The equipment pictured here has been accumulated over a short few months with the help of a good friend in the industry. It has been a fun spending spree to date.
Next on the agenda is room treatment, to tame some noticable reflections, along with bass trapping. Thankfully room is close to an ideal ratio (just a little longer than desired. The floor is suspended some 2-3 feet above the foundation with solid concret stumping, and the ceiling has 6-8 foot of airspace cavity height, this seems to allow allot of the Bass engery to filter out preventing muddyness and bloat. Yet I believe you can never have too much bass absorbtion so I will add traps in all corners.
Power cables and conditioning is yet to be completed, currently auditioning the Oyaide Tunami Cable, which had a noticable improvement to music weight and dynamics.
have also auditioned the Shunyata Hydra 6, but I feel my money is better spent on room treatments first.
(Will be putting in dedicated 20 amp circuits).
Whilst some purists may scoff at using the Denon 3805 receiver as main amplification, they do sound suprisingly nice in Stereo Pure Direct mode (which switches off all video and unrequired circuitry to give clean signal for stereo sound. (and I dont use it for any video processing).
the 3805 has enough headroom to drive the JMLAB Cobalts to very loud levels in my room without signs of stress, I can notice a slight flattening of dynamic range above -15db on the volume control, but this is louder than I can comfortably listen to. I am yet to have it break a sweat driving these difficult load speakers (min 3.2 ohm) It has impressed me to date.
Down the road (when funds permit) I will be adding Monoblock amplification for the front mains, (most likely Nuforce or Bel Canto, using the Denon 3805 as a pre - and rear amplification.
32mm Solid Vic ash entertainment unit, which I designed and had built by a local furniture maker, extremely solid and heavy (1ookg), has improved sound of system over previous flimsy Ikea stand.
Pioneer 436HD
43
Marantz Marantz SA-15S1
SACD, stereo redbook player from marantz new reference line.
Denon 3805
7.1 surround receiver (120wpc)
Pioneer 520H
(80GB Harddisc DVD recorder)
JM Labs Cobalt 826
826 signature floorstander
JM Labs Cobalt 806
806 Signature Bookshelf (used as rear surrounds)
Signal Cable Ultra Biwire
6 foot Ultra Biwire speaker cable, used for front mains and centre
Very nicely done and doesn't seem to be much compromise on the way you set things up either. Always like the clean aesthetics of a well-placed system in a living room.
