swarm subwoofers (4)
Janszen Valentina Active speakers
Gradient 1.4
Dutch & Dutch 8c
Sanders 10e electrostatic hybrid
Graham LS8/1 Signature
Watkins Generation 4

[Continued in Post #12 below for equipment other than speakers]

 

[audioguy]

That is quite the list. I'm a bit older than you and can't recall every single piece of gear I have owned. But like you, my first stereo (in college) was the turntable and 2 speakers in the "suitcase style" enclosure.

Once out of college, the addiction began in earnest. And out of all of that equipment (maybe my list is 75% as long as yours), only a couple were major losers. The rest provided great enjoyment. The piece/system I remember with the greatest affection was my pair of Apogee Divas (driven by some huge Krell mono blocks, Audio Research preamp, and the original VPI turntable with custom Rabco arm). Behind that for fond remembrance were my Dunlavy SC-VIs driven by Bryston mono amps and a multitude of front end gear.

Great (but hugely expensive) hobby.

Thanks for the post. Brought back some nice memories.

 

[tmallin]

Actually, I also owned a monophonic record player earlier than the Voice of Music stereo suitcase. It was more briefcase sized and the speaker was between the turntable and tonearm, below the plinth, aiming up through holes in the wood plinth, as I recall. Those were very common as kids' toys in the pre-stereo era (1957-58 was when the first stereo LPs were released in the USA on Audio Fidelity--I had The Brave Bulls recording of bullfight music).

In addition to equipment I've owned, I suppose I could write quite a list of equipment I seriously considered buying, but never owned and why. For example, I came very close many times to purchasing Vandersteen, Magnepan, and Quad speakers, but there were always sonic and other (besides financial) reasons at the time for not pulling the trigger.

 

[JackD201]

Hi Tom it would be nice if you could also make a list of the ones you wish you had kept. The ones that got away, so to speak.

 

[tmallin]

"Regrets, I've had a few . . . ." (Frank Sinatra, "My Way")

Very few actually. I think one needs to distinguish between "momentary" regrets during the period soon after the departure of the equipment and regrets when viewed from later in life, once one sees more of the arc of the development of equipment and one's goals for home music reproduction.

Even as to "momentary" regrets, there have been very few, considering the lengthy list. Giving up the Snell Type A Improved for the Thiel 03a was one. I knew the minute the dealer hooked up the Snells in his show room to a 200 wpc amp as I was trading them in that the Snells just needed a beefier amp than the Audionics 70 watters I'd been using. The dealer was obviously awestruck, as was I, at the sound that came from the Snells. But viewed from a distance of 30 years or so, I'm sure current speakers are much better yet.

The same thing happened as I was selling my B&W Matrix 801Series II with the Van Alstine mods. Only then, as I was quickly demoing them for my buyer with some cheap lamp cord as speaker cables that I realized that all the expensive cables I'd been using had been a mistake. Van Alstine had voiced his crossover around the sound of Radio Shack lamp cord (something I sort of knew, but had ignored) and with such cheapo speaker cables the sound of the speakers took on a new-found coherence and smoothness. But again, current speakers are quite superior.

I also regretted for a short while selling my Linn Sondek. Not the the Linn itself was any great loss (never has there been a more highly overrated component, in my opinion). But I did regret for many years not getting another turntable and keeping my LP collection. I regretted not modifying an old AR XA turntable and taking it where it could go--much further than the Linn, I feel.

It has only been in the last few decade or so, with the advent of high quality DACs and internet streaming of music through Tidal that I've fully gotten over the lack of an LP collection. Now, with the availability of millions of old albums in high quality digital transfers with a few screen touches, all is well on that front.

I parted with one component due to an oversight. When I moved a couple of years ago, the movers lost (or so I thought) the long threaded metal rods which were an integral and vital part of my Arcici Suspense rack. After looking for them for over six months and making inquiries of the movers and new owners of my old house, I finally gave up hope of locating them and junked the rest of the rack. About a year later I found the rods packed embedded in the packing paper inside a large box which I thought contained only framed artwork I didn't have wall space for in my new home. But, as it turned out, that rack would not have been a good physical fit in either of the rooms of my new house which have audio systems.

Finally (I said this list was short, right?), I do regret parting with my fully Maui-modded TacT RCS 2.2XP AAA. It had a quite fine DAC and was a Swiss Army Knife of a modern front-end digital preamp/crossover/EQ. At the time I gave it up, I figured that far more advanced and easier to use DSP-based EQ in an audio component box was just around the corner and the TacT software was rather buggy and would always be that way given that the company went out of business. But now several years down the road, I'm still waiting after many months for the appearance of the DSPeaker X4, a unit which STILL is not as flexible as the TacT was and is of as yet unknown sonic quality. Makers of EQ systems have in the interim concentrated mostly on software plugins for computer-based audio, not component-style EQ boxes.

But even this last regret is remediable. My upstairs system based around the Janszen Valentina Active speakers doesn't really need EQ the way I have the speakers and listening position set up. And the Harbeth M40.1s downstairs sound and measure not bad at all. I have EQ boxes which will work with either system, but have not really felt a "need" to use them because the frequency response errors are not obvious in either set up.

 

[JackD201]

Thanks for taking the time Tom. I always appreciate how insightful you are.

I once came across the Gradient Active in a show and I remember thinking that they were very very good, not just for the price but very good period. I figured that given the flexibility of their open bass configuration they would be a lot of fun to play with. That or possibly frustrating. What was your experience with them?

 

[tmallin]

The Gradient Revolution Active was a great fit for the concrete bunker basement listening room I had in my prior home. That room was a true pig for bass, having VERY solid walls and virtually no bass leakage. A lot of speakers really needed bass equalization in that room--thus the vast array of equalizers I've owned.

The Gradient, with its dipolar bass, was, along with other bass dipoles I owned, the best overall solution for reasonably flat bass in such a room. Such bass required the least equalization. The downside of dipolar bass, in my experience, is that, even in such a bass-resonant room, dipole bass, while having plenty of detail (the opposite of one-note bass), it lacks impact. With prior dipole bass speakers (e.g., the Legacy Whispers), I added heavily equalized box subs in the corners to help fill in the bottom end. But the solution wasn't complete since the subs needed to be rolled off below the frequency where the lack of impact was still audible in the dipoles.

The Gradient Revolution Actives were the last speakers I used in that basement room and they did indeed provide the best overall solution to the bass problems with that room. It was a "brute force" solution. I augmented the Revolution Active with what I dubbed the Gradient SW-T, which was never an official Gradient product. It combined three of the Gradient SW modules into a 90-inch tall bass tower, each of which contained six twelve-inch woofers. Added to the Revolution Active's woofers, below 200 Hz I had eight 12-inch dipole woofers per side operating in a room measuring 20' x 13' x 8'. These were driven by four Sanders Magtech Monoblocs producing over 1200 watts each and the bass load was a very easy 16 ohms (woofers wired in series). There was plenty of SPL capability right on down to 20 Hz and there was just enough bass impact to satisfy--well, almost enough.

Above the bass, this Gradient system was an imaging and soundstaging champ and had very flat and natural sounding frequency response with no EQ needed. The coaxial nature of the mid/high frequency drivers meant it lacked the last little bit of high frequency detail and extension and the midrange did not have quite the "magic" of the Harbeth M40.1 Radial cone (not much in my experience does, except the Janszen electrostats), and the perceived height of the presentation was a bit on the low side (point source with a vengeance), but those were really the only other minor shortcomings.

Then I got remarried and moved to a new home. Both of the audio rooms in my new home are far more "leaky" in the bass. Thus, dipole bass is not needed. Besides, of all the audio equipment I had in the old house (I had six systems set up there), the only components my new wife objected to from an aesthetic viewpoint were those Gradient speakers (all black, kind of like the obelisks in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Thus, I sold them and have happily used the Harbeths downstairs for two and a half years now; all the friends and relatives who hear that simple Harbeth set up seem quite impressed. Upstairs I've experimented a lot and am now happily married to the Janszen Valentina Actives--which, by the way, my wife LOVES for both their looks and sound, as do I.

If you are looking for a Gradient speaker at a reasonable price, keep your eye out for a used pair of Gradient 1.3 speakers. This highly unusual looking compact design has ported bass, a treble line source, and dipole midrange. They have no right sounding that good for so little money ($2,000 or less on the used market, if you can find a pair). They are best bi-wired or bi-amped. The person I sold them to was ecstatic with everything about them. Perhaps they are another component I have a bit of regret parting with; they would fit well in my new home. Not the bass extension of the Revolution, but fine bass impact and more bass extension than the Helsinki 1.5, no short images, great staging, very fine mids and highs. Beware that these are old enough now that the woofers may need refoaming and the crossover caps may need replacing, but those are probably relatively easy fixes.

 

[tmallin]

I suppose that another logical question is whether there is equipment which I wished I had owned but never have because of financial or other reasons. My bank account is not unlimited, though from my list it might seem so. Still, I've never played the audiophile game at the level some others here have. No Wilson WAMMs or even Grand Slams, for example. I can't recall ever having paid over $20,000 for a component, and purchases even at that level were very few. For my "reference system," purchases of between $5,000 and $15,000 have usually been the top of what I've spent.

To my way of thinking, I have not missed out on much by so "limiting" the price level at which I've engaged in this hobby. I've attended AXPONA the past few years and attended many other audio shows in years prior to that. While there have been very expensive systems which were fairly impressive at such shows or at dealers or friends, I can't say that I've heard much in such venues which so clearly outclass what I already owned at the time that I "just had to have it."

I think this has been so for quite a few years now. High-end audio has largely lost its way, in my opinion. With the decline of the use of the sound of unamplified classical or other acoustic music in a good hall as a reference standard for home audio reproduction, too few audio manufacturers, and too few of their customers, really have a solid idea of what their gear should sound like in terms of a natural frequency balance when reproducing such music. There has instead been increasing emphasis on imaging and soundstage, reproduction of detail in the recorded sound, a general overemphasis of various parts of the high frequency octaves, and a disconnectedness in the bass area with subs plumbing the stygian depths accompanied by a lack of power and warmth further up below the midrange, all in the name of "tight" bass and clarity with a lack of "muddiness." Speakers and systems which can reproduce even a modicum of the bass power and warmth one hears in any good concert hall are looked down on by many.

Those using rock music as a reference are truly adrift without a paddle, frequency-response-wise. Such audiophiles seem to gravitate instead toward demanding clean, impactful reproduction at ungodly SPL levels. They don't seem to realize that if all you want is clean SPL and lots of impact, the Klipschorn solved that problem 70+ years ago, is still available, and still is better than most any $100,000+ speakers in those respects. If you want a drum kit in your listening room, you will struggle to better the sound of K-horns in any remotely decent room. But if you want a natural sounding piano or voice in your room, you will have to look elsewhere.

As far as natural sounding balance goes, I usually find major problems with the extremely high-priced spread at shows. Even if the price were 1/10 as high, I wouldn't buy many of the products or combinations of products which have gained rave reviews in certain quarters or which seem to transfix a lot of listeners at such venues.

But maybe my viewpoint is colored by my inability to afford such products anyway. Maybe my psychological defense mechanism is to simply hear such product efforts as sounding "bad for the money." So I won't name any names in this group. I'll just mention a few more reasonably priced speakers that I often thought about buying in the past but never did for some combination of sonic and other reasons which seemed valid to me at the time.

Quad speakers: From the ESL-57 through the current 2812/2912 models, there is much to applaud, especially in the smaller models. It is not for nothing that the 57 topped the list of most desirable speakers of all time in the TAS article a few years ago. In certain demos, the 57s and later models have seemed so magical. But I have always refrained from pulling the trigger out of concern about damaging them with orchestral power music or other music played too loudly. I don't want to constantly worry about accidental damage. I also don't want a speaker which just can't play at satisfying volumes with material containing strong bass.

Vandersteen speakers: My all-time favorite of the line was the Model 4, but many have seemed well-balanced, very clear, and very well focused. There is a tendency, however, to sound dynamically restrained (perhaps because of the first-order crossovers?) and, in more recent models, to sound overly strong in the top octaves.

Magnepan speakers: I'm sure I'm not the only one here who can name a particular Maggie hearing as an almost transcendental experience. For me it was hearing a pair of Tympani IVDs in a large dealer showroom playing organ music. But once the multi-panel Maggies disappeared, so did most of the magic, as far as I'm concerned. While later Magnepans with the ribbon tweeter were indeed clearer and did not need to be played full out to sound maximally realistic in balance, the frequency balance tipped too much in favor of that tweeter. It has taken several generations of ribbon tweeter to pull the balance back to where the tweeter doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, but the bass and mids and overall volume capability just isn't quite robust enough for my current tastes or a lot of modern music and there is still a general lack of coherence caused by the side-by-side drivers. Sure, they sound big--but they sound big all the time and also sound quite unfocused. I have wanted to like these for decades, but never have consistently been wowed.

What would attract me away from my love affair with BBC-inspired monitors and the Janszen electrostatics? There is one speaker type which I'd still like the explore: a crossoverless, sealed box, vertical line array of identical drivers with somewhat limited horizontal dispersion. The line array would automatically limit the vertical dispersion. It would be better yet if such a speaker were offered in an active (internally amplified), DSP-equalized version. There would need to be a lot of relatively small drivers to have enough treble extension and bass SPL capability, even with equalization.

To my knowledge, there is only one such speaker being marketed today (actually, it has been around for over a decade), and it does not have digital EQ (only analog EQ) and is not internally amplified. Still, I intend to seek out an audition. It is the IDS-25 and is designed and built by the former designer of McIntosh speakers, Roger Russell.

 

[audioguy]

Finally (I said this list was short, right?), I do regret parting with my fully Maui-modded TacT RCS 2.2XP AAA. It had a quite fine DAC and was a Swiss Army Knife of a modern front-end digital preamp/crossover/EQ. At the time I gave it up, I figured that far more advanced and easier to use DSP-based EQ in an audio component box was just around the corner and the TacT software was rather buggy and would always be that way given that the company went out of business. But now several years down the road, I'm still waiting after many months for the appearance of the DSPeaker X4, a unit which STILL is not as flexible as the TacT was and is of as yet unknown sonic quality. Makers of EQ systems have in the interim concentrated mostly on software plugins for computer-based audio, not component-style EQ boxes.

I had the modded TacT as well. Actually, I owned 3 different TacTs, including their not-ready-for-prime surround processor. The 2.2XP was a very cool piece. While certainly not only a DSP piece, the Datasat RS20i provides much superior sonics than did the TacT, but you can not do in real-time what you could do with the TacT.

What do you find problematic with the software based solutions like, for example, Dirac that runs on a PC? Have you diddled at all with any of the miniDSP products that run Dirac ..... and at incredibly reasonable prices

 

[tmallin]

The Datasat RS20i does appear to be a luxury device, but at $23,000+, it is out of my price range. With all those channels, it definitely seems aimed at elaborate home theater set ups, not the two-channel stereo I play with. Good to know, however, that the results sound so good.

I have no real problem with computers and work with them everyday. I am just old-fashioned enough not to want to futz with them as part of an audio system. Hidebound, I know. But I do make exceptions for the "computers" in DSP-based audio boxes and smart phones and tablets used to stream Web content to those boxes or control those boxes. Inconsistent, I know.

I never got around to transferring my CDs to digital files so I could play them from my computer. I still use my Oppo players to play CDs, HDCDs, SACDs, DVD-As, and Blu-ray Audio discs. But I more often use the Oppos to stream the Tidal versions. There is little sonic difference once a modern DAC like that available in my Lyngdorf TDAI-2170 or Benchmark DAC-3 DX is involved. Most of the discs I have are now on Tidal so, in my defense, I have leapfrogged from network based audio files to Internet-based audio files. There is no longer any reason to use a computer for music file serving.

Part of the problem with EQ systems is that modern ones (even the RoomPerfect in my Lyngdorf) often try to do too much, such as flattening highs and filling in bass dips. Take a look at the before and after graphs in the Secrets . . . review of the Datasat unit using Dirac Live. The computing power runs amok, leveling everything to the nth degree. Then you need to use manual controls to undo the damage of overly aggressive automatic equalization.

As those who have diddled with audio system equalization for many years before EQ plug-ins for computers became the rage have found out, for best overall sonic results:

1. You really shouldn't EQ much of anything above about 300 Hz. Below that frequency, what you measure at the listening position is all that matters. Thus, below about 300 Hz, you can and should apply equalization based on measurements made from the listening position.
2. The exception to this rule is if the problems you measure above 300 Hz at the listening position are actually caused by inherent problems with the speaker frequency response, rather than by room effects or effects caused by how you have set up your speakers or listening position.
3. To determine what the inherent speaker response above 300 Hz is, you need to measure the speaker either outdoors (usually impractical for several reasons), in an anechoic chamber (also impractical), or from quite close up (say, one meter) which is a decent compromise.
4. If the deviations from the desired response above 300 Hz which you measure at the listening position do not show up in the response curve as measured from close up on the speaker's design axis (usually orthogonal with the tweeter), you should not correct those deviations.
5. Apply EQ to eliminate the peaks measured from the listening position in the bass below 200 - 300 Hz. Do not try to fill in the dips.
6. If the bass sounds thin with those peaks removed, add a gentle lift beginning below about 200 Hz until the thin sound is gone. A shelf filter can work well for this.
7. Equalize away peaks or dips you found above 200 - 300 Hz in your nearfield speaker measurements, using those measurements, not what you measure from the listening position, to determine the amount of equalization to apply. Parametric filters are best for this part of the equalization. But remember that it is better yet to buy speakers which have little to correct in the midrange and highs since no equalization sounds better than no equalization at all. Think speakers like the Harbeth M40.x or Janszen. Equalization cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
8. You're done with electronic equalization.

[FONT=&amp]If this process looks similar to what you can do quite cheaply, easily, and quickly with the combination of a measurement system like the OmniMic V2 and an EQ box like the DSPeaker Antimode 2.0 Dual Core, you'd be correct. And THAT is the reason I'm hoping the DSPeaker X4 actually ships to me and others soon. It, like the Dual Core, is promised to do EQ this correct way with no more fuss or muss than the less transparent Dual Core. Initial measurements are taken from the listening position. The measurement sweep takes less than a minute. The DSPeaker units will not automatically equalize above 300 Hz or so. For EQ above that, you need to use manually applied parametric filters. The DSPeaker units will not fill in bass dips and they allow you to adjust the overall bass lift in 1 dB steps via remote control from the listening position. It is super easy and quick to get the bass sounding right which, with good speakers and an acoustically treated room, is usually most of the EQ battle. (With the later versions of the TacT RCS 2.2XP software you could defeat the automatic target curve equalization above a chosen frequency; the end product equalized sound was much better with the automatic EQ limited to 300 Hz or so.)[/FONT]

I should add that EQ systems which purport to equalize your system over a large area or from many spots are inherently compromised. If you regularly listen alone, measure only from that spot, as described above. The sweet spot will be less sweet if you equalize based on even a second seat, much less the entire room. I know there are differences of opinion about this, but I've done it both ways and, to my ears, there really is no comparison. Of course if you want the best sound for a group of listeners the multi-point measurement technique might work better for you, especially if the system allows some weighting toward the "most important" or "primary" listening position where YOU usually sit.

As I should also point out, even after EQ to a given measured on-axis mid- and high-frequency response, different speakers will sound different--have a different mid- and high-frequency balance--as heard from your listening position. Much of this is caused by the varying mid- and high-frequency dispersion among speakers. Wide dispersion speakers will bounce more sound off your listening room surfaces, causing the sound to be more forward, or bright, or airy, or some combination.

Usually, the sound will be unnaturally weighted toward the high frequencies. If that is the case, the best way to deal with that is not to muck around further with electronic equalization. The best way to address this issue is to add absorption or dispersion panels, furniture, or decor items to reduce the amount of this mid and high frequency "spray" which reaches your ears at the listening position. Alternatively, you can, as I have done off and on for years (currently on), intentionally choose speakers with rather limited (aka "controlled") mid- and high-frequency dispersion. All that counts in a reference level system is how it sounds from your listening seat. Pay no attention to a certain dullness outside that sweet spot. Just don't be surprised if you still need at least dispersive room treatment even with narrow pattern speakers, especially in a small-ish room.

 

[audioguy]

Some good points. I would NEVER set the target in Dirac where it is set in the example you referenced. I would slide it down 5 db's or so, such that almost no dips were "fixed" Narrow band dips (at that amplitude) are almost always audible at some point if EQ'd. And with Dirac, you can shape the curve anyway you see fit.

No need to spend $23,000 to solve a two channel problem. THIS miniDSP product at about $800 provides a one box Dirac solution with digital in and out. There are other options as well. They have version with built in DACs if you care to go that approach. In addition, with Dirac, there are "curtains" that you can use to tell what area of the FR you want Dirac to pay attention to.

I do apply "the selfish rule" when running EQ. While I don't only use the MLP, all measurement locations are very close to it. To the untrained masses, my room sounds quite good with no EQ so when we have guests, they could not care - and I usually give up the sweet spot when we have company. When I watch a movie, I always do so the first time alone. I like it louder than my wife and I also decide if she (or anyone else we might invite) would have any interest. And I am the only one who listens to music sitting in one spot.

 

[tmallin]

Continued from post #1 above.

Of course, my equipment churn has not been limited to speakers. Here are lists of other audio equipment I own or remember owning.

Headphones & Headphone Amps

Koss ESP-6
Koss ESP-9
Koss ESP-10
Sennheiser 414
Sennheiser 424
Grado HP-1 (aka HP 1000)
Grado RS-1
Logitech Clear-Chat USB headphones
NAD VISO HP-50 (four pairs)
Sennheiser HD800S
Focal Utopia
Audeze LCD-4
Audeze LCD-4z
Mr. Speakers Ether II
Joseph Grado Signature HPA-1 (battery & AC)
Audio by Van Alstine headphone amp
Sim Audio Moon Neo 430HA
Benchmark DAC-3 DX (includes a seriously good built-in headphone amp)
Benchmark DAC-3 HGC (ditto)
Benchmark HPA-4 (an even better built-in headphone amp)
Mjolnir Audio KGSSHV Carbon electrostatic headphone amp (to drive the Stax and Koss electrostatic headphones)
Stax SR-009S electrostatic headphones
Stax SR-X9000 electrostatic headphones
Stax SR-007 Mk1 electrostatic headphones
Stax SR-007 Mk2.9 electrostatic headphones

Integrated Amps

Dynaco SCA-35 (my first amp and the only pure-tube component I've ever owned)
AR Amplifier (the ideal amp for Dynaquad surround because of its built-in difference circuit--owned twice, once during college and then again to drive vintage AR speakers)
Pioneer SA 9100
Lyngdorf TDAI-2170 (magnificent except for the RoomPerfect)

All-in-One Systems

JVC FS 7000 Ultra Compact Component System (two of them, one in kitchen and one at the office)

Receivers

Sony something from the 1980s. It lasted for 20+ years in my bedroom system and never sounded anything other than very good in that context.
Denon AVR5803A (basement home theater system)
Harmon Kardon something (nice sounding in den system until it overheated and failed)
Denon AVR something (den system--okay, but not as good sounding as the HK had been)
Arcam AVR600 (living room system in old house; undoubtedly the best sounding receiver I've ever owned)

Preamps & Stereo Processors

Audionics BT-2
Marcoff PPA (pre-preamp for moving coil cartridge)
Acoustic Research Stereo Remote Control (SRC)
NAD 1020
PS Audio 4H
Mod Squad Line Drive
Electronic Visionary Systems (EVS) Ultimate Attenuators
Audio by Van Alstine FET-Valve preamp
Audio by Van Alstine Hughes SRS stereo processor
Carver Sonic Hologram C-9
Dynaquad Adaptor (real and DIY versions)
Cello Palette Preamp
Bryston BP-25
Bryston BP-26
TacT RCS 2.2XP AAA (first stock and then a later unit fully Maui Modded--both had built-in Ambiophonics XTC processing)
Sanders preamp
Benchmark DAC3 DX
Benchmark DAC3 HGC
*Benchmark DAC3 B
Benchmark HPA4

Power Amps

Audionics CC-2 (2)
Amber ST-70
Threshold SA-300
Mark Levinson No.23
Audio by Van Alstine FET-Valve 500 (2)
Cello Duet
Bryston 7B-ST (4)
Bryston 7B-SST (4)
Sanders Magtech Monos (4)
Lyngdorf SA-2400
Benchmark AHB2 (two, bridged for mono)
Sanders Magtech stereo (two of them for Sanders 10e speakers)

Turntables

AR-XA
Dual 1229
Denon 2550
Linn Sondek Valhalla (my last turntable; I sold it around 1990)

Tonearms

JH Formula 4
Grace 747

Cartridges

Shure M91E
Shure M91ED
Shure V15IIIE
Shure V15IIIG
Shure V15IV
Shure V15V
Microacoustics 2002e (beryllium cantilever)
ADC XLM
Grace 9E
Grado Signature 8
Fidelity Research FR-1 Mk IIIF

Tuners

Dynaco FM-5 (I owned and used this probably longer than any other component, from 1973 until at least 1994)
Sony STJ-75
Audio by Van Alstine FET Valve tuner (a Hafler tuner with FET-Valve output stage)
Tandberg 3001A
Fanfare FT-1A
Sansui TU-X1
Day Sequerra M4r HD tuner

Cassette Decks & Microphones

Sony Walkman Professional
Nakamichi ZX-7
Audio Technica AT8022 X/Y Stereo Microphone

CD Players/DACs

Sony 701ES
PS Audio CD-1A
Sony ES CD changer (bedroom system)
Pioneer Elite DV-59AVi (home theater system)
Audio by Van Alstine FET-Valve CD player
Cello Marantz CDR-20 + Reference DAC
Marantz SA-1 SACD player
PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport + DAC
Various Oppos: 971, BDP-83, BDP-83SE, BDP-95, BDP-105 stock, BDP-105 EVS-Modified, BDP-105D EVS-Modified, UDP-205
Benchmark DAC-3 DX
Benchmark DAC-3 HGC
Benchmark DAC-3 B (for headphone system)

Digital Audio Streamers

Logitech Squeezebox Touch (seven at one point, now down to two for office and kitchen systems)
Blue Sound Node (two for Tidal until that service became available on Squeezebox)
E-Z Cast (regular, pro, and 5G models)
Apple Airport Express
Amazon Fire
Apple TV
Oppo BDP-105/105D players (for Tidal)
Google Chromecast
Auralic Aries G2
Lumin U1 Mini
Lumin X1
Roon Nucleus+

Equalizers

Cello Palette Preamp
Z-Systems rdp-1
Legacy Steradian (for Legacy Whisper speakers)
Rives PARC
Rane DEQ-60L
TacT RCS 2.2XP AAA stock and fully Maui-modded
Audient ASP231
DSPeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 Dual Core (both 2012 and 2013 models)
Behringer DCX2496 + DEQ2496 (also provided stereo shuffling processing)
ART EQ355
RoomPerfect (in Lyngdorf TDAI-2170)
Z-Systems rdq-1
DSPeaker Anti-Mode X4
Roon (not used)
dbx VENU360

Wires (full sets or bits and pieces of power, speaker, interconnect, digital, USB)

Monster Cable speaker cable
Monster Interlink Reference A interconnects
MIT 330 and 330 Shotgun interconnects and MH 750 and MH 750 Shotgun speaker cables
Audioquest Clear and Diamond speaker cable
Straightwire Musicable and Maestro speaker cable
Cello Strings interconnects and speaker cables
Coincident Technology power cords
Kimber silver digital coax link
Mod Squad digital coax link
Acoustic Zen Silver Reference interconnects
Mogami Gold balance interconnects
Benchmark Studio & Stage speaker cables and balanced XLR interconnects
Bryston speaker cables and interconnects (by Van Damme)
Blue Jeans Cable (interconnects, digital links, speaker cables, HDMI)
Absolute Power Cords from GTT Audio
Apogee Wyde-Eye and Wyde-Eye A/D coaxial and AES/EBU digital links
Wireworld Platinum Starlight USB
Oyaide USB
DNM balanced interconnects, speaker cables, and HFTNs
Triode Wire Labs 7+ and Digital American (regular and high power) power cords
Triode Wire Labs Discrete USB cable

Racks/Platforms/Stands/Vibration Protection

Target equipment racks and amp stands
Sound Organisation floor tables (for Linn Sondek and early CD players)
Arcici Suspense rack
Sound Anchor speaker stands
Skylan speaker stands
Bright Star Audio Big Rock (sandbox), Little Rock, and Air bladder support
Townshend Seismic Sink
Black Diamond Racing shelves and cones
Vibraplane Active
Minus-K platform
Mapleshade amp platforms and Isoblocks
Ikea tables (as speaker and equipment stands)
Carolina Cottage (stools used as speaker stands)
Salamander Archtype
A/V Room Service Equipment Vibration Protectors (EVPs)
Various isolation devices from felt to Platter Matter, to Blu-Tac, to Sorbothane, NAVCOM, Aurios, and Symposium Iso-Blocks

Power Treatment, Regeneration, Filtering, and Power Supplies

PS Audio Power Plants--several
Pure Power
MIT Z-Stabilizer (owned and used for 20 years or so)
Dedicated electrical system or circuits for audio in two houses
P.I. Audio UberBUSS (2), BUSS Depot, and hand modified electrical receptacles
Keces P3 and P8 LPS power supplies
Uptone Audio EtherRegen ethernet switch
GigaFOILv4 Inline Ethernet Filter

Room Treatments

Sonex--lots of it, first 3", then 4" thick
PI Audio Group AQD Diffusers, lots of them
AlphaSorb Flat Acoustic Foam, 4"- thick white, lots of it

Various Accessories

FM Antennas: BIC Beam Box, Channel Master FM-9 Stereo Probe, home-made Rhombic antenna, plus regular dipole antennas
Record and stylus cleaners such as Discwasher, Dust Bug, LAST
Various metal cleaners and treatments such as Tweek, Kontac,*Caig ProGold/Deoxit-Gold (a very long-running favorite from HP's first mention of it to the present), and *JENA Labs Electrical Contact Enhancement Fluid
Anti-static products from sprays like Static-Gard and *Eco to guns like the *Zerostat and Ionoclast, to demagnetizers of the bulk-tape variety
CD cleaners/Treatments: *L'Air du Son, *Optrix, Armor All, Monster CD rings, *Marigo CDdamper, *CD Stoplight, Auric Illuminator, Vivid
Audio-Desk CD trimmer
Kanex Pro Audio HDMI De-Embedder

 

[tmallin]

I thought it might be fun to post pictures of some of the equipment I've owned over the decades. This project also gave me the opportunity to review the 88 scrapbooks my first wife made of our life together in order to take pictures of old pictures and write ups she created about my equipment over the years.

Not that any of these photos "prove" that I actually owned any of the extensive list of items mentioned above, but the context and amateur nature of these photos at least suggest that they are by no means stock photos I got from somewhere online. I even appear in some of these photos.

Unfortunately I have no photos of my first component-based stereo I purchased when I was 13 or 14 back around 1965-66. Thus I have no photos of my Dynaco SCA-35 integrated amp, AR XA Turntable, or the few Shure cartridges which went in that tonearm. But while I have no photos of my original AR-4x speakers, I currently own a pair of those speakers purchased as vintage refurbished speakers from Vintage AR. Here's a photo of those in my current office system, together with a Squeezebox Touch and the control unit for the JVC FS 7000 Ultra Compact Component System (for which the AR speakers are substituting for the JVC's speakers):



What I also don't have pictures of are any items I owned in college in 1970 - 1974. I had no camera with me in college and neither did my friends. But all I'm really missing from that era are the Rectilinear XI speakers which replaced my AR-4x in about 1971. My system didn't change much in those days; I was mainly buying new LPs. My college roommate and I combined our two stereo systems into a Dynaquad-type four-channel system in about 1972 with the two front speakers at desk/ear height and the rear speakers atop the bookcases in the rear of the room. Electric Ladyland was quite trippy on that system, I fondly remember. The height of that Dynaquad period occurred after I traded my original Dynaco SCA-35 tube integrated amp for the AR Amplifier. The AR made the perfect rear channel amp for a Dynaquad set up since it allowed total control of the left/right and front/back balance of the four speakers and since it also contained a function which subtracted left from right stereo channels, leaving only the difference between the two channels. What the passive Dynaquad adaptor did, the AR amp did actively, allowing a lot more flexibility in balancing the sound. The front/back balance could be manipulated to get the best results from both swirling psychedelic rock and classical hall ambiance .

Also in college, in 1972 or so, I replaced my Rectilinear XI speakers with a pair of the original Large Advent Loudspeakers in walnut.

In 1974, after I started law school in Chicago, I added another pair of Large Advents (this pair in the utility vinyl finish) and used them either in a Dynaquad arrangement or as "stacked Advents." I also traded my aging AR XA turntable for a new Dual 1229 and traded the AR Amplifier I'd acquired in college for a Pioneer SA-9100, which actually was better sounding in some ways, at least for stacked Advents.

Here's a picture of the stacked Advents from my law school married student apartment, circa 1976, my third year of law school. Yes, that's a black & white portable TV in the center, complete with rabbit ears. And notice I had not yet properly stacked the Advents with both tweeters in the center of the stack:



Later, I added a pair of Microstatic Tweeter arrays to the Advents. Not that this really improved the sound, I found, but they did look cool, I thought, and they were a gift from my new wife in our first year of marriage in 1977. That's back before my hair turned from that reddish brown to its current glorious grey:

 

[hogen]

I suppose that another logical question is whether there is equipment which I wished I had owned but never have because of financial or other reasons. My bank account is not unlimited, though from my list it might seem so. Still, I've never played the audiophile game at the level some others here have. No Wilson WAMMs or even Grand Slams, for example. I can't recall ever having paid over $20,000 for a component, and purchases even at that level were very few. For my "reference system," purchases of between $5,000 and $15,000 have usually been the top of what I've spent.

To my way of thinking, I have not missed out on much by so "limiting" the price level at which I've engaged in this hobby. I've attended AXPONA the past few years and attended many other audio shows in years prior to that. While there have been very expensive systems which were fairly impressive at such shows or at dealers or friends, I can't say that I've heard much in such venues which so clearly outclass what I already owned at the time that I "just had to have it."

I think this has been so for quite a few years now. High-end audio has largely lost its way, in my opinion. With the decline of the use of the sound of unamplified classical or other acoustic music in a good hall as a reference standard for home audio reproduction, too few audio manufacturers, and too few of their customers, really have a solid idea of what their gear should sound like in terms of a natural frequency balance when reproducing such music. There has instead been increasing emphasis on imaging and soundstage, reproduction of detail in the recorded sound, a general overemphasis of various parts of the high frequency octaves, and a disconnectedness in the bass area with subs plumbing the stygian depths accompanied by a lack of power and warmth further up below the midrange, all in the name of "tight" bass and clarity with a lack of "muddiness." Speakers and systems which can reproduce even a modicum of the bass power and warmth one hears in any good concert hall are looked down on by many.

Those using rock music as a reference are truly adrift without a paddle, frequency-response-wise. Such audiophiles seem to gravitate instead toward demanding clean, impactful reproduction at ungodly SPL levels. They don't seem to realize that if all you want is clean SPL and lots of impact, the Klipschorn solved that problem 70+ years ago, is still available, and still is better than most any $100,000+ speakers in those respects. If you want a drum kit in your listening room, you will struggle to better the sound of K-horns in any remotely decent room. But if you want a natural sounding piano or voice in your room, you will have to look elsewhere.

As far as natural sounding balance goes, I usually find major problems with the extremely high-priced spread at shows. Even if the price were 1/10 as high, I wouldn't buy many of the products or combinations of products which have gained rave reviews in certain quarters or which seem to transfix a lot of listeners at such venues.

But maybe my viewpoint is colored by my inability to afford such products anyway. Maybe my psychological defense mechanism is to simply hear such product efforts as sounding "bad for the money." So I won't name any names in this group. I'll just mention a few more reasonably priced speakers that I often thought about buying in the past but never did for some combination of sonic and other reasons which seemed valid to me at the time.

Quad speakers: From the ESL-57 through the current 2812/2912 models, there is much to applaud, especially in the smaller models. It is not for nothing that the 57 topped the list of most desirable speakers of all time in the TAS article a few years ago. In certain demos, the 57s and later models have seemed so magical. But I have always refrained from pulling the trigger out of concern about damaging them with orchestral power music or other music played too loudly. I don't want to constantly worry about accidental damage. I also don't want a speaker which just can't play at satisfying volumes with material containing strong bass.

Vandersteen speakers: My all-time favorite of the line was the Model 4, but many have seemed well-balanced, very clear, and very well focused. There is a tendency, however, to sound dynamically restrained (perhaps because of the first-order crossovers?) and, in more recent models, to sound overly strong in the top octaves.

Magnepan speakers: I'm sure I'm not the only one here who can name a particular Maggie hearing as an almost transcendental experience. For me it was hearing a pair of Tympani IVDs in a large dealer showroom playing organ music. But once the multi-panel Maggies disappeared, so did most of the magic, as far as I'm concerned. While later Magnepans with the ribbon tweeter were indeed clearer and did not need to be played full out to sound maximally realistic in balance, the frequency balance tipped too much in favor of that tweeter. It has taken several generations of ribbon tweeter to pull the balance back to where the tweeter doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, but the bass and mids and overall volume capability just isn't quite robust enough for my current tastes or a lot of modern music and there is still a general lack of coherence caused by the side-by-side drivers. Sure, they sound big--but they sound big all the time and also sound quite unfocused. I have wanted to like these for decades, but never have consistently been wowed.

What would attract me away from my love affair with BBC-inspired monitors and the Janszen electrostatics? There is one speaker type which I'd still like the explore: a crossoverless, sealed box, vertical line array of identical drivers with somewhat limited horizontal dispersion. The line array would automatically limit the vertical dispersion. It would be better yet if such a speaker were offered in an active (internally amplified), DSP-equalized version. There would need to be a lot of relatively small drivers to have enough treble extension and bass SPL capability, even with equalization.

To my knowledge, there is only one such speaker being marketed today (actually, it has been around for over a decade), and it does not have digital EQ (only analog EQ) and is not internally amplified. Still, I intend to seek out an audition. It is the IDS-25 and is designed and built by the former designer of McIntosh speakers, Roger Russell.

My Adyton Imagic 2.0 are that kind of speaker (a crossoverless, sealed box, vertical line array of identical drivers with somewhat limited horizontal dispersion). They do need to be paired with external subs however.

 

[tmallin]

Following law school, in 1977 my wife Marilyn and I moved to Southern Illinois where I briefly practiced law in that area. About this time I entered my Peter Aczel/The Audio Critic phase where I began to pay an inordinate amount of attention to Aczel's reviews and began acquiring some of the equipment he liked. Thus, on our first trip to Nashville, we visited a stereo store where, sad to say, I traded in my Advents and Microstatic tweeters for a pair of the original DCM Time Windows. These actually were quite good sounding speakers, lacking the razor sharpness of the competing Dahlquist DQ-10s the dealer also had on display.

A year later, we moved back to the Chicago area to a Wheaton apartment. While I kept the Time Windows for awhile, I began adding other Audio-Critic-approved items purchased from Quintessence Audio, then run out of founder, Frank Sousa's basement in another nearby suburb. (Quintessence Audio has now become one of the leading audio dealers in Chicogoland, sponsoring several of the largest demo rooms at the annual AXPONA.)

Here are some pictures of that Time Window set up, including one of me basking in its glow--or maybe I'm just guarding the system from prying hands. The earliest of these shots shows my Pioneer SA-9100 integrated amp. Other equipment in the later shots include the BIC Beam Box FM antenna atop the bookcase, my trusty Dynaco FM-5 tuner, an Audionics BT-2 preamp, my Dual 1229 turntable, and a pair of Audionics CC-2 amps.

 

[tmallin]

Never one to keep speakers very long, around 1980 or so I traded the Time Windows to local dealer Audio Creations for a pair of the beautiful Snell Type A Improved speakers. The remember the Snell boxes were really tough to fit into our vehicle at the time, a 1976 Dodge Colt. Even though each speaker came in two separately boxed sections, I could only get one speaker in the car at a time, so I had to make two trips to the dealer to get both speakers back to our apartment. From the picture it looks like by this time I'd replaced the Beam Box antenna with a balcony mounted FM dipole. The dark area to the left of the picture is a patio door which led to our fifth-floor balcony.

The second picture shows me wearing one of my early headphones, the Sennheiser HD424. I'd actually owned even more serious headphones back in high school and college in the 1968 - 1974 period, the Koss ESP-6 and then ESP-9. But those fell into disuse because the adaptors they used didn't work well with my later amps. I also had the early Sennheiser HD414, but abandoned those once I got the much better sounding HD424s. It was not until about a year or so ago that I rediscovered the glories of electrostatic headphones, including the last (and still current) model Koss made, the ESP-10. I'd be using that ancient model today in my computer desk system had I not gone whole hog and purchased the Stax SR-009S, driven by the Mjolnir KGSSHV Carbon electrostatic headphone amplifier.

 

[marty]

I thought it might be fun to post pictures of some of the equipment I've owned over the decades. This project also gave me the opportunity to review the 88 scrapbooks my first wife made of our life together in order to take pictures of old pictures and write ups she created about my equipment over the years.

Not that any of these photos "prove" that I actually owned any of the extensive list of items mentioned above, but the context and amateur nature of these photos at least suggest that they are by no means stock photos I got from somewhere online. I even appear in some of these photos.

Unfortunately I have no photos of my first component-based stereo I purchased when I was 13 or 14 back around 1965-66. Thus I have no photos of my Dynaco SCA-35 integrated amp, AR XA Turntable, or the few Shure cartridges which went in that tonearm. But while I have no photos of my original AR-4x speakers, I currently own a pair of those speakers purchased as vintage refurbished speakers from Vintage AR. Here's a photo of those in my current office system, together with a Squeezebox Touch and the control unit for the JVC FS 7000 Ultra Compact Component System (for which the AR speakers are substituting for the JVC's speakers):

View attachment 61783

What I also don't have pictures of are any items I owned in college in 1970 - 1974. I had no camera with me in college and neither did my friends. But all I'm really missing from that era are the Rectilinear XI speakers which replaced my AR-4x in about 1971. My system didn't change much in those days; I was mainly buying new LPs. My college roommate and I combined our two stereo systems into a Dynaquad-type four-channel system in about 1972 with the two front speakers at desk/ear height and the rear speakers atop the bookcases in the rear of the room. Electric Ladyland was quite trippy on that system, I fondly remember. The height of that Dynaquad period occurred after I traded my original Dynaco SCA-35 tube integrated amp for the AR Amplifier. The AR made the perfect rear channel amp for a Dynaquad set up since it allowed total control of the left/right and front/back balance of the four speakers and since it also contained a function which subtracted left from right stereo channels, leaving only the difference between the two channels. What the passive Dynaquad adaptor did, the AR amp did actively, allowing a lot more flexibility in balancing the sound. The front/back balance could be manipulated to get the best results from both swirling psychedelic rock and classical hall ambiance .

Also in college, in 1972 or so, I replaced my Rectilinear XI speakers with a pair of the original Large Advent Loudspeakers in walnut.

In 1974, after I started law school in Chicago, I added another pair of Large Advents (this pair in the utility vinyl finish) and used them either in a Dynaquad arrangement or as "stacked Advents." I also traded my aging AR XA turntable for a new Dual 1229 and traded the AR Amplifier I'd acquired in college for a Pioneer SA-9100, which actually was better sounding in some ways, at least for stacked Advents.

Here's a picture of the stacked Advents from my law school married student apartment, circa 1976, my third year of law school. Yes, that's a black & white portable TV in the center, complete with rabbit ears. And notice I had not yet properly stacked the Advents with both tweeters in the center of the stack:

View attachment 61784

Later, I added a pair of Microstatic Tweeter arrays to the Advents. Not that this really improved the sound, I found, but they did look cool, I thought, and they were a gift from my new wife in our first year of marriage in 1977. That's back before my hair turned from that reddish brown to its current glorious grey:

View attachment 61785

Love it! I had the Advents with the Microstatic tweeters as well!! But you've got me on the rabbit ears, only because I didn't have a TV in my dorm room.

 

[cjfrbw]

Some of my stuff when in residency, including great 13" TV and typewriter. i built those speakers in my father's garage the first year in college at UC Berkeley. Roberts Reel to Reel, miscellany, Fisher tube integrated. I eventually went to four large Advent speakers with Advent SoundSpace Control.

Also, me in Dental School and one with the tape deck. God, the hair and the mustache, those were the days. A relative sent these pictures after my mother's death.

 

[tmallin]

I kept the Snell Type I Improved speakers until sometime after we became homeowners (well, condo owners). We moved one town west to Winfield. Being an FM radio fan (big fan of classical WFMT) I made sure we got a unit on the second floor and which was on the east wall of the condo building. The 11'4" x 15'1" bedroom I converted to my stereo room was on the east wall of the building. This unit also had the sole access to the attic above the units where the building's TV antenna was located. That ceiling access door was in the hallway just outside my stereo room. That eventually gave me an opportunity (with permission from the condo association) to also mount a Channel Master FM9 Stereo Probe antenna up there and thus easily provide a strong signal to my trusty Dynaco FM-5 tuner. Before that, however, I continued to use either the BIC Beam Box, a simple dipole antenna taped high up on the east wall of the room, or use a home-made rhombic antenna after I saw plans for that design in one of my audio mags.

It was in this room where I first began experimenting with room treatments. First they were primitive ugly blankets and towels. Then, after reading a Bert Whyte article in Audio about the marvels of Sonex in a Live-End/Dead-End configuration, I began using that foam material. Thus began a love affair with absorptive room treatment which lasted decades.

I think the stereo transaction I most regret was trading my biamped Snell Type A Improved speakers (by this time I had Snell's dedicated electronic crossover for those speakers) for Thiel 03a speakers. I could never get good low bass from the Snells in either room I used them, apartment or condo. When I traded the Snells to Sounds Deluxe in Westmont and later heard them in the dealer's showroom plugged them into a 180-watt Luxman integrated amp, the sound quality blew me away and my heart sank. I instantly knew that what I'd needed all along was not new speakers, but just a single powerful amp rather than biamplifying with two 70-watt Audionics CC-2 amps or a CC-2 and an Amber 70 amp I had also purchased. It was at that moment that I started to re-examine my tendency to follow Peter Aczel's recommendations.

The Thiel speakers, both the 03a and the CS-3 I later replaced them with, did produce much better low bass in my room than the Snells did with the amps I had. However, the Thiels were bright and edgy by comparison in my smaller-than-showroom-sized audio room and thus the need for absorptive room treatment. I also replaced the Dual 1229 turntable Shure V15 carts with a Denon 2550 with a JH Formula 4 arm and Fidelity Research FR-1Mk3f moving coil cartridge with Marcoff PPA-1 pre-preamp (not a match I'm proud of, but that's what I picked at that point). This phono setup sounded pretty neutral, like the Dual/Shure combos had, and that didn't help the speaker balance.

Later, however, I acquired from Victor's Stereo in Chicago a Linn Sondek Valhalla/Grace 747/Grace F9E cartridge and started getting relief from the bright thinness of the Thiels. The Linn and the cart were both warm sounding and had a lot of midbass. The same was true for the later Grado Signature 8 I also used with the Linn/Grace. At some point I also got an NAD 1020 preamp to replace my Audionics BT-2 and that had honest-to-goodness tone controls so I could turn down the treble if I wanted. The NAD actually sounded at least as clean as the Audionics to boot. The Thiel CS-3s actually sounded fairly well balanced with a boatload of Sonex in the room, plus the warm sounding Linn/Grado, plus the treble control of the NAD preamp.

As the pictures below indicate, more electronics changes followed. The Amber 70 amp was followed by a Threshold S300II, then a Mark Levinson No. 23. Based on my own auditioning at Audio Consultants in Hinsdale and at Frank Van Alstine's shop in a Minneapolis suburb, as well as Lew Lipnick's Stereophile review, I bought a pair of B&W 801 Matrix Series II. The bass alignment box for those speakers was the Achilles heel of the design, however, so after awhile I made Frank Van Alstine's recommended crossover modifications to the speakers. This was a truly wonderful enhancement to these already great speakers.

The speakers would have sounded even better if I'd followed Frank's advice and just used ordinary 16-gauge lamp cord as speaker cables. That was how Frank had tuned his crossover modifications and it made another huge difference. Unfortunately, I only found out about this synergy very late in the game with these speakers. As you can see in the picture showing the crossover of the B&W speaker, this design came with a lot of extra internal Van den Hul silver cable connected between the crossover and the internal connections of the speaker cable binding posts. At one point in this room, after the last of the photos here, I had a pair of Van Alstine FET-Valve 500 amps driving the speakers in bridged mono. I had the amps on short amp stands mounted just behind the speakers with their rear panels facing the back side of the speakers. With the monblock amps thus arranged, there was enough internal connecting wire in the speakers to stretch to the amp binding posts, eliminating the need for any speaker cable at all (I soldered the Van den Hul cable to some very spiffy locking banana plugs to make connections to the Van Alstine amps). But, in reality, this didn't sound as natural as the MIT MH-750 speaker cables did, attached in the usual way to the speaker binding posts. And even the MIT speaker cables paled in comparison to the results I got when I finally tried ordinary 16-gauge lamp cord. Sigh.

 

[tmallin]

In response to today's Steve Guttenberg, The Audiophiliac Daily Show video, "How Many Speakers Have You Owned?" I wrote the following comment which I think fits well in this thread. I didn't want it to "get lost," so I'm posting it here as well.

In my 50+ years in this hobby, I've owned a lot of speakers. I usually keep them about a year or two. Exceptions are few, the most recent one being the various versions of the Harbeth Monitor 40 (original, M40.1, and M40.2) which I owned from 2004 - 2019.

I've owned most types of speakers, but never horns. Most horns, even the very expensive ones I've heard (including Avant Garde) sound too colored in frequency response for my tastes. For a "reasonably" priced horn speaker, though, the new Klipsch Cornwall IV is pretty good and I could probably live with that one for awhile. Other good sounding (though more expensive than Klipsch) horn speakers I've heard are those from Volti Audio.

I, too, owned the Snell Type A. I've wanted to own Quads many times, but always decided against Quads for fear I would damage them by playing "power music" at high volumes. I've also come close to owning Maggies several times and even recommended them to friends who have purchased and enjoyed them for many years after purchase. But, for me, they have always come up short in terms of bass impact, or, more recently, with the ribbon tweeter models, the treble just seemed too bright for long-term listening (although the most recent models have increasingly tamed that tweeter), and listened to from the near field there has been a problem with a vertical venetian blind effect as you move your head slightly.

As far as the rationale for switching speakers, sometimes it's just "the grass is always greener on the other side" audiophile nervosa thing. But in recent years I've been focusing more and more on speakers which can sound their best in the near field and which interact with the room less than most. My current listening room is small and forces near-field listening. My goal has long been for the system to transport me to the venue where the recording was made ("you are there") rather than to bring the musicians into the listening room ("they are here"). Another goal is to allow me to hear what the recording microphones heard. I realize that these goals don't mean much for studio recordings of non-acoustic music, but at least they allow acoustic music to sound more like a live concert and many studio recordings also seem to be well served.