My brand new system from today :-).

[The Knife]

Inspiring to see so many extraordinary systems on display.

I am in 7th heaven right now with one big grin on my face. Indeed the angels have come down to sing for me .

Here is my system bottom up, acquired today, and as we speak only played for a few hours.

Living on the top floor in an old Factory from 1890 in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden. 165m2 of disposal in an open design of which ca 30m2 is dedicated to the living room/music room. Sealing height is 3,1m (10ft).

The foundation for the Transducers is a 12mm Piano(sound) dampening carpet in NASA grade material from Professor Grosskopf (in total covering an area of 3 m2) beneath an extra thick oriental carpet. The floors are otherwise made of concrete with a thin layer of oak parquet.

Transducers
Martin Logan Electrostatic Master Series Impression 11 (High Gloss black) on Crystal Cable Special Series Power cords

Amplifier
Peachtree Nova 500 on a Sine (-196c cryogenic treated) Nidas HC Power cord
(Got it as a package deal, and it will sure undergo thorough evaluation, I keep it my study behind the living room for a more clean look in the living room).

Source
Tidal on a stationary PC I9-9900K 32GB RTX 2070 on a Stealth Swift Power cord

Interconnects
Mytek USB Cord
Supra Cat 8 ethernet wires
Supra Speaker cables

Wifi
AmpliFI WIFI Router

Ps. The sofa table top in glass rest on concrete bricks from the Berlin wall. Yes, I went down there and bought them from a scrap yard .

I have one question to you guys who have seen and heard it all!

Although I find the sound mesmerizing, this business wouldn't be the nice slippery slope it is if the first question to raise wouldn't be: Which amplifier, what speaker cables, will make the ESL11´s reach even higher altitudes?

Kind regards from Stockholm

 

[the sound of Tao]

Inspiring to see so many extraordinary systems on display.

I am in 7th heaven right now with one big grin on my face. Indeed the angels have come down to sing for me .

Here is my system bottom up, acquired today, and as we speak only played for a few hours.

Living on the top floor in an old Factory from 1890 in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden. 165m2 of disposal in an open design of which ca 30m2 is dedicated to the living room/music room. Sealing height is 3,1m (10ft).

The foundation for the Transducers is a 12mm Piano(sound) dampening carpet in NASA grade material from Professor Grosskopf (in total covering an area of 3 m2) beneath an extra thick oriental carpet. The floors are otherwise made of concrete with a thin layer of oak parquet.

Transducers
Martin Logan Electrostatic Master Series Impression 11 (High Gloss black) on Crystal Cable Special Series Power cords

Amplifier
Peachtree Nova 500 on a Sine (-196c cryogenic treated) Nidas HC Power cord
(Got it as a package deal, and it will sure undergo thorough evaluation, I keep it my study behind the living room for a more clean look in the living room).

Source
Tidal on a stationary PC I9-9900K 32GB RTX 2070 on a Stealth Swift Power cord

Interconnects
Mytek USB Cord
Supra Cat 8 ethernet wires
Supra Speaker cables

Wifi
AmpliFI WIFI Router

Ps. The sofa table top in glass rest on concrete bricks from the Berlin wall. Yes, I went down there and bought them from a scrap yard .

I have one question to you guys who have seen and heard it all!

Although I find the sound mesmerizing, this business wouldn't be the nice slippery slope it is if the first question to raise wouldn't be: Which amplifier, what speaker cables, will make the ESL11´s reach even higher altitudes?

Kind regards from Stockholm

Welcome to the slippery slope Knife.

Great start... perhaps look to your source as a beginning point for further development if you are chasing something more.

Perhaps a great dac or dac/small server since you are going to essentially be streaming. You’ll then understand better what your amp and cables are doing later once you establish if the front end is playing the tunes right for you. Good luck... and enjoy no matter which way you head.

 

[JackD201]

Congratulations Knife! A beautiful system located in what is in my opinion one of the most beautiful cities in the world!

I am very interested in your carpet backing. Would you be so kind as to share some more information?

 

[Ron Resnick]

Congratulations, The Knife! Enjoy your new system!

 

[The Knife]

Welcome to the slippery slope Knife.

Great start... perhaps look to your source as a beginning point for further development if you are chasing something more.

Perhaps a great dac or dac/small server since you are going to essentially be streaming. You’ll then understand better what your amp and cables are doing later once you establish if the front end is playing the tunes right for you. Good luck... and enjoy no matter which way you head.

Thanks Tao. Yes. Correct. It is foremost streaming here for the moment. Maybe to add a Vinyl player later on. When you talk about source. Do you deem my set up with Tidal on a Computer as the weak part in the chain? I am thinking the DAC in the Peachtree gets a digital signal (FLAC) and convert it to Analogue with decent quality. Of course the inbuilt DAC isn´t extraordinary, but should be reasonable?

 

[The Knife]

Congratulations Knife! A beautiful system located in what is in my opinion one of the most beautiful cities in the world!

I am very interested in your carpet backing. Would you be so kind as to share some more information?

Thanks Jack. Sure thing!

https://www.pianomagasinet.se/produkt/ljudabsorberande-matta-iso-floor-12-mm-tjock/

...Unfortunately only in Swedish but maybe you can source the product on an English speaking site. Otherwise they for sure will answer you in English if you write them.

Iso-Floor for sound insulation was developed by the physicist and construction acoustician Prof. Dr. Großkopf on behalf of the Association of the German piano industry. It was invented with the purpose of dampen unwanted low frequencies from Pianos that easily can travel in concrete constructions (as I live) and create unwanted resonances for both your self and your neighbors. I bought in total 2 x 1,5m2 for the sum of ca 300 USD, and for my room, they work just wonderful. They are heavy. Like 10kg the piece. People invest in good speaker´s feet (I might too eventually), but I thought, why not start with the floor .

 

[the sound of Tao]

Thanks Tao. Yes. Correct. It is foremost streaming here for the moment. Maybe to add a Vinyl player later on. When you talk about source. Do you deem my set up with Tidal on a Computer as the weak part in the chain? I am thinking the DAC in the Peachtree gets a digital signal (FLAC) and convert it to Analogue with decent quality. Of course the inbuilt DAC isn´t extraordinary, but should be reasonable?

Hi Knife,
Yes, I had a peachtree Nova quite some time ago that I used for a home theatre setup and I’d suggest that the amp within the peachtree is doing good things mostly, but if you are now looking for a next step then going for a separate dac would be an area to harvest potentially a considerable overall improvement.

Your speakers have a lot to give and will be revealing of anything that you do in your system so if you are looking to an upgrade your upstream source would likely be a big potential for return on investment.

A good dac would be a great start... then while your laptop will do the job (depending on your budget) also consider streaming dacs and or servers as these can then take the music much further. Though perhaps that’s a story for another time.

 

[The Knife]

Thanks for the insight Tao. Nice that you had the Nova. Given your PureAudioProjectHorn 1 speakers and the Magnepans, it seem like you would not buy anything with poor quality. A proper DAC is on the wish list, however, I was thinking buying something less expensive first. Better speaker cables. Any idea of what would work good to the ESL11?

 

[the sound of Tao]

Thanks Knife,
No experiences wrt cables for ML unfortunately... would be best to talk with some ML owners for that. Cables are the foundations for the slippery slope though... many have been lost to the jagged crevasses of cabling. Enjoy. Discovery is certainly half the fun.