I was about to post this in the thread about Harbeths, but really... a bit too much of a tangent, even for me!
As I type I'm sitting and listening to a live broadcast of the Jackson Symphony through my aforementioned Reference 3a speakers and reflecting on not only the speakers themselves, but what comes before them and the audio people in my life who brought it together.
The speakers just work for me. Even in my little 12 x 12 room I never "hear" them, only the huge, detailed, lush musical image they project. I have to stick my ear right up to either of them to hear them individually - a bit of sorcery to me.
Backing up from the speakers in the chain is the Heybrook P-2 SS power amp JohnVF gave me last year when he moved to Chicago (my thanks once more, John). John has mentioned this amp and the pleasure it gave him in a few threads recently. It is a Tim Paravicini design and very much in the general Brit amp mode in terms of character. It was clearly getting tired and long-in-the-tooth and went to my tech, Dennis for a refreshing. In the end it got a major makeover. Not only was it full of dying 30 year old caps (which were replaced with really good modern equivalents), but there were quite a few areas where production cost savings had been made which were rethought. Dennis has done this for a number of my pieces over the years - undoing the compromises introduced in the production design phase. In every instance it has reaped a major benefit. At the beginning of the circuit were a couple of op-amps that would have been cheap even in the mid-80s and these were replaced with excellent recent Burr-Brown equivalents. The block rectifier bridge was replaced with one built from four Schotty diodes which really made a huge impact on the speed of the amp and dynamics. The RCAs and binding posts were changed out to some really nice ones that Dennis had rescued from various pieces of dead high-end gear he had about. All of the internal wiring was stripped out and replaced with really good stuff. The end result is an amp that is really "transparent" and a huge and very deep soundstage to go with it. Bass is tight, goes incredibly deep and full. In the end I feel like I'm basically listening to everything further up the chain, only louder. My tube amp is feeling a bit neglected these days, poor thing.
The next piece back is another relatively unsung piece, the Anthem Pre-1 from Sonic Frontiers. It was from SF's "bargain" line, but has some serious design features including a huge separate tube-rectified power supply and a wonderful MM/MC phono stage with basically the same circuit as their stand-alone phono pre of the time. Ernie came over the the house a year and a half back with some tubes from his stash and we repopulated with really good things. Thanks again, Ernie! The sound signature is interesting as it retains the harmonic complexity of a tube pre, but has the balance and poise of a SS design. I've never been a big fan of a really "tubey" sound, why I was drawn to the Conrad Johnson PV-12, but the Pre-1 now completely trounces it as far as I'm concerned.
As far as sources go - you know my turntable and arms, there is the inboard phono stage and a Bottlehead Seduction (also from Ernie) and SUT (Redboy) to cover the second arm on the table. At the moment I'm listening to the Dynalab tuner (yet another Canadian product). Denon CDP as transport/CI DAC, Revox RTR deck.
So there is the gear, but also the wonderful people in my life who make it possible. My thanks...
As I type I'm sitting and listening to a live broadcast of the Jackson Symphony through my aforementioned Reference 3a speakers and reflecting on not only the speakers themselves, but what comes before them and the audio people in my life who brought it together.
The speakers just work for me. Even in my little 12 x 12 room I never "hear" them, only the huge, detailed, lush musical image they project. I have to stick my ear right up to either of them to hear them individually - a bit of sorcery to me.
Backing up from the speakers in the chain is the Heybrook P-2 SS power amp JohnVF gave me last year when he moved to Chicago (my thanks once more, John). John has mentioned this amp and the pleasure it gave him in a few threads recently. It is a Tim Paravicini design and very much in the general Brit amp mode in terms of character. It was clearly getting tired and long-in-the-tooth and went to my tech, Dennis for a refreshing. In the end it got a major makeover. Not only was it full of dying 30 year old caps (which were replaced with really good modern equivalents), but there were quite a few areas where production cost savings had been made which were rethought. Dennis has done this for a number of my pieces over the years - undoing the compromises introduced in the production design phase. In every instance it has reaped a major benefit. At the beginning of the circuit were a couple of op-amps that would have been cheap even in the mid-80s and these were replaced with excellent recent Burr-Brown equivalents. The block rectifier bridge was replaced with one built from four Schotty diodes which really made a huge impact on the speed of the amp and dynamics. The RCAs and binding posts were changed out to some really nice ones that Dennis had rescued from various pieces of dead high-end gear he had about. All of the internal wiring was stripped out and replaced with really good stuff. The end result is an amp that is really "transparent" and a huge and very deep soundstage to go with it. Bass is tight, goes incredibly deep and full. In the end I feel like I'm basically listening to everything further up the chain, only louder. My tube amp is feeling a bit neglected these days, poor thing.
The next piece back is another relatively unsung piece, the Anthem Pre-1 from Sonic Frontiers. It was from SF's "bargain" line, but has some serious design features including a huge separate tube-rectified power supply and a wonderful MM/MC phono stage with basically the same circuit as their stand-alone phono pre of the time. Ernie came over the the house a year and a half back with some tubes from his stash and we repopulated with really good things. Thanks again, Ernie! The sound signature is interesting as it retains the harmonic complexity of a tube pre, but has the balance and poise of a SS design. I've never been a big fan of a really "tubey" sound, why I was drawn to the Conrad Johnson PV-12, but the Pre-1 now completely trounces it as far as I'm concerned.
As far as sources go - you know my turntable and arms, there is the inboard phono stage and a Bottlehead Seduction (also from Ernie) and SUT (Redboy) to cover the second arm on the table. At the moment I'm listening to the Dynalab tuner (yet another Canadian product). Denon CDP as transport/CI DAC, Revox RTR deck.
So there is the gear, but also the wonderful people in my life who make it possible. My thanks...
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