2. amps-preamps
  3. 184609-86238

$50k - $80k Budget…Opinions please.

Long story short, I sold my beloved 2-channel to reduce family debt. In about a year-ish, I’ll be in a position to rebuild with a hefty budget. I loved my Harbeth + Pass Labs combo. My REL sub died before I really got to integrate it, so opinions wanted there as well. I fully understand the diminishing margin of returns when moving into some arenas, but that’s ok, opinions are strongly encouraged.

I listen to a lot of Miles Davis/Coltrane, Radiohead, Tool, Pearl Jam, Brent Cobb. I’ve often preferred “organic” or neutral, not sure how technical that is.

toddcowles
allenf1963
338 posts
 

@corelli 

 

A-Freaking-Men

p05129
501 posts
 

Kind of hard to recommend equipment when you said nothing about your room. If you don’t have a good room then you will be wasting your money. 
if you have a smallish room then it would be foolish to recommend a large floorstanding speaker and if you have a large room, you will want something bigger than a smallish stand mount speaker. 
Before going to a dealer, go to some audio shows to get a feeling of what type of sound you like

grislybutter
3,102 posts
 

I will not have 80K in a year but I can post the same question for 180K. 

you just buy a bunch of super-expensive stuff

bikeboy52
189 posts
 

@beach2mtn Have both if those artists on my playlist right now actually, always afraid someones going to look at really close someday and think Im schizophrenic.

ghdprentice
7,030 posts
 

Your budget is good to get a great sounding system. Given your circumstances I would recommend starting from scratch… forget what you used to like. Use all the experience you gained on sound quality and components and start over.

 

I would start auditioning systems… locally first, then maybe a couple trips. Go listen to a Wilson system, a Sonus Faber system, Audio research, B&W, Magico, Conrad Johnson, Roland, Boulder… Magnaplanar. Don’t worry about cost. Find what connects to you.

 

Then start thinking about what to buy… speakers first.. but you have the advantage of getting all synergistic components at one time.

 

I found that carefully chosen component at each level sounds better than the last… so a $80K system will sound very significantly better than a $40K system and not nearly as good as a $160K.

I recommend buying the best you can and do not spend much on cables and interconnects (I buy DHLabs as really good quality budget wire), wait about six months or a year until all is broken in and you know what your system sounds like and then start working on optimizing your system with wire. You can then really compare speaker cables first, then power cord (amp)… then interconnects and finally interconnects for all your components. At the end of this… two or three years you can have an incredible system carefully customized to your own tastes.

 

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