JA - John’s system is decidedly low-key, and interesting for that. He had sold his system before early retirement to Sandwich. His primary source is streamed music via Tidal, generally high resolution with MQA option. He has a turntable, but I haven’t seen him use it. No disc player at all. The server is (I’m blanking the brand) mid-priced, good performance. His previous server was PC NAS based which he had hot-rodded for verified bit-perfect delivery to the USB output. (John’s background includes MIT electrical engineering and computer science. He knows stuff. The new dedicated server outperforms his PC rig. Amplification is a Prima Luna integrated at about 35 watts, in which he has rolled tubes to firm up the bass, de-glare the mid-highs, etc. Speakers have included Thiel CS1.5, 1.6 and now 2.4s that he bought from audiojan (through this forum). Cables are Belden via BlueJeans, although we have run some of my experiments through his system. Presently we’re looking for a time to compare my StraightWire Rhapsody III ICs and Octave II SCs, as well as a borrowed pair of Iconoclast II speaker cables to his stock stuff. He has some sort of good AC filtration.
His room is well-enough proportioned, but has glass walls behind the speakers and the listeners. Ceiling is high enough, but reinforced with flat trusses. We have swept it and it’s pretty clean, but could definitely use more work. He is a very busy man, and we find time for audio fun less than once a month.
He was a founding operative of JazzBoston (which didn’t make it). He knows musical performance and production and has an amazing ear which I have come to trust more than my own. He is younger with hearing all the way up.
I would say John’s setup is good enough to show intrinsic behavior of whatever we’ve put in (such as Benchmark stack vs his PL). I know this MQA bit-truncation (or whatever we’ll call it) is real, but not yet analyzed enough to make much sense. What we both heard points to the kinds of misgivings I’ve been stirring around.