I've had the Piegas the longest - 12 months, followed by the Spectral pre - an awesome piece of kit that was £4700 in 2002 that I bought from Larry of Audio works in June last year for £2400. He was using it in his own system up to that point. It was also on demo at the Bristol Show in 2003.
In July I bought the acrylic Quadraspire Reference table bits to complete that particular modular support kit.
In the last month I bought the Bel Canto CD2 and Puresound A30 valve amp from Mr. C.
My latest purchase this week was the acrylic Reflex mains block and one more Recoil lead for the Spectral. This is the purchase that has had me listening to music until about ten minutes ago and what prompted me to finish work early tonight (it was quiet) and listening to music through a very involving and enjoyable setup was so preferable to sitting on a taxi rank. I've only stopped listening because Tasha is tired and wants to sleep in silence.
The mains block/lead changes have really consolidated the CD/valve amp upgrades and created the kind of dynamics, depth, flow, timing, tunefulness, separation, 3D imaging that just hits the spot. I just wonder how it is possible to preserve the structural integrity of a recording on such a little silver disc or any other medium for storage of nought and ones the way I've been hearing it tonight.
As for the Bel Canto CD2, yes there are players that extract more insight into vocal inflection and other subtleties in the midrange, like the Accuphase DP500 costing nearly double that I heard at AW on Wednesday, but I found the latter to be just a teeny touch soft in the upper frequencies in comparison, although that could equally be attributable to its Accuphase power amp partner.
ADMB9s - pah! Not even close to what I've been enjoying tonight. About 10% maybe, never mind the bullshit about how they measure up/are engineered and must therefore be perfect.
From what I could remember of the ADMB9 setup at Bristol, it just sounded truncated, flat and brittle in comparison. The louder it got the more it drownded out noise from outside the room that still managed to serve as an almost welcome distraction.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Steve
