wspohn
Responses from wspohn
My Home Theatre Room Challenges - Is It Worth It To Upgrade Speakers Full range main speakers are a necessity but augmenting with powered subwoofers is also a good idea. Even more important is to have the room analyzed, treated if necessary and set up properly, | |
Do You Play Or Save Your Best Cartridges Have to be bonkers to want to change cartridges more than you have to. Each time you do that there is a small but finite chance you will damage it - brushing against the stylus with a sleeve or any number of ways. Plus it is a PITA to do . If t... | |
Previous Ownership...does it matter to you? If it is in good shape and sounds the way it should why would I care if it had been owned by one owner or many? We have a large Asian community here and most of the audiophiles in it change their gear every year or two when the latest and greates... | |
HT and 2 channel in same room? 1 or 2 systems? I went through this when I added video to an earlier system and again when I moved house and gear to a new location. Some of my conclusions: 1 - you need main speakers that are dual purpose, i.e. that have the range and sound good with either pur... | |
TT Arm-base Unipivot vs Gimbal-base Designs... Theoretically I think there is less to go wrong with a unipivot. With an arm with conventional bearings, the clearances are crucial to good sound and smooth operation, so if you opt for a well made arm. They needn't break the bank - even the lowe... | |
A public service announcement I never play analogue (nor order gear or music) while under the influence. As a wine aficionado, I figure listening to digital is small price to pay while sipping. | |
What is the current retail cost of your reference system? About half of what my car collection is worth. | |
Tube or solid state I like whatever sounds best. Tubes in main system with efficient speakers, and big Class A power and pre in the other two systems, one with conventional speakers and one using electrostats. | |
radio? One or two Sonos Ones would do it for you. | |
Warm and accurate bookshelves that can handle volume These would do it for you: Totems | |
Best turntable under $4000 Best way to spend $4K is to buy a used well cared for turntable that originally cost double that. I have done that several times, once getting a VPI TNT/ SMEV for the price of the cartridge it came with! Takes research and careful examination of... | |
Speakers with deep/powerful bass It isn't hard to get lots of low bass, quite often rather poorly controlled but it is very hard to get really good well controlled low bass. I have two speakers that are excellent at low bass (one is 3dB down at 23 Hz and the other at 20 Hz. Imp... | |
VPI dust cover I just got some plastic rod stock, cut it into four 'legs' and glued them to a flat sheet of plastic a bit bigger than the turntable (I have a TNT V) . Doesn't look bad and keeps most of the dust away. | |
Best sounding low power (under 80watts) Class AB amp? Interesting to see mention of the Robertson 4010 - I thought everyone would have forgotten about them long ago. I still use one in my 4th system and it is indeed a sweet sounding amp (it replaced another very decent amp, a Bryston 2B, which was de... | |
Speakers that are good with tubes I drive my Wilson Maxx 2 with tubes because I prefer the sound to using a very good solid state amp. Tube amps tend to be lower output power so you need speakers with fairly high sensitivity. |