Newbie.......well kind of

[jaguarxjr]

Hello everyone,

I originally registered with the forum many years ago but didn't do more than that! I know, remiss of me.

Anyway to make amends a brief introduction - I have quite a varied interest in music including jazz, blues, rock, classical, opera, etc.

To allow enjoyment of this music I have spent many years assembling a hifi that is getting close to something I am reasonably happy with - speakers are B & W Nautilus 804, these are powered by Icon Audio 845 mono blocks which in turn are driven by an Icon Audio LA4 pre.

Music at present comes on black and silver disks with a Gyrodec SE, RB300 and Denon 103 ( trying various phono stages at present ) doing the analogue thing while an Audiolab M DAC handles the ones and zeros from several different sources.

Getting this far has taken quite some time with many 'interesting' happenings along the way. Considerable time has been spent with a soldering iron with varying degrees of success. My work takes me out of the country for months and sometimes years at a time so attention to things hifi it tends to be a bit of a feast/famine scenario.

Thank you for dropping by.

Kind rgds,

Raphael

[walpurgis]

Hi Raphael. Welcome to AOS.

Glad you decided to join in. Looks like a nice system you've put together.

Tell us what future plans if any you may have for your Hi-Fi and feel free to join in and chat with members.


Enjoy the forum,
Geoff.

[hifi_dave]

Welcome neighbour.

[bumpy]

Hi Raphael
I'm an even closer neighbour. Welcome.

[vinyl]

Welcome to AoS :)

[jaguarxjr]

Good evening all,

Apologies for the delayed response but thank you all for your words of welcome, much appreciated.

Ultimately I'm not completely certain where the system will go. On the analogue front I need to decide on a phono stage - I have three at the moment ( one on loan ). A Ming-Da special ( rebuild of an existing unit by Mark from Ming-Da ), a Lehman Black Cube SE, World Designs Phono3 ( on loan ).

I have tried several others a Trilogy 906, Icon Audio PS3 ( I previously owned one ), Project DS Tube box and an Arcam. For me and with the current setup the ones that have 'that something' are the Icon Audio PS3, World Designs Phono3 and the Trilogy 906.

On the digital end of things the M Dac may be replaced by something from Chord or similar - I am fairly happy with the pre/power and speaker combination. The idea is ultimately to rip all the cds ( NAS already built ) and implement both the Sonos & Bluesound ( still in their boxes ) to retrieve the data.

This is the crux for me - work defines my time availability - as mentioned previously that seems to be a feast/famine situation - frequently without prior warning!

Time will tell.

[Lawrence001]

Welcome to the forum (again!). I didn't know b&w 8xx series worked well with valve amps, how do you find the match?

Sent from my BLN-L21 using Tapatalk

[jaguarxjr]

Thank you Lawrence,

I had replied to you some time ago but when I looked just now there was nothing - I'll put it down to operator error, my apologies......

So for me valves ( currently 845s ) seem to work very well with these B & Ws. Previous to this there KT120s & KT150s, EL34s and 300Bs Parallel Single Ended.

All worked well, even the 300Bs combination. This combination did however suffer from a lack of power - the 300Bs were putting out about 19 Watts a channel - nice enough to listen to but not up to handling heavy stuff - Zepellin/AC/DC etc.

The speakers ( B & W 804 ) are reasonably sensitive at about 90dB/Watt but if memory serves have an impedance that dips down to approx 3 Ohms at one point - they really like a bit of power to drive them properly. The current 845s have lots of power, about 85 Watts. The have a damping factor of 4 and by changing the impedance tapping on the 845s you can select which flavour of grip/bass performance you prefer.

I try not to be a valve snob - I am currently trying various phono stages and one of the best so far ( at its price level and not requiring a second mortage ) is solid state, a Trilogy 906. I have heard better but it would seem to me to be beginning to get close to the not necessarily better but different scenario,,,,,,,,,,,,I feel certain there are those who may disagree.

Kind rgds,

Raphael