Hi

aporigine here

I am on my fourth serious upgrade binge, uh, cycle. I wouldn't have embarked on this daring journey without the pre-owned marketplace. Thanks 'Gon!

By now I have a pretty good idea of what I want out of an assembly of audio components. That the realization that no matter how accomplished the hardware, the software sets an absolute limit. So I don't concentrate on reproducing the performance, "putting the musicians into my room". Rather I seek gear that plays team to extract as much info from the *recording* as is possible without introducing artifacts or systematic error.

My tastes have steered me toward solid-state amplifiers and toward "resolution" more than "musicality" and "pace". So far my experience is that an honestly-engineered bit o'kit that errs toward the analytical, detail-seeking side of the spectrum tends to nail "second-order" phenomena like soundstaging and rhythmic integrity. So long as I can tell a guitar from a lute from a bouzouki ... or the upper registers of a clarinet from thode of an oboe. Those are sounds I know from live performances, and I use them to perform a first-pass evaluation of the sonic signature of a component.

DISCLAIMER. I have observed that the auditory sense is variable from person to person, above and beyond the familiar envelope of sonic and musical taste. I have further observed that my auditory sense seems to be out somewhere on the skinnier parts of the bell curve. This makes my audio journey sometimes choose paths less traveled. While I will endeavor to express my insights and insounds as "normally" as possible, Normal isn't me; it's a town in Illinois.

As this system takes shape, I am for the first time engaging two limits: room acoustics and perhaps cabling.

The first imputes that even if I significantly upgrade a piece of the replay chain, I won't get much return because I am fighting the poor acoustics of an untreated room in which other people live. In some months I will be able to move the big rig into my shop (poor wife thinks that means I'll be doing some useful work in there, lol), a space I can pretty much set up "my way". One wall will need to be workbenches and storage for my unnecessarily large collection of tools. My fixation with cool equipment is not limited to audio, I'm afraid.

The second means that I might be able to begin discerning the difference cable and cord choices make in the overall sonic presentation. At this point, I cannot really hear cables. That does not mean I'll take an objectivist stance and say "pricey cables are a bunch of hooey". What it does mean though is that until I hear the diff, I'll remain undecided (and insecure). In the meantime I'm collecting (and making) wires to cover all price points and, presumably, the entire quality range.

Initially I thought I would only have a digital front end. However, with the assistance (or is that corrupting influence) of a Bay Area audio retailer, I was initiated into the dark art of vinyl playback. Since then I have been scouring the thrift stores in our rural neighborhood, looking for the occasional diamond in a thick mud of Mantovani and religious lite rock.

So now I am putting nickels into a jar to finish my digital front end (need a dedicated transport) and a complete analog setup (table, arm, cartridge, phono stage). Edit: analog front end online.

And when I'm done with that ... who knows?! bwahaa bwahaaHAAAha