Hello everyone!
Hi everybody! My name is Keith Graham and I live in Cheltenham UK.
I am retired and only recently took up hifi as a hobby. I've always been keen to have good quality equipment but work, children and a wife who failed to see why any stereo should cost more than a TV, not to mention the sheer cost have prevented me from following my desires. I threw my TV out years ago, I much prefer reading and DIY. Untill about this time last year I was content to listen to Spotify through a sound card and a Rega Brio amp to budget Focal speakers.
My son bought me a Fatman hybrid amp to put in my workshop and I was blown away by the 'valve sound' - I had to go further!
I bought a Musical Fidelity V-LINK 192 streamer and set up the PC to stream direrctly from source via USB to a Derek Shek DAC and into the Fatman, then I bought a Rega Planar 3 with the Elys cartridge and ran that through a Chinese valve phono stage. I thought it was good untill.. I bought an Audio Note DAC4.1 kit from ANK in Canada, it was not cheap, but worth every penny - seriously, I could not believe how incredible my music sounded through this DAC. It blew the Rega away completely, which sounded flat and uninteresting in comparison. I bought a 'Space Tech Laboratory' (hand made valve phono stage) on EBay but the vinyl just could not beat the DAC.
Then I heard Audio Note were about to release an audiophile pre-amp, 'The Mentor' I managed to talk Brian Smith of ANK into letting me do a beta test build of it, so I was very happy to be the first customer with this pre-amp. Mine was the 3rd build in the world and first in Europe. It was utterly amazing, on first listen I had tears of joy in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Now I am a total Hi-Fi nut. I took to making my own interconnects (they are much better than anything on the market) and I'm about to build my first SET amp from schematic rather than a kit.
Wish me luck!
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Originally Posted by Wilbur
