Any Audiophiles in the house?

my audio keeps failing.

[link to open.spotify.com (secure)]

I spent about 25K building a system from scratch. Now I have it, there is no need to go further. So I moved on to other hobbies.

I bought a Micromega Minium system in 1998. Got it half price for £1200 brand new (Amp, speakers, CD, FM tuner)

It still sounds gorgeous and I would have to spend thousands to better it’s performance. It turned out to be a total bargain.

I have an old Thorens turntable connected to its fantastic inbuilt phono stage. I even added a cheap Gale active 55w subwoofer that I got for £60 for parties and movies ( movies go through my Cambridge Stream Magic 6 via optical from my cheap TCL smart TV - I got the Cambridge second hand from EBay for £250)


This set up will last me until I die.


I may buy a used Quad 306 /34 set up for a second system though and some old Epos speakers - all from EBay super cheap.

Spotify premium in 320kb through my Cambridge Stream Magic sounds like heaven

Onkyo Amp and Dali speakers if you want a great system for not much money.

You had me until you mentioned spotify. First off, to mention audiophile and spotify in the same sentence is blasphemy. Sound quality from spotify is not very good, even on premium subscriptions. All of my equipment is audiophile grade. The best sound quality is on vinyl.

To me...audiophile means you are into the equipment that delivers high quality sound.

Musicphile means you are into music genres and styles.

I agree but a good DAC that can upscale 320kb sounds pretty acceptable to me when you weigh up the convenience. I still have vinyl of course. Steely Dan on original 1972 vinyl is something else..

I’m considering buying a Chinese copy of a marantz valve preamp and riling the valves with Mullard / GE or whatever

Rolling the valves I mean

We live in a hifi golden age now that we have EBay.

What do people think about using old speakers?

Do they degrade over time?

I know that pre 90’s amps all need recapping

I've got some 70's era Pioneer bookshelf speakers connected to a modern Grace Class D amplifier, and computer games sound fantastic.

If you like metal then Artefact - Ruins is a great listen if you can find it in HQ.

It depends on the kind of track that is compressed.

Some of my favorite industrial and techno tracks sound like ass in a 320kbps stream, even with aac encoding.

I am of the opinion that all audiophiles should at least once do a service to the digital generation and, on a quality sound system, play that little one's favorite song ever through a CDDA or FLAC stream if they are going to insist on not going pure analog so they can hear what their ears have been missing.

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Last Edited by Lazy Monk on 05/08/2022 12:07 PM

I only use vintage speakers. I started building an analog system for vinyl & got my first pair of full-range 3 ways. They sounded so good, that I sold all my modern speakers & went full tard. I've got more speakers now than I have sources, ha.

Most only need re-foaming of the mids/woofs, or a dented cone here and there. I've replaced 2 crossovers from donors.

It’s a good job I love my existing speakers so much otherwise my house would be filling up with 1980’s/90’s Quad, Epos and Tannoy speakers which can be picked up for a song these days.

Thanks for the advice

One the biggest hifi bargains you will ever hear are JBL Control One Pros. About £140 a pair.

We use them in professional edit suites. They flatter pretty much any half-decent amp.

T class chip amps sound outstanding through them - and they start at £50.

I am an audiophile with good hearing.

My best system is very simple. A computer, a DAC, electrostatic headphones with amp. It sounds like I'm in the room, with all the odd sounds that are unrelated to the music.

Note that the amp has to be for electrostatic headphones not a normal amp or headphone amp. It has to provide very high voltage at low current, not high current at low voltage. In other words the headphones need high voltage and have high input impedance. Typically the headphone amp is sold with the headphones. Sometimes people upgrade from that; I may do that someday if I find a good deal, but electrostat amps can run up to $10,000 and the one I have is OK.

I also have another computer, DAC, line level attenuator with active studio monitors. I attended an audio show and the difference between the active speakers (amps in the speakers) and even the most high-end systems with separate amp was obvious. Everything else was colored. The actives were just music. So I found similar actives for a much lower price.

The only things I buy brand-name are the transducers -- the headphones or speakers. I know what I need in electronics (and I listed it above for you) so I don't need some brand name with a big advertising budget and stealer network to tell me what's prestigious and mark it up 20 times.

My headphones are Koss ESP/95X which come with the required amp. The speakers which I bought 20 years ago are Genelec 1031A. (I don't have a subwoofer, but that would be a reasonable addition.) Nowadays Genelec has speakers with digital inputs, so you can probably use those and skip the DAC because it's internal, and I hope of adequate quality.

Both my systems, not including the computers they're hooked to as digital sources, are probably replaceable for $5000 total today.

My better half is a big audiophile who re-built 4 large, early 70’s teak wood speakers for surround sound with widescreen TV. Awesome. Now the interest has shifted to a tube amplifier for hookup with the turntable.

Ant tube amp expertise and recommendations out there?

Thanks in advance.

Winwot.

My better half is a big audiophile who re-built 4 large, early 70’s teak wood speakers for surround sound with widescreen TV. Awesome. Now the interest has shifted to a tube amplifier for hookup with the turntable.

Ant tube amp expertise and recommendations out there?

Thanks in advance.

Winwot.

The first investment you probably need is a cartridge for the turntable. The table just rotates the platter. What you hear, assuming the rotation is adequate, is the cartridge.

Some people love the fat sound of a nice cheap heavy moving magnet cartridge. I don't. But my wife won't yet let me get a moving coil cartridge (together with amp, this is in the area of $500) which would make those platters sound more like digital. With the existing cartridge, piano sounds awful, massive cutoff of the high harmonics.

For tube amps I'd find something on ebay. Class A sounds the best but make sure you have enough oomph to drive your speakers. A big enough Class A tube amp could be very expensive even at ebay prices.

Ebay has a lot of good tube amps so I approve the idea, either for Class A or Class AB. Alternatively, FETs (field effect transistors) sound like tubes and actually operate on similar principles. Back when I was shopping, tube gear was expensive and FETs were more affordable.

My line level attenuator (volume control, since power amplification is in my active speakers) has one Sovtek tube and a big honking transformer. It was a few hundred dollars, almost all that for the transformer. Transformers have only gotten more expensive since then, and that's what you're paying for once you strip out brand-name overpricing.

That's a deep hole to venture down, especially if you start looking into upgrading/customizing.

Russian tubes are still the best in the world. NOS tubes from back in the day are even available for hefty $. The CCP tubes are actually pretty good, too if you're on a budget, or to keep a set as backup.

I went with modern amps, 2 40W units for my surrounds & a 20W monoblock for the center channel. Since I have full-range speakers, I left the subwoofer out. The vinyl source, obviously only drives the front pair.

IMO, with vinyl, the best thing you can do in a tube setup is take your time picking a preamp. It'll do more for the sound than the amps themselves and a good place to start any customization/upgrades.