My current setup [Archive] - The Art of Sound Forum

Quicky82

05-09-2012, 13:56

Hi all,

New member here adding a pic to support my 'hello' in the Welcome thread:

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/4206/setupdf.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/818/setupdf.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

Recently been able to move this into a dedicated room so I'm happy.. for now. Although looking at some of the incredible setups dotted around the Gallery section has set my upgrade urge going again!

htm_1968

05-09-2012, 14:24

Floyddroid

05-09-2012, 14:50

smashing looking system. very very interesting. I am intrigued.

Floyddroid

05-09-2012, 14:52

tell us about your system.

Quicky82

05-09-2012, 15:05

Thanks Floyddroid!

My system comprises of:
- A Wyred4Sound DAC2
- 2 ICEPower 125ASX2 based amps
- Factory-recommended BLH cabinets with Fostex fe206en drivers (and Planet10 phase plugs)
- A BK XLS200 subwoofer

This runs off a Macbook playing lossless CD rips. The laptop's output is slightly EQ'd to tame the shout from those Fostex drivers and the cabinets have had their internal volume reduced to tune them. I have some bass trapping going on in the room also, at the moment I'm pretty happy with it on everything except bassy electronic stuff!

htm_1968: My turntable is in the cupboard at the moment! I need to find some way of getting it hooked up to the rest of the kit. The DAC has a 'home theatre passthrough' feature which I could put the turntable through but I'm missing a preamp with a volume control.

The turntable is a Technics 1210 with RB250 tonearm and Shure 'audiophile' cartridge. The vinyl is mainly all house and disco stuff from when I had a DJ setup rather than a hifi setup.

Puffin

05-09-2012, 19:41

Nice system. I built 208 Sigma cabs for my 206E's with Planet 10 phase plugs. Used them for 4 or 5 years and was very happy with them in a very small room would you believe. Moved them to a larger room and I could not get them to work anywhere near as well as before, so they are gathering dust.

Bluedroog

05-09-2012, 21:18

Very nice, how do you find the W4S Dac?

RichB

05-09-2012, 21:29

Clearly you've given this some thought.... looks fabulous. Seems you've also got some room treatments in there, please tell us more about how you've designed your listening den.

Quicky82

05-09-2012, 21:47

Thanks guys! :)

Puffin: That's interesting; I initially had the system in a bigger room and was never quite happy with it. There were really annoying nulls in the bass. Moving them to the current room in the pic made them sound better!

I'd also heard that the 208 cabinets work really well with the 206 drivers, but not until I'd already made the 206 ones! I've never heard them in the 208 cab so I can't compare first-hand.

Bluedroog: I love it! I really wanted something with remote control and good connectivity (async USB mainly). Sound wise it's fantastic. I had went from a Benchmark DAC which I loved, the sound from the W2S is more 'meaty' and full than the Benchmark but both are very detailed. I'm curious as to which is more accurate though!

RichB: It's actually ended up like this through adding bits and pieces over time and trying to tweak things (like fixing the bass nulls mentioned above!) - quite an organic process as opposed to everything being designed from scratch. The bass trapping certainly helped in the other room and I just moved it over when I was able to move everything into the new room! I also needed somewhere to store the vinyl which ended up doubling as a system rack.

Puffin

06-09-2012, 05:26

There were really annoying nulls in the bass.

Yup, that's exactly what happened to me. Great bass about 4 feet away or 17feet:scratch::doh:

Tarzan

06-09-2012, 09:31

Adam, that is a lovely looking set-up you have there mate, l reckon you lose a few hours lost in music:) Could you tell us a bit more about the power amps?

Quicky82

06-09-2012, 11:35

Hi Tarzan, thanks very much; I try to spend as much time as I can!

The amps are ICEPower Class D amps. Each one has a single 125asx2 module running in BTL mode, one for each speaker. This is 3rd gen ICEPower I think. Each give a claimed 250 watts into 8 Ohms (totally overkill for those drivers but I'm a firm believer in headroom!). The idea was to also leave me room in future to move to less efficient speakers if need be.

I got them from a Chinese seller on Audiogon called Ghent who was great to deal with. I was already totally sold on ICEPower because before that I had a Rotel RB1510 2-channel home-theatre distribution amp which had one 125asx2 running in single ended mode and I was able to sell that for a good price as was curious to try the same modules in mono block format.

Before that, I'd really enjoyed various types of Tripath amps and I'd found Class D far superior to any (admittedly fairly budget) ClassA/B amps I'd tried. For me it was a cheap way to get good performance, I never have huge budgets for kit so I like to try and get good bang-for-the-buck. I was also really interested in how many amp manufacturers were using ICEPower modules themselves, some modified and some not.

In the future I would be very interested to try some of the new Hypex n-core amps but for now I absolutely love the ICEPower modules.

Alex_UK

06-09-2012, 18:28

Thanks for sharing Adam - looks fab! Great to see new members do the Gallery thing - not enough do, IMO (hint, hint!:))

Quicky82

13-09-2012, 12:45

Just a heads-up in case anyone is interested. I'm selling some of the bits and pieces in the photo (mainly speakers, sub, and a TT) in order to get a more 'all rounder' set of speakers.

Details are in the appropriate 'private ads' section. Thanks again for all the comments!

Quicky82

30-10-2012, 21:54

So, after a round of swapping things around, selling things and getting new things, I thought I'd share my new setup.

After listing my Fostex horns everywhere, I eventually sold them to a really nice local guy who frequents this very forum (if you're reading this, I hope you're enjoying them!). It was nice seeing them go to a good home!

I bought some ProAc Studio 140 MkI's to replace them, which I absolutely love. I've found I've had to EQ from the Mac slightly to account for a room mode, but now my system is even simpler (no sub needed).

Now I just need to find a way of playing those 12 inch singles and I'll be set.

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/269/hifi2.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/268/hifi2.jpg/)

Sovereign

31-10-2012, 07:13

I had a wyred 4 sound DAC 6 months ago, borrowed from a shop whilst my MDAC was being fixed, and thought it was excellent.

Quicky82

31-10-2012, 07:42

Ah, interesting! How do the two compare?

When I got the W4S dac, I originally wanted an MDAC but they'd just came out, no where had any stock and no one knew when they'd be back in. I ended up seeing the W4S on eBay and going for that.

They're both very similarly specced and I think they both use the Sabre ESS 9018 chipset. I imagine they sound similar but I've never heard MDAC.