Looks like a cozy comfortable place to be enjoying great sound. The rack looks awesome and I’m sure will perform equally well. Love the wood color and style.. very nice Peter! Enjoy your new setup !
Sublime Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
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adyc, no wood cabinet in the left front corner of the room for now, but with the latest removal of the map chest, the front corners are now more symmetrical. I will now have to listen and perhaps slightly adjust speaker position to accommodate the new room acoustics. Artwork will also need to be rehung and positioned. It is certainly a work in progress. Power lines need to be cleaned up too.
The room is much livelier and the sound is considerably more open and dynamic. It will take some more adjustments to fine tune and get used to the new acoustic.
Good Morning Peter, Do the amps heat up the room after being on several hours ? I found The XA25 to get
quite hot in operation, but not affect the rooms temp. You have the big bad boy monos with more output devices and mass. My tube amps always required extra cooling which made the rest of the house uncomfortable at times.
This is a very interesting question and one that many friends have asked. Now that I have lived with the Micro for about a month and set it up twice in different room configurations, I have a better idea of how to respond.
In my opinion, the SME 30/12 and Micro Seiki SX 8000 II share two qualities that are very important to me: they are both balanced and natural sounding. It is very difficult to assess turntables in other people's systems because of the challenges of isolating their contributions relative to the other components, particularly the tonearm, cartridge, and cable. However in my own system, I was able to conclude that the difference between these two tables is really only one of degree. The Micro is more resolving. I hear more nuance. Both tables seem fairly neutral in terms of tonal balance, but the Micro presents more information.
When I sold my SME, I included the outboard armpod I designed plus the SME 3012R so that the new owner will have the major benefit of being able to play two arm/cartridge combinations on a table designed for only one arm. I found this combination very successful in my system. I did quite a few arm and cartridge comparisons on that platform and the table served me extremely well as a stable and what I thought was a neutral platform. The SME is a very well made and designed product that sounds great and I enjoyed it tremendously for nine years. It has the benefit of being in current production from a company that offers superb service and support.
By the time the Micro arrived, I had fine tuned the SME to the point that it was sounding really excellent. My friend who bought it, listened to it three times in the week before he decided to buy it. We both agreed that the system had never sounded better. He helped me uncrate the table nine years ago and knows my system very well. He helped me pack it up in its original crate with all of its accessories. Part of me was quite sad to see it leave the room, though I am happy knowing that I will one day help set it up again in a local system for many more years of enjoyment.
The Micro Seiki SX8000 II is considerably more expensive and very difficult to find. It is a special and rare table. It is the flagship table from arguably one of the best turntable manufacturers, and it was made at the very end of when vinyl was the main source for recordings (just before the CD era). I feel very fortunate that ddk was able to find me one is such superb condition. It is very deserving of its superb reputation.
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Thanks Jeff. The mapchest and diving helmet will be moved up to my office along with an architecture model I made years ago. It is a beautiful piece of furniture once belonging to my grandfather, so I am happy it will have a new home in the house. The many flat drawers are extremely useful.
Yes indeed. The XA 160.5s are very warm. In the winter we usually do not turn on the heat in that room. In the summer, it can be a bit too much. There is no air conditioning in my very old house. That's why I go sailing and listen to less music then.
Happy Easter!
The Passion of Christ according to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Passion of Christ according to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
yes of course. It is a compromise. There’s no other location for the piano in our house except for that room. My children used to play it.
At Jim Smith‘s recommendation I dampened the keys temporarily, so it is not as big an issue as one might suspect. I would prefer a larger room with a taller ceiling too. We do what we can within the context of our compromises.
The Micro Seiki is now complete with today's delivery of the motor pulley/belt dust cover. Thank you @ddk for your efforts to locate and send this cover to me.
The dust cover is very heavy and solid and built to a very high standard, just like the rest of the turntable. There are two small pins which hold the cover in place. It is a very nice design aesthetic. There is a smokey grey film on the underside of the glass, amazingly still intact after all these years. I guess there is the option of removing it exposing a clear glass view of the pulley and belt. For now, I am going to leave the film in place. I like seeing only a "hint" of what is beneath. With the two 2" polished stainless steel plates for support, this is a fairly unique example of this rare table.
Here are some images of the completed turntable:
The dust cover is very heavy and solid and built to a very high standard, just like the rest of the turntable. There are two small pins which hold the cover in place. It is a very nice design aesthetic. There is a smokey grey film on the underside of the glass, amazingly still intact after all these years. I guess there is the option of removing it exposing a clear glass view of the pulley and belt. For now, I am going to leave the film in place. I like seeing only a "hint" of what is beneath. With the two 2" polished stainless steel plates for support, this is a fairly unique example of this rare table.
Here are some images of the completed turntable:
That looks great Peter, the shape of that cover really adds a very shapely sculpted quality to the overall form. Very lovely.
Bravo Peter! It looks fantastic. You must be thrilled to own such a trophy. I hope it provides all the “natural” sound you desire. I know I’d be thrilled. 
Those SME 12 arms are very good. Older SME arms are the one to get, Not the newer ones.
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