Description

I assembled most of this system in the late '80s after going through lesser components for 15 years.  I was finally satisfied with this system.  I carefully auditioned cables for each component and have a variety of brands--Morrow Audio, Cardas, DH Labs, Tubulus, van den Hul, MIT, etc.  The photos were taken before I changed several cables.

My setup has matching monoblock amps right behind the speakers with short runs of biwired speaker cables, and there is nothing between the speakers to interfere with imaging. 

I listen to a mix of CDs, vinyl, FM, streaming digital and cassettes that I recorded with my Nakamichi cassette decks. The tapes and decks still sound fine, even though many are 30 years old or more.

When I have compared CDs and their vinyl counterparts, sometimes one medium is superior, other times the other.  Audiophile (half-speed mastered) generally beats conventional CDs, but SACDs, HDCDs, DVD-A, Blu Ray and high-res streaming files can compete with the best vinyl.
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Room Details

Dimensions: 25’ × 15’  Large
Ceiling: N/A


Components Toggle details

    • Apogee Acoustics Duetta Mark II
    Full-range planar speakers, refurbished by True Sound Works Audio.  Fantastically transparent speakers that throw a soundstage like nobody's business and reproduce bass better than other types of planar loudspeakers.
    • SOTA Star Sapphire III
    Belt-drive turntable with vacuum holddown platter.  Walnut cabinet
    • Eminent Technology ET-2
    Tangential-tracking, air bearing tonearm; upgraded with a damping trough.
    • Lyra Kleos
    MC cartridge
    • Hegel V10
    No-frills, dual mono phono preamp, made in Norway.  European manufacturers don't have to pay for health insurance for their employees, so I think they can make products better than some US products at the same price point.
    • Cambridge Audio CXU
    Universal disc player.  Also streams YouTube.
    • Nakamichi CR-7
    Cassette deck with remote control, remote azimuth adjustment, and frequency response of 20-20,000 Hz.   With the right tape, recordings are often indistinguishable from the sources.
    • Nakamichi BX-300
    Cassette deck with pitch and bias controls.  Otherwise, a relatively basic cassette deck with 20-20,000 Hz frequency response.  Often, recordings are indistinguishable from the sources.
    • Nakamichi RX-505
    Auto-reverse cassette deck.  Instead of reversing the heads to play the other side of a cassette, this has a remarkable assembly that reverses the tape.  It looks very cool and makes for better sound.   Often, recordings are indistinguishable from the sources.
    • Classé Audio DR-7
    Two-chassis, dual mono, solid state preamp.  One of the most perfectionist preamps I know of--has a series of discrete resistors instead of pots for each volume control; a power supply the size of many power amps; a control for reverse stereo, mono, L or R channels singly.  It may need a separate phone preamp for the lowest output cartridges, but works well on many low-output MC cartridges, with an ingenious circuit for automatic capacitance adjustment for cartridges.  Very neutral and transparent sound.
    • Classé Audio DR-9
    Solid-state stereo amp, 100 watts per channel; bridged is 400 watts into 8 ohms, 800 watts into 4 ohms.  These amps were chosen by Jason Bloom, the designer of the Apogee ribbon speakers, for many of his demos of those speakers, and they are a fantastic match for them--with sufficient current and power to make them sing.
    • Luxman T-03
    Digital synthesized AM/FM tuner.  Same as the T-117, but with a silver cabinet.
    • Absolute Power APS-360m, APS 240m
    power line purifiers
    • Focal Bathys MG
    When I bought these in 2025, they were acknowledged as the best wireless headphones available.  The app has a listening test that adjusts their EQ for the listener's hearing.  They have switchable noise-cancelling that is probably less effective than other brands, but I prioritize the sound quality, which is superb, bettering even my trusty Sennheiser HD600 phones.
    • Sennheiser HD600
    Excellent-sounding over-the-ear headphones.  Slightly better than the HD-580, which I also have.
    • Headroom Little Headroom +
    Small headphone amp with switches for frequency response and imaging processor; external power supply.  Sounds musical.
    • Denafrips Venus 15th
    R2R DAC that is a rebadged Terminator 12th at a lower price.  Fantastic soundstaging and bass reproduction, with the somewhat analog-like house sound of other Denafrips DACs.
    • GeerFab D.BOB
    Digital break-out box.  Enables transmission of DSD from SACDs to DAC
    • Network Acoustics MUON
    Ethernet filter device.
    • Denafrips Hermes DDC
    Digital-to-digital converter that 1) allows all digital sources to travel via I2S into my DAC and 2) allows all digital sources to run on the DAC's superior clock, to reduce jitter.
    • Innuos ZENith MK3
    Streamer with 1 TB hard drive.  Compared to the Bluesound Node 130, this has more refined low-level detail, reduced grain, and slightly better bass and soundstaging.  The overall effect allows greater involvement with the music, which can be very realistic with a high-quality recording--you just listen to the music, not the system.

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