LionMage
New Member
I've been living in Arizona since 1994, which is when I started getting serious about HiFi. Prior to that, I grew up in Connecticut, where I learned to love the tube sound of my dad's Telefunken.
Sadly, I was naive when I went to put my first system together. The Onkyo receiver wasn't bad (at least it had all discrete output devices), but the Bose 301 Series III speakers were a poor choice. I simply was too blinded by the hype surrounding those direct/reflected speakers, and by the association between Amar Bose and my alma mater.
Once I started to experiment, I went through speakers and amplification stages at a pretty good clip. NHT 2.5i speakers were cool, but compressed the soundstage between them. The Vienna Acoustics Haydn speakers had better imaging, but the high end felt too rolled off. I tried separates, but quickly discovered that my old house suffers from the same problem as many houses in Arizona, namely a crappy ground with crappy house wiring. (Insert an image of me pounding a grounding stake into the hard-packed earth in my back yard -- during a really bad monsoon storm.) After trying a few solutions, I eventually settled on a Denon AVR-2807, which has served me pretty well for years; I want to replace this in the next year with a more modern Marantz.
I also maintain a small rig at work for headphone listening, which is a little nuts but tolerated by my employer. It consists of an Onkyo C-S5VL for SACD/CD playback and a Bellari HA540. I am currently using a pair of Yamaha Pro 500 headphones, but I also switch off with a Pioneer SE-MJ591 set that's pretty sweet with the high-frequency detail (but has a high clamping force that leaves my ears aching after about an hour).
I've avoided getting back into vinyl for years, initially because I had this idea that pure digital was the way to go, then because I figured the dust we get in Phoenix is horrendous for playing and storing vinyl. Recently, though, I've finally started looking for a good turntable so I can rediscover some old records (including some German opera) and listen to some recent releases. That'll be a topic for a whole other post...
Anyway, as someone with a physics background, I tend to be pretty analytical about claims made about equipment, though I know that in the end it's best to trust one's ears. It's just that I am dubious of what I think I'm hearing if the specs or measurements for a piece of gear just don't seem that good to me.
Sadly, I was naive when I went to put my first system together. The Onkyo receiver wasn't bad (at least it had all discrete output devices), but the Bose 301 Series III speakers were a poor choice. I simply was too blinded by the hype surrounding those direct/reflected speakers, and by the association between Amar Bose and my alma mater.
Once I started to experiment, I went through speakers and amplification stages at a pretty good clip. NHT 2.5i speakers were cool, but compressed the soundstage between them. The Vienna Acoustics Haydn speakers had better imaging, but the high end felt too rolled off. I tried separates, but quickly discovered that my old house suffers from the same problem as many houses in Arizona, namely a crappy ground with crappy house wiring. (Insert an image of me pounding a grounding stake into the hard-packed earth in my back yard -- during a really bad monsoon storm.) After trying a few solutions, I eventually settled on a Denon AVR-2807, which has served me pretty well for years; I want to replace this in the next year with a more modern Marantz.
I also maintain a small rig at work for headphone listening, which is a little nuts but tolerated by my employer. It consists of an Onkyo C-S5VL for SACD/CD playback and a Bellari HA540. I am currently using a pair of Yamaha Pro 500 headphones, but I also switch off with a Pioneer SE-MJ591 set that's pretty sweet with the high-frequency detail (but has a high clamping force that leaves my ears aching after about an hour).
I've avoided getting back into vinyl for years, initially because I had this idea that pure digital was the way to go, then because I figured the dust we get in Phoenix is horrendous for playing and storing vinyl. Recently, though, I've finally started looking for a good turntable so I can rediscover some old records (including some German opera) and listen to some recent releases. That'll be a topic for a whole other post...
Anyway, as someone with a physics background, I tend to be pretty analytical about claims made about equipment, though I know that in the end it's best to trust one's ears. It's just that I am dubious of what I think I'm hearing if the specs or measurements for a piece of gear just don't seem that good to me.
