New Member from Chicago

Deonild

New Member
Hey All,

Glad I found this forum, lots of good info and people!

I'm a younger, budding vintage audio enthusiast. Grew up with my Dad's 4 foot tall Marantz speakers and receiver. I took that system while I was in college, yet he sold it 5 years ago.

Since then have had a cheap Sony bookshelf stereo, tried a soundbar, upgraded to an AV receiver and surround sound. Bought a decent turntable and phono preamp, trying to get some better music listening experience. Took my Dad's records, he wasn't using, and bought some more. Got a PonoPlayer, some nice headphones and earbuds. Still, the stereo music listening experience was not what I remembered from my Dad's Marantz system.

Found some massive speakers at a garage sale, as big as my Dad's old ones, after buying them and being disappointed with the sound quality did some research and determined they must be the cheapest speakers ever made of that size, in the 90's. Found some JBL L60T, good reviews for speakers with this tweeter, and better bass with 8" woofer compared to the 5 1/4" woofers in my surround sound system. These made a difference. After some more research online determined to try separates. Found a used Adcom 5400 amp, had distortion issues so got it repaired (still cheaper than something new from emotiva/parasound/etc). Got a matching Adcom preamp used, the repair guy who serviced the power amp did not have nice things to say about the Adcom preamp, so I did a trade-in for a Harman Kardon Citation Eleven preamp. The minute I tried the HK preamp (from 1973) I was immediately reminded of my Dad's Marantz system's sound (hard to put a finger on it, maybe a placebo, not sure, but I like it).

Mostly playing FLAC albums on PonoPlayer > HK preamp > Adcom amp > JBL speakers. Was hoping to not need EQ, but had to bring back the higher frequencies a couple db using the HK preamp's 5 band EQ. Very happy with this setup, and very happy I took the leap to try a piece of equipment 14 years older than I am! If I upgrade in the future I will probably first look to more vintage pieces.

Looking forward to reading more on this forum and seeing what's out there. Plenty of garage sales in Chicago, may find something good once I learn what to look for!
 
Welcome to the AK bunch.

Great write up with your intro:thumbsup:...and sharing the audio world of hard knocks! And with your pos attitude...you will overcome any future sound barriers that you will encounter.

Q
 
Greetings to ya. I am going where you have already been. I have well over 2TB of music files on a network drive and haven't put together a way to run it to an analog receiver. I can get it to the HT setup. I have some other things to work on first using the copious amounts of info here on AK. Have a great time up here!
 
Greetings to ya. I am going where you have already been. I have well over 2TB of music files on a network drive and haven't put together a way to run it to an analog receiver. I can get it to the HT setup. I have some other things to work on first using the copious amounts of info here on AK. Have a great time up here!

kryten79, This week I got tired of having to get up to adjust the volume frequently, and got a Raspberry Pi with a DAC+ RCA attachment, and plugging in a USB with FLAC albums into this. Controling it to change songs/volume from my phone and computer. There's some options for on-board DAC's, and ability to connect to external DAC, I may change it up over time. So far happy with it and it competes with the PonoPlayer for sound quality! May not be as airy as Pono, but the DAC I got seems to have better kick and detail in drums. PM if want any info about them, did a bunch of research this last week.
 
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