LawrenceWil
New Member
Hi everyone,
In the way of an intro, I'm Lawrence from Chicago, now living in Bulgaria. When I relocated to Europe, it was impractical to move my beloved Luxman receiver and (pre-mass market) Polk 10B's on stands that I bought new in the late 80's. This combo sounded very good to me and received many compliments from friends with much more audiophile components.
Fast forward to Bulgaria, I put together what I could find, a 90's Aiwa XA-950Z 100 watt integrated amp, a 70's Akai semi-auto turntable with a Stanton 500 cartridge - likely original, Elac ELR-65 speakers and an Auris BluMe DAC. This set up did not begin to compare to my memory of my Luxman/Polk combo - not even close, especially when spinning vinyl, it just sounded like noise.
I decided to upgrade and focus on new rather than vintage, but being in Bulgaria buying new has it's challenges of only a few stores with limited brands and selections, not to mention a big price premium.
First I sourced a Pro-ject Carbon turntable on Ebay UK, but it was destroyed in shipping. However the Ortofon 2M red cartridge survived, and I put it on the Akai. There was a very noticeable sound improvement. Even if it has arrived intact, I was not very impressed with the overall build quality of the Pro-ject Carbon, this is the disadvantage of buying based on internet reviews without seeing (or hearing).
I decided to increase my turntable budget and really dug into internet research and after watching on Ebay UK for a long time, I bought an almost new Rega P3 with the RB330 tonearm and Elys 2 cartridge. All I can say is wow, this is in my limited experience the best turntable value for the money. It is of the highest quality and sounds amazing. And it looks like hifi porn on my cabinet, it's really beautiful. The Rega turntable was a big upgrade making the Aiwa and Elac's sound much better.
For my integrated amplifier upgrade, web research led me to to an article about the PS Audio Sprout paired with Andrew Jones designed Elac Debut 6 speakers, hailing it as a near audiophile quality system for the lowest price, so I decided to roll the dice, again sight and sound unseen and bought the Sprout 100 from a dealer from the UK. When I hooked the Sprout 100 up and let it run for a couple of hours, it seemed to burn in magically before my ears and it is another huge (HUGE) upgrade to my system. The blue tooth streaming Deezer Hifi from my Macbook sounds amazing and it supremely brought the Elac ELR-65's to life to the point that I am considering keeping them. However, it arrived with a dead channel on phono stage so I had to return it. 0-2 luck so far on this project which is particularly painful because deliveries across Europe take forever and are super expensive, it took a month from the date of purchase to receive the replacement.
The dealer sent me a new Sprout 100 and while everything works,I swear it is not the same. It did not magically burn in and it seems to need to warm up every time I listen to it. When cold it has a lot of booming bass which is interesting because the lack of bass imaging was my primary complaint about the Elac ELR-65's. For those of you not acquainted with the Sprout, it is a book sized little box with digital/analog/bluetooth/vinyl with no bass, midrange, or treble adjustments.
After it warms up it get better but it still seems bass centric and I swear it lacks the sound stage of the first one.
This leads to my questions.
1. Can identical components have different, better, worse sound characteristics?
2. Can I leave it on all of the time? The box gets slightly warm.
3. Anyone care to speculate if I will get another sound upgrade if I replace the Elac ELR- 65's with Elac Debut B6.2's?
I just came across a beautifully restored Marantz 2230 - my teenage dream reciever for $600 and I'm really tempted to replace the Sprout or take it to my office, but I just spent $800 on the Sprout.
Anyway, that's my story. Thanks in advance for your help.
Lawrence
In the way of an intro, I'm Lawrence from Chicago, now living in Bulgaria. When I relocated to Europe, it was impractical to move my beloved Luxman receiver and (pre-mass market) Polk 10B's on stands that I bought new in the late 80's. This combo sounded very good to me and received many compliments from friends with much more audiophile components.
Fast forward to Bulgaria, I put together what I could find, a 90's Aiwa XA-950Z 100 watt integrated amp, a 70's Akai semi-auto turntable with a Stanton 500 cartridge - likely original, Elac ELR-65 speakers and an Auris BluMe DAC. This set up did not begin to compare to my memory of my Luxman/Polk combo - not even close, especially when spinning vinyl, it just sounded like noise.
I decided to upgrade and focus on new rather than vintage, but being in Bulgaria buying new has it's challenges of only a few stores with limited brands and selections, not to mention a big price premium.
First I sourced a Pro-ject Carbon turntable on Ebay UK, but it was destroyed in shipping. However the Ortofon 2M red cartridge survived, and I put it on the Akai. There was a very noticeable sound improvement. Even if it has arrived intact, I was not very impressed with the overall build quality of the Pro-ject Carbon, this is the disadvantage of buying based on internet reviews without seeing (or hearing).
I decided to increase my turntable budget and really dug into internet research and after watching on Ebay UK for a long time, I bought an almost new Rega P3 with the RB330 tonearm and Elys 2 cartridge. All I can say is wow, this is in my limited experience the best turntable value for the money. It is of the highest quality and sounds amazing. And it looks like hifi porn on my cabinet, it's really beautiful. The Rega turntable was a big upgrade making the Aiwa and Elac's sound much better.
For my integrated amplifier upgrade, web research led me to to an article about the PS Audio Sprout paired with Andrew Jones designed Elac Debut 6 speakers, hailing it as a near audiophile quality system for the lowest price, so I decided to roll the dice, again sight and sound unseen and bought the Sprout 100 from a dealer from the UK. When I hooked the Sprout 100 up and let it run for a couple of hours, it seemed to burn in magically before my ears and it is another huge (HUGE) upgrade to my system. The blue tooth streaming Deezer Hifi from my Macbook sounds amazing and it supremely brought the Elac ELR-65's to life to the point that I am considering keeping them. However, it arrived with a dead channel on phono stage so I had to return it. 0-2 luck so far on this project which is particularly painful because deliveries across Europe take forever and are super expensive, it took a month from the date of purchase to receive the replacement.
The dealer sent me a new Sprout 100 and while everything works,I swear it is not the same. It did not magically burn in and it seems to need to warm up every time I listen to it. When cold it has a lot of booming bass which is interesting because the lack of bass imaging was my primary complaint about the Elac ELR-65's. For those of you not acquainted with the Sprout, it is a book sized little box with digital/analog/bluetooth/vinyl with no bass, midrange, or treble adjustments.
After it warms up it get better but it still seems bass centric and I swear it lacks the sound stage of the first one.
This leads to my questions.
1. Can identical components have different, better, worse sound characteristics?
2. Can I leave it on all of the time? The box gets slightly warm.
3. Anyone care to speculate if I will get another sound upgrade if I replace the Elac ELR- 65's with Elac Debut B6.2's?
I just came across a beautifully restored Marantz 2230 - my teenage dream reciever for $600 and I'm really tempted to replace the Sprout or take it to my office, but I just spent $800 on the Sprout.
Anyway, that's my story. Thanks in advance for your help.
Lawrence
