A very musical (what an overused term!) system which leans to the warm side of neutral. The Ovations are great imagers and have very satisfying bass. My main goals continue to be neutral timbres and the illusion of real instruments playing in my acoustic space. Imaging is important but secondary to dynamics and creating this illusion. The living room is 14 x 20 feet.
SACD player and CD transport with superclock 2 and transport mod.
Levinson No-360s
Wonderful DA converter.
VPI Industries TNT-5
All mk.5 upgrades but with original mk.1 platter.
Graham Engineering 1.5t/c
with both aluminum and ceramic armwands, and 2.2 bearing cap upgrade.
Lyra Helikon
Helikon mono for mono records!
Benz Micro LP Ebony
Black as night, still breaking in...
Audio Research Reference 1
with Great Northern Sound reference mod.
Klyne Audio Arts 7PX-3.5
Wonderful phono preamp with lots of gain.
Audio Research Classic-120
Recently upgraded by GNS with Reference level mods (including balanced inputs, Cardas connectors, new caps, and assorted other changes to the passive components).
Verity Audio Parsifal Ovation
In beautiful Makore wood!
Straightwire Crescendo and Virtuoso
Great interconnects with a warm, ballsy sound.
Discovery Essence
A very tuneful phono cable.
Purist Audio Venustas
12 feet speaker cable. Also use Venustas jumpers on the Verities.
Wireworld Gold Starlight 5
Really great cable.
Balanced Power Technologies BPT 3.5 Signature Plus
Great balanced power conditioner.
BPT Pure Power Center
power strip with Wattagate outlets
Shunyata Python, Copperhead, and Taipan
power cords.
PS Audio Lab cables
From the wall to the UO's, and from the UO's to the amps.
Magnum Dynalab FT-101a
FM tuner.
Alesis Masterlink 9600
CD burner (and a spare transport).
Argent Room Lenses
Really good for focusing the soundstage.
ASC Tube traps
The Circe's like a more lively room so I had to remove some of the traps.
Stax Lamba Pro Headphones
Electrostatic headphones with solid state headphone amp.
Yanagisawa A-991
Great jazz maker with wonderful tonality. Can adjust timbre by moving mouthpiece in and out. Can play up to high F#.
Thanks for the comments. About one third of my records are mono jazz from the 40's and 50's - mostly small group but alot of swing too. I love the Helikon mono on those records. It is very quiet, has great weight in the upper bass and really sounds wonderful. The Benz Ruby 3 also sounds quite good on mono records, but is a bit noisier (as is to be expected) and does not have the heft (if that makes any sense) of the Helikon. The new Classic reissue mono records sound fantastic on the Helikon. I just placed a new order!
BTW, I've been collecting records for over 20 years since my grad school days and only got into audio when my record collection was already quite large and I decided to get a new turntable (my first turntable was the veritable AR-ES1).
Nice pictures of your system - I bet that you find much enjoyment listening. I can see what you were describing in positioning your Circes along the long wall of your listening room. You mentioned the effort required to calibrate their final position. It only took me about a year to find the location for my Circes where I am satisfied :-) Once the proper location for speakers and listening position was determined, it created an illusion of instruments precisely located in horizontal and vertical space and distance from the stage.
You have a huge LP collection. Do you listen to mono recordings? If so, what kind of experience can you share with a mono cartridge like the Helikon, SPU or Denon? Perhaps something else?
