Your greatest high end audio purchase!!!

Can’t single out any one but here are the biggest winners for me, all current:

1) Ohm Walsh Speakers

2) KEF meta speakers

3) Roon

4) Cambridge Audio Evo 150

5) Room Equalization Wizard (REW) freeware (used with Roon DSP)

6) dbpoweramp for ripping CDs and Picard freeware to help with autotagging

7) Linn Axis turntable with Denon dl103R cartridge.

8) Audacity freeware to master analog vinyl converted to digital. This enables me to do my own digital mastering when converting vinyl to digital to then add to my digital music library and access via Roon.

9) Humminguru Ultrasonic record cleaner to get records spiffy clean before playing and typically also converting to digital.

Search my posts over the years and you should find I’ve elaborated on each of these at some point.

I hate to repeat from a recent post… but.

In 1978 I committed to a really great system and after reading popular stereo magazines (Stereo Review ((not a good source)) I bought the top rated Onkyo tape deck. It performed well, I thought. To get the very best out of it I had a technician align the heads for maximum performance. That destroyed the sound.. several iterations… never sounded good again.

I was in a high end store sharing my woes with a sales person and he said, “here, take this home and try it.” It was a first generation Nakamichi, wood around the outside, upright.. seven years old, weighed a ton. I was skeptical. I took it home, it was unbelievable. Comparing it to the original, in perfect working order Onkyo, the Onkyo sounded like a small plastic transistor radio vs real high fi equipment. It was a revelation, showed me what set apart audiophile (other than astronomical cost) from the rest and set me on my audiophile path for the next fifty years.

@ellajeanelle would you happen to know anything about their subs? namely

Interesting question, because my answer is not what I thought it would be.

When all is said and done, my choice would be the Sansui AU-9500 integrated I purchased back in the early 70's. The warm sound, the black faceplate and the sensual feel of the switches and knobs. They all combined to totally infatuate me at the time.

grislybutter: Unfortunately, I am not familiar with their subs, but those that you asked about are newer. Pretty much all of the AR stuff with a black finish came after the company was sold and are not anything like their earlier speakers in terms of quality or sound. (not even close)! Those subs may sound great, but like I said I have not heard them, and I would be very skeptical. I did try a pair of newer ARs once (black finish) and I was very disappointed. They ended up as a gift to one of my nephews. The fact that they now only make some crappy lamp shaped Bluetooth speakers is a good indication of how far they've sunk. See this link: Company:Acoustic Research - HandWiki