Very happy with this system. It's in my basement, decent acoustics, have the sweet spot dialed in pretty well even though the furniture means my speakers are not ideally placed - would like them further into the room and maybe a bit closer together. Brief descriptions of each piece are in the Components section. Always appreciate comments and suggestions!
Bought these slightly used for $4K - never get tired of listening to these beauties! On Sound Anchor 16" stands.
SST Son of Ampzilla II Amplifier
220W class A/B amp. Like it's combination of detail, warmth and power in a nice, small footprint.
Linear Tube Audio MicroZotl MZ2 Preamp/Headphone Amp
A $2000 do it all 12SN7-based preamp that has added huge amounts of detail, resolution and imaging to the music. Beautiful sounding headphone amp as well.
Bluesound Vault 2 & Node 2i
I stream from my own collection on the Vault as well as Tidal (lot of MQA available).
Sennheiser HD-650 Headphones
I don't listen to headphones that often but when I do, it's through these. Smooth and comfortable.
Kimber Kable 12TC Speaker Cable
Not convinced speaker cables make a discernable difference but also didn't want to skimp just in case! These are well regarded for an acceptable price.
Audio Art IC-3SE Interconnects (with DH Labs High Copper Alloy Ultimate RCAs)
Thank you cio52! I did increase the toe-in and liked the results. Will try the back angling this weekend and see what it does for me. Your system looks fantastic by the way!
Beautiful System, I'm sure it sounds great. I have a couple of suggestions. One quick tweek you should try is to angle the speakers back slightly as this will really improve the sound stage. Your pictures also show that the speakers are barely toed in, I've had more success in my room with a more direct line to the sweet spot (ymmv of course). Please visit my system for more info and feel free to comment. Enjoy everyday (safely), your ears are the best they will ever be today. Thank you for sharing your system.
Thanks for your suggestion jwcondo. I will need to wear down my wife on replacing that cabinet unit! I actually have roughly an equilateral triangle between speakers and my listening position so it's not too bad although Alan Shaw suggests more of a 1:1.5 set up.
The Bluesound for me has been great. I know there are better DACs out there than what is in the Node but the whole thing is so convenient for me, especially since I upgraded my home wifi. And with Tidal native on the Bluesound app, I can easily get at a big library of MQA tracks. I have two of the Bluesound Pulse units for use in other parts of the house as well.
I am just using the Bluesound app for digital music. All of my owned tracks are on the Bluesound Vault and I can access Tidal from that app as well (Spotify too but I am enjoying exploring all the MQA content on Tidal).
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