I have been a member of Hifi Haven for quite a while but I have never posted details about my system, so here goes.
My listening is 99.9% to vinyl. Over the years I have gradually accumulated a decent size collection (3000 LPs give or take) of mostly jazz but also some classical as well as rock and folk. My musical tastes coincide with the years when the LP was king (1950s through 1970s), so the music I like is nearly all available on vinyl and some of it has never been reissued on CD.
My vinyl playback gear has been pretty constant for a number of years. The spinner is a Galibier Gavia with either a Triplanar VII or Analog Instruments Siggwan tonearm. To tell the truth, while I love the Siggwan, I have used the Triplanar exclusively for the last couple years. I am just too lazy to swap arms. Or change cartridges—-I have a Benz LP that I bought new ten years ago, it has been retipped twice by Soundsmith and will be going back again next year. I love the Benz!
The Benz is a low output moving coil so it gets amplified by some 1:10 Emia SUTs before heading to the phono preamp. The phono preamp is the D3a/5687 circuit described in a separate thread.
I have two options for my linestage. For active gain I have an Emotive Audio Epifania which uses a single 12B4 gain stage per channel. Most of the time, however, I use an Autoformer Volume Control wound by Dave Slagle of Intact Audio/EMIA. The AVC sounds almost as good and is dead quiet.
I have several power amp options. My everyday amps are 6L6 floating paraphase monos I built earlier this year. They sound very nice and their modest power (15-20 watts) is fine with high-sensitivity speakers. Other options have both higher and lower wattage. My Emotive Audio Vitas are push-pull KT120s with about 50 watts. And my 46 single ended amps are slightly more than 1 watt.
My primary speakers are Open Baffles using a Jensen P15LL, a YL (Yoshimura Labs) horn midrange, and ElectroVoice horn tweeter. The drivers and horns are all from the 1960s or 1970s.
Recently I started using another set of speakers that use the same woofer and tweeter but with a Western Electric 32A horn and 720a driver. The woofers are in a vented cabinet which sounds quite different from open baffle.
My interconnects and speaker cables are all Audio Note, both copper and silver. Power cords are Audio Note Isis except for the phono preamp which uses an Ocellia Reference silver power cord. All the power cords have Furutech FI-50 NCF connectors.
I will post some photos in a separate post.
My listening is 99.9% to vinyl. Over the years I have gradually accumulated a decent size collection (3000 LPs give or take) of mostly jazz but also some classical as well as rock and folk. My musical tastes coincide with the years when the LP was king (1950s through 1970s), so the music I like is nearly all available on vinyl and some of it has never been reissued on CD.
My vinyl playback gear has been pretty constant for a number of years. The spinner is a Galibier Gavia with either a Triplanar VII or Analog Instruments Siggwan tonearm. To tell the truth, while I love the Siggwan, I have used the Triplanar exclusively for the last couple years. I am just too lazy to swap arms. Or change cartridges—-I have a Benz LP that I bought new ten years ago, it has been retipped twice by Soundsmith and will be going back again next year. I love the Benz!
The Benz is a low output moving coil so it gets amplified by some 1:10 Emia SUTs before heading to the phono preamp. The phono preamp is the D3a/5687 circuit described in a separate thread.
I have two options for my linestage. For active gain I have an Emotive Audio Epifania which uses a single 12B4 gain stage per channel. Most of the time, however, I use an Autoformer Volume Control wound by Dave Slagle of Intact Audio/EMIA. The AVC sounds almost as good and is dead quiet.
I have several power amp options. My everyday amps are 6L6 floating paraphase monos I built earlier this year. They sound very nice and their modest power (15-20 watts) is fine with high-sensitivity speakers. Other options have both higher and lower wattage. My Emotive Audio Vitas are push-pull KT120s with about 50 watts. And my 46 single ended amps are slightly more than 1 watt.
My primary speakers are Open Baffles using a Jensen P15LL, a YL (Yoshimura Labs) horn midrange, and ElectroVoice horn tweeter. The drivers and horns are all from the 1960s or 1970s.
Recently I started using another set of speakers that use the same woofer and tweeter but with a Western Electric 32A horn and 720a driver. The woofers are in a vented cabinet which sounds quite different from open baffle.
My interconnects and speaker cables are all Audio Note, both copper and silver. Power cords are Audio Note Isis except for the phono preamp which uses an Ocellia Reference silver power cord. All the power cords have Furutech FI-50 NCF connectors.
I will post some photos in a separate post.