Greetings from Pimlico
A quick hello to introduce myself - I'm Richard, living as the user name suggests in Pimlico, London.
In my spare time I play the piano, classical, post Grade 8 standard, or even better if I practice properly. I'm a lapsed bass baritone and ought to be singing more. Listening is mainly classical, particularly chamber music, solo/duo piano, Baroque opera, vocal from early polyphony through Baroque, and German Lieder. I've recently fallen back in love with Wagner, and am off to Bayreuth next year for the Ring which will be a case of kill or cure I'm sure. In terms of modern rock or pop I tend to be more interested in more acoustic styles with varied harmonic structures rather than heavy rock.
Even though the quality isn't audiophile, I'm great Spotify fan, which can allow you to explore all sorts of new music. Often then I find myself buying CD's or LP's of things I've heard on it. The Chord DAC (see below) really does improve the quality of that sound.
I've based my system around classic Quad equipment which I've always had a bit of thing for ever since hearing my best friend's father's system way back when. He was one of the key engineering designers at Quad back in the Peter Walker era and was very heavily involved in the development of the ESL63.
The speakers I have at the moment are ESL 57's which have been overhauled by Quad to bring them back to standard with some new panels from Quad Germany who have the original manufacturing equipment from Quad UK, and in fact will still build you a Quad ESL 57 today. Main amplification comes from a mixture of valve (Quad II's with a full complement of Mullard/GEC valves) and solid state (Quad 303 or one of last 909's made in the UK). For preamps I have a choice of a Quad 44 which has had some upgraded internal components but retains the basic system architecture or a newer Quad 99. I'm great fan of the tone controls, particularly the tilt function, for sorting out poor recordings and especially older mono recordings.
The front end has had a bit of an upgrade recently and for vinyl I have a Rega P9 with an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze, Whest PS30 RDT. Digital comes from a Quad Elite CDS or from my MacBookPro via the rather marvellous Chord QuteHD DAC. For better or worse I'm not a great believer in fancy cables. The speakers are making do with some old Linn speaker cable from my first hifi system bought over 20 years ago. On the basis that it is better than bell wire and that last time I looked there seem to be quite a few strands of copper all twisted together I think Peter Walker would probably approve. Other cables are generally from Flashback Sales who are a great company for making up cables to fit all sorts of old Quad and Naim equipment together, with a few Chord Crimson's thrown in for good measure.
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Originally Posted by pimlicoquad
