I switched from the musical fidelity a3cr preamp to the sonic frontiers line 1, i now understand what a true soundstage is, but I miss one really important thing, the midrange palapability of the a3cr, in comparison the Line 1. anyone have any suggestions, cables? tubes? also, whould i see an advantage in gonig from rca to balanced between my cdp and preamp? thanks, vinay
Linnie I would love to hide all those cables, i have a 3 foot rack and 6 foot cables so there is a bunch of excess, I guess its time to get a little creative...
How do you like the linn/thiel combination, I have been seeing some nice linn gear in the used market that has been tempting me.
System edited: I modded the preamp with a new volume control chip(Brown Burr PGA2311) add some Herbies dampers to the tubes. The speakers are new from the gon. I plan on getting some more power to driver the speakers, Im looking at Mccormack, Oddessy or Pass, still considering.
Hey its been a while, here is an update. I got bored of the Sonus Fabers for a couple of years after upgrading my studio system. I have some Dynaudio bm5a active studio monitors, they sound much more accurate and less boxy/hollow than the concertinos they lack the big soundstage the concertines give, so the 2-channel rig when to sleep and the REL moved to the studio where is works really well.
Recently, I got the bug for floorstanders, after auditioning the thiels on a whim, they were the ones. Anyway a few weeks later and the cs 1.6 are really awesome, they have a very mild high-end versus the forward sound of the sonus I find them more listenable and there is none of the boxy sound i got from the sonus speakers, now I think the a3cr might not be up to the task because the bass could be stronger, maybe i could mod it... any suggestions?
Added an REL Storm III last week, it has been mostly broken in by now. Really makes music more tactile, you can feel instruments being played. This is a great sub, but it sets off all the room nodes in my small-a** room, my next upgrade in a big new room. Does anyone have prefered DAC reccomendations, I have been looking at tube output dacs to mellow out the sound a little.... Thanks
I just added marble tile to the tops of my components, this lowered the noise floor considerably. I also added DH Sound cones and slabs, another good upgrade.
Thanks for the comments! Vader the REL Storm III is on my short list, I have already auditioned it and everything sounds hollow now that its gone ;( . After a lot of setup, the Storm III dissappeared in my room, the only time it was not obvious that the additional bass was actually coming from the sub is on songs with very deep bass lines(Bjork, Homogenic, Track 1 - Hunter), the amount of clean musical bass that eminated from the Storm is something the Thiels could never touch. And to think they make MUCH bigger subs!!! Topkat, which power chords from Whale do you like? Have you auditioned them against any powersnakes, Im getting a new Sidewinder Gold to audition ssometime soon.
