TAD Compact Reference with Beryllium coincident tweeter and midrange.
Graham Engineering Phantom
Excellent sound, and a joy to set up and use. Damping fluid not used.
Soundsmith Strain Gauge
Phono cart system including phono stage
PS Audio PerfectWave DAC
PWD - with network bridge board.
Atma-Sphere MA-1 mk3.1
140 watts of Triode Power, fully balanced monoblock design with V-cap upgrade. OTL- No transformers to get in the way of the music. Notice the point to point wiring featured under the chassis of this unit, which actually was routed much neater on their older chassis, but they went to this design to fit into a standard equipment rack. Even before I fired these up for the first time I just had take a look under the hood and snap this pic. You can see the 38 beautifully glowing tubes in the system pics.
Atma-Sphere MP-1 Mk3.1 Remote Volume
All tube Preamp now with remote volume. So much depth and harmonic richness. Beautiful build quality.
Stealth Audio Hyperphono
Hyperphono phono cable
Starsound Technologies Sistrum SP-1
Sitting under Raven One turntable- a very nice improvement.
Acoustic System Resonators various
I have 6 in total, from basic to silver to gold special. SInce i have limited space, the only acoustical treatment I have are Roomtune Corner tunes and these Resonators. They actually do work.
Oyaide AC receptacles and Plug P-004 and R-1
Beryllium plated AC plug and outlet made a big difference over stock outlets and Hubbel plug. I have two more R-1's that have to go in a quad box to replace Powerports. (which should be interesting to see if there is an improvement)
I've only been to one audio show, the '07 RMAF, and the speakers I remember the most were the TAD's. They still stand out in my mind as one of the best speakers I've ever heard. I went back to my early favorites, the Dual Concentric Tannoys, which share some of the same characteristics as the TAD's, not as much detail and refinement, but nonetheless very enjoyable.
Very beautiful and interesting system. Although I've enjoyed both Atma & TAD gear, never heard them together. When I owned MA1 mk2 amps, such a fine speaker never made it home with me. Enjoy! Cheers,
Very nice system. Thank you for having me over. The TADs sound amazing. Definitely a world class system. Cant wait till you finish sorting out the room treatments & analogue setup.
Many changes are taking place in our system. First we have gotten in the unbelievable TAD CR1 speakers. This was a multi year search for a reference quality speaker that would play well with OTL's and could be used to check mixes on our audio/video post production work. We auditioned numerous top quality speakers, all of which got rave reviews or mentions from reviewers. Quite a few of them were outstanding performers.
But upon hearing the TAD's in our system, it was evident that designer Andrew Jones had done something unique. With millions of dollars in resources for R&D (Pioneer is the parent company) TAD has created a transducer that takes audio reproduction to a new level of fidelity, truthfulness and pure enjoyment.
The coincident arrangement of the drivers creates a wonderfully accurate point source, with excellent imaging, specificity, tonality and soundstage depth. Is vapor deposited Beryllium the next in driver technology?
Any Audiogon members visiting the Big Apple, please look me up at triodepicturesound.com (or contact me via Audiogon) just to say hi and give us your opinion.
The second big change for us is the purchase of a commercial loft in Manhattan for our video/audio post production and hi fi listening facilities.
We will be building out the facility, power, acoustics, etc. over the next several months.
The Halcyonics clarifies much of the spectrum. I believe I had posted some further thoughts when I first got it when it was fresher in my mind, you may be able to search for. The thing is that the unit actively cancels vibration up to about 100-200 hz I think then it works passively, so just shutting the unit on and off doesn't tell the whole the story of what it's doing.
System edited: Last year we moved into a loft - the biggest change has been the room. It really allows the system to breath. I had a guest listen to Bill Evan live at the Village Vanguard on vinyl, and it turns out he was recently at that venue. He thought our new space sounded very much like it did a few weeks earlier at the Vanguard. The Raven one table is sitting on a Halcyonics platform, on the floor for now.
Well tell us what the name of your company is. By the way there is little room in this industry for people that are passionate about their products. Most people just want to brand up. Meaning the just want big brand names. You know the ones.
Just wanted to update my system to make the disclosure that I have made the transition from mere audiophile, to being a dealer for just a few of the products I feel passionately about. (one being the atma-sphere amps and preamps, the Soundsmith Strain Gauge, just last week PS Audio, plus a new cable company named Performance Reference.) I know that in the current economy, this is rather poor timing, but luckily, audio will not be my main source of income, but rather my film and tv production work. I feel this affords me the opportunity to not have to push products I don't believe in and don't use in my own personal system every day. It reminds me of the old adage, how do you make a million dollars in the high end audio business... start with 5 million. But hopefully this hybrid approach of combining my editing facilities with an audio showroom will allow me to continue my audio endeavor in a low key, low pressure environment.
Your post on a Strainguage coming has me very curious. Would love to know how you like it once set. Are you keeping your Phantom & Tron 7? I would love to hear it once it settles in. I heard it briefly in the Munich show. It sounded promising w. caveats, but it wasn't working 100%. Got to love the blue light. YOu are taking a wonderful direction with your spending well thought out. I have a feeling your audible ROI is higher than most of us out there.
Hi RD, By the looks of things you made it all work just fine!
A thought came to mind after your comment on my page regarding the VPI record cleaning machine.
If you do not already have a record cleaner,the VPI 16.5 will do a very effective job.
I'm familiar with this brand though I'm sure there are others on the market that are just as good for the price.
I did mention the fluid dispencer on the 17F on my page, you could use it with the Walker prelude solution with only one type of solution only. There is a stepped method to using the kit and solutions.
Though you could verywell have something else in mind. The 17F would be agood one to own or some of the other brands like Kuzma and Clearaudio.
If you have many thousands of LPs that you plan on listening to at some point,then I would spend the money on a larger better unit then the 17F.
I rotated my entire setup 90 degrees so the system is now firing down the long wall. This improved the quality of the bass response tremendously, and gave me better depth and deleniation. The sound stage is not as wide now, since the room is only about 11 feet wide, but 27 feet long.
Also having the speakers much closer to the side walls has caused me to have to deal with first reflection points, which I tamed using some 2" acoustic foam pyramid panels. I may want to try Realtraps for better aesthetics, but acording to a chart I saw in the mids and highs the foam seems to do as well.
One of the things I really love about this hobby is the huge improvement I got just from changing the setup and speaker position.
On the new Warner Bros. LP release of James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, the guitars are amazingly lifelike, and I hear unamplified acoustic guitars from close up often enough to know what they should sound like.
Very impressive system. I bet your tv is never on. I know mine is somewhere under a pile of records, but why even bother when our systems do so much more. Very nice rd!
Outlier - what type of floors do you have - Mine are concrete - so perhaps that has something to do with my success using the Sistrum stand. Also you can see the Sisrum sits on a 1" slab of slate, which itself is on a wooden rack.
CDC - I wish I could get some audiophile friends over here to confirm what I am hearing. I really believe that the ceramic cabinets Cerious uses are the best that current audio has to offer. They are rigid, yet lossy and thus dont need any absorbent material in the cabinets. Wrapping your knuckles on the cabinet is like hitting a black hole. It comepletely absorbs the energy from your hand. They make magic and realsim at the same time, and offer shocking performance at the price.
That being said, I suspect in the next few months some lucky east coast A'gonner is going to get the buy of a lifetime. I am thinking of going to the Polymer Logic speaker. I know their cabinet can't be as good as the Cerious, but from everything I have heard from owners, the diamond midrange makes music like no other.
It's just a shame I dont live in a house where I could have a second system or a dedicated home theater. If I did, I would NEVER sell these things. And of course I wont sell them til I am 100% convinced that the Polymers are right for me (and my rather narrow room.)
Hi Emailists, I was interested to see you trying a Sistrum stand with yuour turntable.
I had tried this before, using an Sistrum 004 on my Teres 255 turntable (also an unsuspended design). My initial impressions where poor, and I removed the Sistrum without putting much listenting time in. I guess I should retry it, given your positve results. I have a couple of 001 stands that I'm using om my amps, and a couple of 003 stands that are idle just now (they used to be used under my older speakers - Audio Physic Virgo II, and were all but essential there, but I've now moved to Focal Diva Utopia be, and they're harder to use on the Divas.)
I think the key challenge for me that you don't have with your Raven, is that my motor is decoupled from the table, so can't be part of the sistrum suspension. Perhaps I'll try a sistrum between two pieces of wood/granite slabs with the tt on top.
