Well as usual, things don't stay around here too long.
First off are the speakers... I came across a really smokin' deal on a mint, nearly new pair of Klipsch Heresy III's. So good of a deal that I made an 880 mile round trip to go pick them up since the seller was only going to sell local and not ship. From central FL to just south of Atlanta, GA. A 15 hour non-stop road trip! My girlfriend and oldest brother went along for the ride. We left town at 1am and got back home around 3:30pm. It was actually a fun and relaxing drive.
Heresy's aren't known for their bass capabilities, so I reinstated my 10+ year old Polk Audio PSW505 subwoofers as the amps in the JL subs have gone south for a second time now. Anyway, the Polk subs are getting their signal via their high level inputs from the main amps and they are on top of IsoAcoustic isolation stands. These subs have never sounded this good. Extremely good in fact! Shockingly good in fact!!
Speaking of main amps, since I don't need 700 watt monoblocks for these 99 dB sensitive speakers, I decided to sell off the PS Audio gear and get back into tubes and some low power amps. Here comes some Schiit! I went with the low powered, Class A Aegir amps. Of a matter of fact, I went with two of them. Not that I need even 80 watts of power for these Heresy's, but I wanted to keep the signal balanced, and the only way to do that is to run the amps in mono.
Since I needed a new preamp and wanted to get back into tubes, I went with the obvious choice of the Schiit Freya + preamp. Honestly, the only reason I went with the PS Audio gear was because at the time, Schiit's first Freya preamp kept the tubes burning all the time, even if you were in passive or JFet mode. With the latest Freya +, once you go into passive or JFet mode, the tubes fully power down. This is a requirement for me since I leave my system up and running 24/7. When we're asleep or at work, I switch over to JFet mode, saving the precious tubes for actual listening time.
I have my Sonus Faber speakers up for sale, and once someone buys them, I will be purchasing the latest Schiit Bifrost 2 DAC, which I will also be running that balanced into the Freya +. Right now I'm just using the analog output from the Bluesound Node 2, but even so, this system sounds much better overall than the PS Audio gear did in the same system/configuration. Even in passive and JFet mode, there's significant improvements in sound over the PS Audio gear, so it's not just the magic of the tubes making a difference. It's those Aegir amps. Of course, once you heat up those tubes, they make things even better!
And speaking of tubes, I'm getting in several different matched pairs of NOS tubes. I already have a pair of NOS Raytheon/Baldwin 6SN7GTB's that I've been running for the last few days. Just yesterday, I got in a pair of NOS Sylvania JAN-CHS 6SN7GT (VT-231) tubes that I've been running. So far, they're excellent as well. Definitely a different sound signature from the Raytheon/Baldwin's. And then in the mail (should be showing up in the next day or two) is a pair of NOS RCA Radiotron 6F8G tubes along with adapters to work in the Freya +. Those should be interesting!
Lastly, I also purchased and installed some tube socket savers (risers) to get the tubes "out" of the chassis. I'm keeping the stock JJ tubes on the left side right for now since that's the cathode follower output stage, and to keep a constant for now while I roll in the new NOS tubes. The right side is the input voltage gain stage, which is said to have more influence on the sound than the left side tubes. Eventually, I start rolling tubes on that side as well. It's something like a 70/30 ratio in sound influence with the right vs left tubes, so we'll see.
Anyway, enough yacking. Let me post up some pictures of the new goodies. BTW, all of this has taken place in the past 5 weeks!
Out with the old...
In with the new...
Raytheon/Baldwin tubes...
Sylvania JAN VT-231 tubes...
