What Did Your System Look Like 20 Years Ago???
- Thread starter gfroman
- Start date
Hey!!! Those are some rare birds- Perkins PR2Fs at a guess. I'm suspecting that this pic goes further back than two decades @carl13 ??? And you must have lived in Southern Alberta at the time 'cuz I don't think any of the handful of those exotic handbuilt loudspeakers ever traveled all that far from their maker. They sure did sound great right up until the tweeters failed. How long did you have them for and where did they ultimately end up?
Scott Frankland from MFA turned me on to the speakers, which I heard at his home in San Jose,CA. I powered them with MFA M-150s. My son put his finger through one of the tweeters, but Bill sent me a replacement.Can't remember when I sold them.
Well they were fantastic sounding loudspeakers in their time (and even to this day I suspect if one could have sourced replacement tweeters to keep them going). In my early twenties living in Calgary Alberta some 35 years ago, Bill helped me out with a few audio projects in his workshop and home electronics lab. Those afternoons we would hang out and talk for hours while he worked on my project.
During the 18 months I lived in Calgary I briefly owned a pair of huge triple driver passive subwoofers Perkins had originally custom built for one of the owners at K&W Audio. Unfortunately I just couldn't get them to seemlessly integrate with my Spica TC-50s (with Perkin's upgraded crossovers) and returned them to Wayne at K&W. I also spent several intensely enjoyable evenings in Bill Perkins' home listening room. The sound quality and musical insight found there certainly left an aspirational mark on me.
Wow, what a wonderful collection of systems has been displayed here! Twenty years ago, my own journey was approaching the end of what had been a decade-plus quest of analysis and discovery. In my forties I finally began to understand and love live opera. Living close to the Metropolitan Opera helped. And separately, early in the 2000s came new venues for Jazz at Lincoln Center, further cementing my thinking on live, unamplified music. In any case, twenty years ago my main system was based around two sources: a VPI TNT turntable which began life as a Jr. but morphed over the nineties with the addition of a tri-pully system, SDS controller, and upgraded feet, together with a VPI JMW 10.5i tonearm fitted with a Transfiguration Temper cartridge, and a Sony ES777 SACD player which had been highly modified by Richard Kern. They fed signals to a Hovland HP100 MC pre-amp, then on to twin BEL 1001 Mk ii amps in mono configuration, ending at my beloved Sonus Faber Extrema speakers. With the exception of the turntable to pre, a Hovland Music Groove phono cable, all wires were BEL.
So, what has changed in twenty years? In 2007, somehow my Transfiguration Temper cantilever broke, which led to replacing it with a Lyra Skala. In 2008 I sent the amps to Richard Brown to be updated to his final Mk V level. He passed the following year. In 2012 all hell broke loose. The Sony ES777 failed, which led to replacing it with an EMM Labs XDS1. That change revealed something fundamentally off in the system and an exhaustive effort to uncover the problem. The fix was a surprise: the replacement of ICs and speaker cables with AudioNote SOTTO and Sogon, revealing that the limiting factor was wire. Finally, in 2021 COVID isolation and boredom led me to revisit the Transfiguration Cartridge, sending it to Peter Ledermann at Soundsmith for a rebuild. That, in turn led me to acquire a second VPI arm, this time the 3D 10i, and bringing in the incredibly skilled Michael Trei to re-setup the turntable with both arms for easy switch.
So, the system has remained remarkably the same, yet incrementally improved over the past two decades. The Extrema speakers, the BEL amps, the Hovland Pre, the VPI TNT remain the core, supplemented by the XDS1, a MAC Mini running Audirvanna playing my ripped CD collection through the XDS1, and oh yes, the Magnum Dynalab MD-102 tuner which stares at me from time to time wondering why I give it so little love. Now as I turn 70 this year, I think about tearing it all down and getting something simpler, something my wife could use, but then I put on a record, sit down and think, “Damn, this system is going nowhere…,” as I fall into the music.
So, what has changed in twenty years? In 2007, somehow my Transfiguration Temper cantilever broke, which led to replacing it with a Lyra Skala. In 2008 I sent the amps to Richard Brown to be updated to his final Mk V level. He passed the following year. In 2012 all hell broke loose. The Sony ES777 failed, which led to replacing it with an EMM Labs XDS1. That change revealed something fundamentally off in the system and an exhaustive effort to uncover the problem. The fix was a surprise: the replacement of ICs and speaker cables with AudioNote SOTTO and Sogon, revealing that the limiting factor was wire. Finally, in 2021 COVID isolation and boredom led me to revisit the Transfiguration Cartridge, sending it to Peter Ledermann at Soundsmith for a rebuild. That, in turn led me to acquire a second VPI arm, this time the 3D 10i, and bringing in the incredibly skilled Michael Trei to re-setup the turntable with both arms for easy switch.
So, the system has remained remarkably the same, yet incrementally improved over the past two decades. The Extrema speakers, the BEL amps, the Hovland Pre, the VPI TNT remain the core, supplemented by the XDS1, a MAC Mini running Audirvanna playing my ripped CD collection through the XDS1, and oh yes, the Magnum Dynalab MD-102 tuner which stares at me from time to time wondering why I give it so little love. Now as I turn 70 this year, I think about tearing it all down and getting something simpler, something my wife could use, but then I put on a record, sit down and think, “Damn, this system is going nowhere…,” as I fall into the music.
Attachments
This was my system approximately 35 years ago:
This was approximately 25 years ago:
And of course, this is current:
This was approximately 25 years ago:
And of course, this is current:
Circa 2005? Pipedreams and their "depth charge" subwoofers. The Pipes were the most beautiful speakers I ever owned. Carpathian Elm Burl. Hemisphere back. No serial number. Bought them off the floor from an old CES at Alexis Park many moons ago. I used a DSP-based system at the time to integrate the subs appropriately.
"But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"- Bob Dylan
"But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"- Bob Dylan
Viva Aurora Monos are the amps I would buy today for Avantgarde loudspeakers!
20 Years ago.
Wilson Watt Puppie 5
ML 33 h
MIT EVO 850
CAT SL1 MKII with phono
Oracle Delphi, Syrinx PU3, Koetsu Black
ML 31.5 ML 30.5
40 Years ago
Acoustat III
PS Audio Two C Plus in bridged mode x 2
PS Audio IV Preamplifier
Rega III
Grace Tonearm Grace cart
Nakamichi 582 Z
Wilson Watt Puppie 5
ML 33 h
MIT EVO 850
CAT SL1 MKII with phono
Oracle Delphi, Syrinx PU3, Koetsu Black
ML 31.5 ML 30.5
40 Years ago
Acoustat III
PS Audio Two C Plus in bridged mode x 2
PS Audio IV Preamplifier
Rega III
Grace Tonearm Grace cart
Nakamichi 582 Z
Marc
Actually I had the opportunity but to do that but I never did. The photo posted above was from my house in Texas (2003-2010). I designed that room and it won 1st place for best media room in a National competition. It also sounded great, so why change it? When I moved to New Jersey, I duplicated that room down to the mm. If you look at the NJ room in the first post below, the astute eye will notice that the room seems identical to the Texas room however it is actually a mirror image of the Texas room, so the fireplace and room entrance way is reversed. Took 2 years to build. I ain't goin' anywhere soon so that ceiling will be there for quite a while.
Spectral DMA 400s arrive in New Jersey
I always enjoy reading the descriptions of members’ systems. The world of high end audio offers ample offerings to choose from and are in no small way limited or restricted. Even better, the quality of sound that was available only a few short years ago for obscene amounts of money is now far...
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Pacha, this is beyond category! I would love to have heard this in action. Thanks for sharing these pictures.
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