Paul4972
31-10-2016, 23:23
1830018297182981829918296Hi, a quick hello, from a predominantly LP spinning music lover in his fifties. That is to say, the record collection I have now (approx. 24 linear feet of classical, jazz, rock and some pop) was started some time ago, around 1970, and was barely interrupted by the advent of CD. I buy the spindly little discs only if I have to. I bought my first CD player late, around 1997, to play the few CD's I had amassed, reluctantly, after hearing early CD transfers of the famous Pablo Casals Bach Cello Partitas. They sounded terrible, and only the more recent purchase of a pre-owned Ayon CD2 valve player now allows music to flow from the discs I do possess. I prefer the natural unforced sound I get from spinning LPs, particularly pre-digital era produced discs, as on my set-up, with a recently rebuilt Decca SC4E cartridge, seemingly all spatial and other information including the air around that space is present, and unscrambled by the one's and two's of digital code. Check the great short essay by Lynn Olsen for a nicely insightful think through the issues : http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/illusion-engines.html. With an evolved valve preamp from the supreme amp wizard, Glenn Croft, the signal from my LP's passes through one of his super creations with an off-board psu, to a Yamamoto A-063 SET power amp, with very nice current production AD1 valves from the Czech republic. The amp supplier in Germany, offered --and provided-- a one-off new production (specially for my amp) AZ4 rectifier valve from the Emissions Lab factory in the Czech Republic. That item absolutely blew away the NOS item initially provided. So I've found that some NOS valves sound fantastic, like Mullard long plate ECC 83's in my phono stage, --no surprise there-- and depending on valve pattern / model, some new production valves sound so much better than NOS. But I digress, on my way to the loudspeaker story. From my first pair of speakers in 1977, B+W DM5's, that were replaced around 2000, with B+W Nautilus 805's (amazingly, almost same sound in terms of tone, and beef, but much much wider and deeper spatial presentation), to in 2009, a conversion on the road to Damascus, to single driver full range folded horn loudspeakers made by Loth X with special drivers made / tuned in Berlin by Stephan Stamm, that the objective, wise, and very helpful London dealer, Adrian Parsons Balbi, introduced to me. There is no going back to more conventional cartridges (from a Decca) or loudspeakers, because this set up gets probably as close as I'll be able to afford in equipment to the real thing; music in actual space. That is, short of a six quid prom ticket to the Royal Albert Hall, from where this past summer, I was fortunate enough to stand four people back from Peter Serkin playing Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto playfully brilliantly. I listen to all music bar heavy metal. Er, that wasn't quite a quick hello. I'll try and attach a few images of some equipment. Thumbnails above, full size here --http://s1378.photobucket.com/