After selecting your components setting up your room is the key. You should start by positioning your speakers properly and then treat your room. I really like the room kits they offer at Sonitus, Anthony Grimani's company:
Recommendations for HiFi Listening Room
Newbie here. Wife and I are looking to turn our Great Room into a listening room. It’s roughly 21’X’19 and has a cathedral ceiling that is 11’ tall at the wall and 20’ tall at the apex. Spoke to a good hifi dealer in the area who made the following recommendations/proposal and I’m curious if this group may have any input for getting maximum bang for my buck. Basically, with a budget around 35k (or thereabouts) would you buy something similar or are there any components you’d add or swap out?
Paradigm Persona 3F
McIntosh MA8950
Pro-Ject Xtension 9 w/ Ortofon Black Cartridge
Sony ES DSD Music Server (this one concerns me a touch in that it appears to be an 8 yr old product line).
Thanks so much in advance for your collective expertise. My wife isn’t going to let me drop money into this for another 15 years so I need to get it right the first time.
If it matters, our musical taste is quite varied: classical, jazz, classic rock, alternative, hip hop. My mother complained in my youth that if i had 10 bucks I would just buy a CD with it. She is still right.
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BTW, if you haven't purchased speakers yet you may want to look at active speakers such as the Kef LS60 which is an entire system. They have reviews of many of these type of system/speakers at soundstage:
https://www.soundstagesimplifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews |
List of speakers I’ve had in my listening room for at least 6 months. Revel salon 1, salon 2, usher be20dmd, persona 7f, meridian dsp 8000se, Kef blade, vienna acoustics strauss and kef r107/2&r105/3. for a bright room I would recommend the usher, vienna acoustics and mostly meridian dsp8k. The salon2 and kef blade will be better with carpet and space, even more so for the persona’s. I found the persona’s to be the most amplifier sensitive, the salon 2 the most power hungry and the blades are my current passive favorite. Used prices on meridian make them a great bargain but service is limited to a single shop in Georgia. Legacy aeris look the goods for a large room. |
@brewerslaw Just because you bought tons from iTunes doesn't mean you're stuck with Apple Music forever. When you stream it, they don't even play the best version of the files. They shrink to save bandwidth. Your best bet is to store you Apple purchased files in AIFF on a NAS or USB drive. Then you can play those with any decent software on a streamer even if you don't have a service subscription to Qobuz etc. Roon would make for better metadata. One super annoying thing about Apple is they don't by default place album art .jpgs in your folders. You can easily fix this some cheap or maybe even free software. But that's a whole 'nuther conversation. @grislybutter buying an amp before choosing what speakers you'll use them with is like buying your favorite tires because they'll be the "spirit of your ride" then looking at what vehicles fit those tires. Speakers vary far more widely in design and each needs an appropriate amp. The delta between appropriate amps will be significant, but nowhere near as wide ranging in possibilities vs. the myriads of speaker options. You wouldn't want to buy monster truck tires and then decide you'd like to drive a Miata. Cheers, Spencer |
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