Audio hobby is like tasting wine.

1. There is no best wine for everyone.

It depends on personal taste to choose favorite wine.


2. Law of diminishing return apply to both audio and wine.

100$ wine is not 10 times better than 10$ wine.

1,000$ wine is not 10 times better than 100$ wine.


3. You need experience to acknowledge good audio or wine.

I am not wine connoisseur.

But I could taste some nice wines through one of my rich friend who is willing to treat nice wines in his listening room.

He treated 700$ wine to me last year. It is the best wine I had ever tasted.

I had never bought wine more than 150$ myself, since I do not have confidence in selecting right one.

Some rich guy paid huge price for big audio system.

It plays loud but not in the balanced way or without any nuanced flavor of nice wines.

Money can not buy you nice system.

You need experience to match right components and cables.


4. One keeps looking for different flavor.

Most people do not want to drink same wine everyday.

They wish to taste different flavor.

Audiophile is looking for new flavor in their audio system.

They keep changing components every year or do some tweaks like cable rolling, tube rolling and power isolation.

Sometimes audiophile do sidegrade rather than upgrade.


I have my first serious audio system back to 1978 with ADS bookself speaker, Garrard Turntable and Fisher integrated amplifier.

After using dynamic speakers like Altech, Thiel and Canton, I was enamored by Apogee Duetta ribbon speaker and Martin Logan CLX full range electrostatic speaker around 1989.

I do not have enough listening space or money to buy two of them at the same time.

Although I loved silky violin tone out of Martin Logan, I chose Apogee based upon overall balance and seemless dynamics.

I had been happy with Apogee Duetta Sig driven by Krell KSA 150 from 1989 to 1999.

But I wish to get sub bass below 35 hz.

It is not easy to match subwoofer with Apogee Duetta Sig which is very fast.

Thus I had switched to Avalon Ascent II and then to Wilson Watt Puppy 4 and then B&W Notilus 801.


B&W Notilus 801(15 inch woofer) driven by Jadis 500(350 watts tube power) gave the most powerful and deep bass in my listening room.

But with too much heat and some tube popping out, I had swtiched to 300B SET amp with 8 watts from the recommendation of my friend who treated me 700$ wine.

I also replaced B&W Notilus 801 with full range high efficiency speaker.

Full range speaker is not my cup of tea with limited dynamics and bass extension.

Thus I had auditioned few speakers to replace full range.

It came down to Lansche 4.1 and JBL DD66000.

Although I liked enormous dynamics out of JBL, it may need more power than 8watts of Silbatone.SET.

Thus I had chosen Lansche on 2007 and been happy with its pristine treble out of plasma tweeter.


Last December, I came across Vintage Western horn full system which cost 300K$.

I really like its natural dynamics and timber out of it.

But I could not shell out 300K$ right now.

This year I had embarked upon earphones and headphones.

I need those listening to music when my wife is sleeping or I travel out of town.


I had lot of joy in Stax 009S driven by Carbon amp with nuanced details and wide and deep headstage.


Although I loved Martin Logan CLX sound, I had never had electrostatic speaker at home.

Now I enjoy Stax 009s instead.


I also had considered getting ribbon or planar speaker but will opt for ribbon headphone instead.

It is called Raal Sr1a which I auditioned last week.

It reminds me of Apogee Duetta with fast and open sound.

I expect to get it January next year.


Some people place more than two sets of speakers in one room.

But I do not like such placement since sound of speaker is very sensitive to room acoustics.

But it is easier to have several headphones and choose them upon mood without paying attention to room acoustics or space.


For the time being I will play with several headphones with various flavors.