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A modest Hi-Fi setup.


tomteriffic

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Inspired by @Disturber, I thought I'd just crow a little bit too.  I've been selling off a few guitars, amps, etc., doubtless there will be more, but I decided to put a umm, like, rillyrilly good sounding stereo together with some of the money.  It wasn't my intent to blow the neighbors' chimneys down or rattle guitars off the racks.  Nope, just blow my socks off in a relatively small space.  The final piece came together today and I couldn't be more tickled.  A romp through Miles Davis, Taj Mahal, live Dire Straits and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra revealed stuff I never heard before, all while sounding cohesive and very musical.  I've built and dismantled three recording studios over the years and never had a monitoring system that sounded this good.  Granted, studios and listening rooms have very different requirements, but still....

The audiophile bug can bite hard and rip a significant gash in your wallet before you know it.  I was determined to keep it simple and cost-effective.  Hell, I already have a pretty decent home theater in the living room that fixes the go crazy part.  No, this is for sitting down and just listening to music in stereo.  The result is simultaneously satisfying and exciting.  Hmmmm very tickled I am.  All in, including stands, cabling, various accessories and a nice pair of headphones I'm into it for roughly $2K.  I scored the odd refurb and closeout and that shaved some off, and I'm still looking into streaming, but basically I'm done.  And most Esteemed Redhead sprang for the furniture!

If anybody gives a crap, the bits include:

Emotiva TA1 preamp/tuner/amp/DAC

Klipsch RP600M speakers

Fluance RT85 Turntable with Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge

Emotiva  SE8 Flex Subwoofer

Pangea Stands

Leftover studio cabling, mostly

Sennheiser HD 600 cans.

As one reviewer noted: "The only person who has to like your system is you".  I do.

Not planning on pix since it's just a bunch of black boxes.

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First off, congrats on the rig. Second, that shit ain’t modest. And I’m sure it sounds rad.

My ghetto rig is as follows

Kenwood KD3700 turntable with Ortofon Blue cartridge. 

KAB stereo/mono conversion switch

Vincent phono pre

NAD CD player

Onkyo 3-head cassette deck

NAD power amp

Cerwin-Vega 217R speakers (bi-amped) with backward-firing tweets  

Sounds amazing. CDs and iPod sound great thru it all.

 

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Good stuff! How do you like the Ortofon blue?  I just got a Pro-ject with a Sumika Olympia. I was looking at Ortofon and ended up just pulling the trigger to avoid getting too OCD over the whole thing. (I've been known to do that all to often...)

You must be happy with what you have. If it sounds good, it is good!  : )

Pics would be nice, though. Black boxes and all...

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4 minutes ago, veatch said:

You must be happy with what you have. If it sounds good, it is good!  : )

That’s the key with modern HIFI. The low-mid end stuff is so much better than the gear we used BITD that it really comes down to how much are you willing to spend?

A solid TT/cartridge, good CD player, solid power amp…it’s GOLD, Jerry!

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1 hour ago, veatch said:

Good stuff! How do you like the Ortofon blue?  I just got a Pro-ject with a Sumika Olympia. I was looking at Ortofon and ended up just pulling the trigger to avoid getting too OCD over the whole thing. (I've been known to do that all to often...)

You must be happy with what you have. If it sounds good, it is good!  : )

Pics would be nice, though. Black boxes and all...

Jef, so far I'm liking it a lot.  As for a better/same/worse comparison, well that's tough to do.  Upstairs I have the venerable Technics 1200 with a couple of "vintage" cartidges I swap out occasionally, a Stanton triple 6 and a Shure V-15 Type 4.  But in totally different systems, who knows?  On a clean pressing it seems like I'm pulling a little bit extra out of the grooves, hearing little stuff I hadn't noticed before.  You gotta be happy with the Sumiko in a Pro-ject though.  I strongly considered that route.

 

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1 hour ago, RobB said:

That’s the key with modern HIFI. The low-mid end stuff is so much better than the gear we used BITD that it really comes down to how much are you willing to spend?

A solid TT/cartridge, good CD player, solid power amp…it’s GOLD, Jerry!

Nice rig your own self, Rob!  Since I was starting from scratch on this, the price/performance or bang for buck ratio was an important consideration.  Oh, I forgot, a blu-ray player with an optical out that I just use for CD's, I forget what it is.  About a hunna dolla.

 

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19 minutes ago, tomteriffic said:

Nice rig your own self, Rob!  

Thanks, Tom. I lucked out, as I got my CD/PowerAmp cheap on the HFC. Got the gargantuan speakers from an estate sale (again, cheap) and the Kenwood TT from a friend (plus a much-needed tune-up from a local  tech [auto return, etc.]). I LOVE sitting down with my LPs, drawing a cuppa coffee and doing crosswords on a weekend morning. Nothing like it and it sounds great.

My, "Spotified-buddies", laugh at me: "I have the WHOLE WORLD OF MUSIC IN HD at my fingertips! Why the EFF should I deal with LPs with this MODERN CONVENIENCE?" Well, I have YouTubePlus, too. Admittedly, it's a great tool. 

I'd rather sniff out vinyl in dusty record shop somewhere...

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7 hours ago, tomteriffic said:

On a clean pressing it seems like I'm pulling a little bit extra out of the grooves, hearing little stuff I hadn't noticed before.  

I noticed that, too. I think that is/was the most enjoyable part of it. 

Congrats and enjoy!

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15 hours ago, veatch said:

Good stuff! How do you like the Ortofon blue? 

I like it just fine. It's a solid, mid-priced cart that was what I could afford at the time. I could drop multi-$1000s on a better cartridge, but I ain't. Funny, my insane audio repair guy was gushing all over my 38lb, vintage turntable but is not a fan of the Ortofon Blue. 

63105460654__E397A3D8-9672-4C7C-80CE-C281A4487A6A.jpg

Older pic. I have added four more of those nifty storage cubes. Their prices shot up over the pandemic, but I lucked out shopping the scratch'n'dent sale.

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21 hours ago, tomteriffic said:

Inspired by @Disturber, I thought I'd just crow a little bit too.  I've been selling off a few guitars, amps, etc., doubtless there will be more, but I decided to put a umm, like, rillyrilly good sounding stereo together with some of the money.  It wasn't my intent to blow the neighbors' chimneys down or rattle guitars off the racks.  Nope, just blow my socks off in a relatively small space.  The final piece came together today and I couldn't be more tickled.  A romp through Miles Davis, Taj Mahal, live Dire Straits and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra revealed stuff I never heard before, all while sounding cohesive and very musical.  I've built and dismantled three recording studios over the years and never had a monitoring system that sounded this good.  Granted, studios and listening rooms have very different requirements, but still....

The audiophile bug can bite hard and rip a significant gash in your wallet before you know it.  I was determined to keep it simple and cost-effective.  Hell, I already have a pretty decent home theater in the living room that fixes the go crazy part.  No, this is for sitting down and just listening to music in stereo.  The result is simultaneously satisfying and exciting.  Hmmmm very tickled I am.  All in, including stands, cabling, various accessories and a nice pair of headphones I'm into it for roughly $2K.  I scored the odd refurb and closeout and that shaved some off, and I'm still looking into streaming, but basically I'm done.  And most Esteemed Redhead sprang for the furniture!

If anybody gives a crap, the bits include:

Emotiva TA1 preamp/tuner/amp/DAC

Klipsch RP600M speakers

Fluance RT85 Turntable with Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge

Emotiva  SE8 Flex Subwoofer

Pangea Stands

Leftover studio cabling, mostly

Sennheiser HD 600 cans.

As one reviewer noted: "The only person who has to like your system is you".  I do.

Not planning on pix since it's just a bunch of black boxes.

That’s nice.  I have a setup that’s nowhere near that level but I do enjoy my vinyls. 

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