Hello to you all at AOS

[dennis]

Greetings.
My name is Dennis and I am located in Northampton UK.

Main system:
SB Touch with Sbooster linear PS.
Coax into Meridian G68J processor (used as pre amp and dac)
EAR 869SE integrated (used in power amp mode)
PMC DB1+

Headphone rig:
Optical from the SBTouch into Musiland dac, WAD HD83 headphone amp and Senn HD250 II linear headphones.

[MartinT]

Hello and welcome to AoS, Dennis. An all-digital front end feeding a valve amp, I like your style :)

[dennis]

Thanks Martin.

[Welder]

Wotcha Dennis :)

Yep, like Martin, got to admire the style; valves and file may just be the best combo for a lot of people who still find digital a bit brutal for their tastes.
I would be interested in hearing what sort of sound you get out of that setup

[Jonboy]

valves and file may just be the best combo for a lot of people who still find digital a bit brutal for their tastes.


Agreed with the combo thing, that would be me with the brutal issues, Anyway welcome along Denis

[Alex_UK]

Hi Dennis, welcome to AoS.

I hail from Northampton originally, having been born there, but no one here seems to hold that against me so you should be fine! ;)

Interesting kit - heard a pair of the little PMCs at the Scalford Hall show last month and they were astonishingly good, especially for such a small speaker.

Enjoy the forum!

[dennis]

Hi All,
Apologies for the long post but thought it may be of interest to some of how I arrived at my current system.

2 years ago moved from a detached house to small bungalow.

System comprised of the following:
Systemdek II, Dynavector, Roksan DP1+DA1,SB3 ,Magnum MP150+ MF250, Royd RR2.

I had increasingly started to listen to more digital (flac) through the SB3 than LP a good 12 months prior to moving.

I was very pleased with how the system sounded in my old living room (concrete floor and relatively flat sounding) but when I moved into the bungalows small living room (suspended wood floor) the sound was boomy & bright.

Tried thick carpet, rugs, heavy curtains etc. The system never sounded as good as before the move.

Borrowed different speakers, Royd minstrals, RR1, Dynaudio 52, BW 602. All different sounding but again not working with this room.

As a last resort I thought I would give room correction a go and purchased the Meridian G68J. It made a difference but still the sound was not to my liking.
Purchased a pair of Meridian M33 active speakers. I found the sound a little harsh and uninvolving.

After a year of throwing a lot of time and money at the problem I gave up in frustration and decided to listen to my music through headphones.

Purchased SB Touch, various dacs, headphone amps and headphones.

Sold the TT,CD,Magnum pre/power, Royds and eventually offered the Meridian for sale.

Six months later and on a whim I purchased an EAR 869 and a pair of Tannoy revolution signature DC6.

After playing around with the various dac combinations I had at my disposal I settled on SBT/G68/EAR/Tannoy.

With meridian room correction the sound was OK but nothing more.

Two months ago I came across a user’s very positive review of his own EAR 869 and PMC DB1+ system. Purchased a S/H pair of DB1+. WOW, what a difference.

The system sounds absolutely fabulous in my small living room. Far, far better than any system I have previously owned.

I attended the Scalford Hall HI-Fi show and I can honestly say my system sounds as good, if not better than any I listened to at the show.

Thanks for listening.

[Spectral Morn]

Welcome to AOS

Enjoy the forum and have fun.


Regards D S D L

[electric beach]

Welcome to AOS

Enjoy the forum and have fun.


Regards D S D L

Welcome Dennis

Sounds like you're having fun already! :band:

Could you offer some detail regarding how you feed the Touch?

[dennis]

Hi electric beach.

I have a tranquil T2e pc, Via 1Gz cpu, 2x500Gb HDD, running WinXP.
I also have a External backup HDD. I remotely access the server with a notebook and VNC.
CD’s ripped to FLAC using Easy CD-DA extractor
99% of my music files are FLAC and I have some mp3’s downloaded from Napster.
All the hardware is kept in a cupboard in the conservatory.

Connection between Touch and server is via cat5 cable.
I also have SB Duet in the conservatory, again connected via cable to the server.
Bedroom has a SB Boom and Kitchen a SB Radio both of these connected via WiFi.
I haven’t bothered listening to the touch wirelessly because I have the cables in place.
I did try the Touch with an external drive connected via the USB.
It works but to me does not sound anywhere near as good when configured this way and very sluggish in operation.

With the Touch I do not use the touch screen for selecting music. The screen works fine but I prefer to use the remote from my spare SB3 (Classic).

Cheers
Dennis

[electric beach]

Thanks Dennis

I've received my Touch now and it's sounding better than CD when running directly from either USB or portable hard drive, so I'm more than happy. I will have to try streaming to it to compare the sound quality then. I agree the operation is fairly slow from an HD via USB, but I'm using a USB powered HD, which is not recommended.