Jeff's New Music Room, the Return of Jeffrey_t

Hello All!
Due to some welcome and overdue forum changes, I'm happy to return and share my new music room and system. I'll be using my Audiogon user name going forward. Over the last year I built a dedicated room on my property, my last room was a converted garage. This room has the following features:

-Dedicated lines with 10 awg copper wire and separate ground
-Shear walls all around
-Quite Rock II drywall
-Blue Jeans insulation
-Wood roof with slightly uneven rafters to break up the reflections
-Custom built record rack behind the listening position that acts as a giant diffuser
-Bathroom/utility room for record cleaning

The system has also been updated, as I've sold all of the Lamm gear. The major focus of the system is to capitalize on the new quite dedicated lines and have a zero hum system. You can put your ear up to the midrange horn and hear nothing. I listen to 90% analog so the heart of the system is the PBN Garrard 401 which continues to be a stellar performer, I really can't think of another turntable I would want. My new phono stage is the phenomenal Aurorasound Vida Supreme. It is extremely musical, flexible, dynamic, and silent. With some help from two WBF members (thanks @Al M. and @KeithR) digital streaming has been added to the system, really great for rock and finding new music. Blue Node streamer and Schitt Yiggy DAC are a lot of fun to mess with. I've also added a TVC to the system (thanks @213Cobra), the very musical Luxman AT-3000. It also helps with the theme of silent and black backgrounds. Two SET amps give different flavors, 2 watt 45 for clarity and 8 watt 300B for added warmth. Full system list:

-PBN Garrard 401
-LDA Turntable Power Supply
-SME 3012R x 2
-VDH Colibri Stradivarius
-Ortofon SPU A95
-Aurorasound Vida Supreme Phono
-Blue Node Streamer
-Schitt Yiggdrasil LIM
-Yamamoto 45
-Xaio Nan 300B hand made mono blocks
-JBL Hartsfield

Here are some pictures of the project:

 

Congratulations, it's a cosy room, with an excellent system. I can't imagine how are you able to leave it.
IS it the end? No more upgrades?

 

Hi all,
After my initial post under my old moniker (jeffrey_t) the system seems to have an issue and has locked me out. @Steve Williams was gracious enough to reactivate my user name but it doesn't seem to be working. I'll just move forward with my Audiogon user name.

Thank you for your kind words, I'll respond to all of the questions this morning.

Jeffrey

 

The record cleaning toaster in the bathroom is a nice touch. Purge vinyl while purging.

All noisy things (record cleaning, beer fridge, "purges") are kept in the utility room!

 

Jeff, so glad you decided to post your system and new room. I absolutely love the record storage unit and sliding library ladder. I look forward to hearing your system in a few weeks. I don’t think I’m going to need to bring any records LOL.

Haha....I'm looking forward to your visit. I used to have the records over several racks, now they they are all consolidated on one, I can see that I have issues....

 

An elegant and commodious room … visions of the ablutionary arrangements surplus to requirement , … Where is the Wine Cooler? And yes, mayhap a shift away from the dark side.

There is a beer fridge and my collection of scotch in the corner. The wine cooler is kept under lock and key by my wife, it's her collection.

 

You left your AT-3000 off the equipment list. Great device, I got one recently too.

Nice ceiling. What does the exterior look like?

I'm very lucky to have obtained the Luxman. I borrowed @KeithR 's Music First preamp and was very impressed. I was using the Lamm LL2.1 preamp at the time and the Music First gave it a run for the money WITH a remote.

I'll post a picture of the outside later today, it matches the house. All though it looks like it is attached, it's actually a stand alone building.

 

Welcome back Jeff! Glad to see you finally got your room completed. System looks really nice and but it sounds great. I am curious about the phonostage...is that a tube or SS phonostage? Also, I am familiar with the Yamamoto amp (is 1 watt really enough...I find my speakers, which are about 3dB less sensitive than yours, need at least 5-6 watts) but where are the 300B amps from? Never heard of that brand before. What are the differences in sound character you hear between them? Did you find that these low powered SET solutions were superior to the FirstWatt SIT you were fond of previously?

Again, if I had the space, the Hartsfield speakers would be high on my "ultimate" speakers list based on the limited exposure I have had to them.

HI Brad,
I hope you are well. The Aurorasound Vida Supreme is solid state but IMO delivers the warmth and scale of a tubed phono, I'm very happy with it. The Yamamoto is rated at 2 watts by the manufacturer. Personally I think it really delivers with the Hartsfield for my personal music listening 85-90dB. When you have people over and want to rock out, it will run out of steam and distort at higher levels. I have three sets of tubes for this amp (EM Labs, NOS RCA Coke Bottles, and NOS RCA Globes.)

The 300B amps are hand made point to point wired amps made by a person named Xaio Nan in China. He hand winds his transformers over three days. Phil (@213Cobra) turned my onto this maker and is a great way to dip my toe into 300B for a relatively low cost. Elrog 300B's took these amps to the next level.

In terms of the First Watt SIT3, it will be the only piece of my last system that I will truly miss. Unfortunately the SIT3 really does not like 16ohms. I contacted Nelson Pass and he told me the only way the amp would work on the Hartsfields was to shunt them down to 8ohms, which I wasn't willing to do. So I sold the SIT3

The SET amps do have a very similar sound to the SIT3, to my ears it's the best solid state amp I've ever heard.

 

Congratulations, it's a cosy room, with an excellent system. I can't imagine how are you able to leave it.
IS it the end? No more upgrades?

No upgrades? How dare you! I am an audiophile sir.....

 

Here is a picture of the outside of the room. There was a strip of land in the back of the house that was unused. We built out 1200 square feet, making my daughter's room larger, adding a master bath and closet, and building this room. The slab for this room is actually separate from the rest of the addition, with a 4" gravel gap between them.

 

No upgrades? How dare you! I am an audiophile sir.....

I was afraid you would say otherwise... So, is anything in the works?

 

The garage is now populated by automobiles again?

 

The garage is now populated by automobiles again?

Over the years I've had many classic cars. I'm hoping to buy a new one once the market for classic cars cools down.

 

Absolutely stunning...congrats

 

I visited Jeff’s place this past December. He took time out of his schedule to host me for a visit and long listening session—a huge thanks for that!

If you think the room looks and sounds wonderful in pics, you should see and hear it in person.

Kudos to Jeff on a great system and a great place to listen to it!

It was a fun visit, thank you for making the trip to check out the room!

 

Jeff’s new music room is so beautiful and so thoughtfully designed to maximize aesthetics that for my first 45 minutes or so there I just kept looking around — I couldn’t even focus on the music.

 

Jeff’s new music room is so beautiful and so thoughtfully designed to maximize aesthetics that for my first 45 minutes or so there I just kept looking around — I couldn’t even focus on the music.

same

 

Here are a few pictures of the build. Here is the crew digging the foundation:

 

Here you can see the segmentation of the slab, the music room (foreground) has it's own floating slab.

 

Here is a shot of the 10awg dedicated power lines. We ran the power over the ceiling so they are nowhere near other power lines, telephone, or CAT 5.

 

This room was made for the JBL Hartsfields. The corners are reinforced in an attempt to improve the bass. The bass is indeed better than the garage, but I'm not 100% sure it's because of the reinforcement.