I picked up a set of Kestrel Hot Rods in summer of 2022. For a while, it was part of my bedroom setup, serving as either FR/FL in a surround setup, or connected to an analog setup for occasional turntable use. But after selling three sets of speakers - Snell K7, Revel M22 and Snell LCR7 - and moving remaining pieces around, the Kestrels ended up where I hadn’t imagined.
They‘re currently running off the heart of my analog system, a vintage Kyocera R-661 tuner/amplifier from the late 1980s. (Kyocera refused to call it a receiver). What finally put this setup to more active use was a little Apple AirPort Express (2nd version) I found through Craigslist. While it can serve as a wifi router, it also functions as a network streamer. So I can shoot Pandora or Apple Music, including lossless, via AirPlay, and use its onboard DAC, which has a decent reputation, to get analog into the amp. Sounds better than I’ve ever experienced in that room.
They‘re currently running off the heart of my analog system, a vintage Kyocera R-661 tuner/amplifier from the late 1980s. (Kyocera refused to call it a receiver). What finally put this setup to more active use was a little Apple AirPort Express (2nd version) I found through Craigslist. While it can serve as a wifi router, it also functions as a network streamer. So I can shoot Pandora or Apple Music, including lossless, via AirPlay, and use its onboard DAC, which has a decent reputation, to get analog into the amp. Sounds better than I’ve ever experienced in that room.
