Made my first real Hi-fi purchase in '2001 - before then i was listening through earphones and computer speakers from portable cd players. I had the real intention to explore this category soon after a visit to an apparently good friend of my dad's. He had 30 grands worth of Mark Levinson setup in his living room with a HUGE pair of Cello speakers. I was completely clueless but was amazed at its performance & at the time i felt like it opened up a new chapter of my life. my girlfriend thought i had gone mad when i became obsessed! Then i visited the hi-fi specialists (kind of unusual for a 16 year old to do really) but that time i had no spare cash/income to finance any purchase. I lusted owning a setup of my own for 2 years then I went to college, had my own space & student loan and i made my first purchase ever:
Linn Nexus
Cambridge Audio D-500SE
Musical Fidelity A120
w/Chord Cobra interconnects & QED silver cables
this setup meant alot to me at the time as it was my first (Hifi cherry popped lol) & the first time i enjoyed listening to all my cds again.
Then i went home one summer, saw my dad's setup (the one that's always been there - the one i hadn't even paid attention to until then!) A Musical Fidelity A200 paired with the Rogers LS3/5a. I can't say how I would compare my setup to his, all i know is that his had they were 'BBC' monitor speakers, knew nothing about them, plus they look old, & on paper the Linn Nexus is more superior plus i fully tested my room for the best speaker placement for the Nexus & the Ku stone stands contributed big time holding the speakers to the ground. I must admit that I was very surprised especially by the vocal & the strings the LS3/5a produce, its clarity & tonality is fantastic! I bought better interconnects & cables for this setup because I felt they much deserve my attention ( i went all van den hul ). I re-listened to most of my CDs. was mesmerized by that & honestly quite speechless for some time! I envy my dad's system and the fact that his mates recommended these equipment to him, he didn't even know he had a system with such potential! In fact he was so busy that he hadn't took notice the upgrades & adjustments i made, he doesn't listen to them enough.
In 2005 I decided to go all vinyl from that point on, I still kept my Cds & Cd player but felt the urge to move away from the idea of digital sound read off tiny bumps on a CD & remastered cds.... I went & bought my Pro-ject Xpression with its standard cartridge but soon upgraded to a Grado gold MM then the Ortofon 2m blue. I sold my Nexus and used some money i yielded from investments to purchase my own Rogers LS3/5a, i personally think they sound very different from the ones i listened to before simply because of the different production year & had different amount of usage ( the millage was different from my dad's). I became deeply obsessed with the idea of the perfect pair, I considered building my own pair from scratch but at the end I bought a pair from Stirling Broadcast (their LS3/5a v2) - brand new pair this time i decided to break-em in myself & discover all the magic as time goes by.
I've always wanted to purchase a full Linn system to get a different perspective of things I hear their acktiv systems is a must own - but for some reason, i never felt the intention to make a purchase after auditioning them.
I recently bought a pair of Rogers studio 3 but was somewhat dissapointed by them. I'll probably p/x them with some JR149 or Spendor BC1 soon, I'm thinking of purchasing the Gyrodec se or perhaps an audiomeca to fulfil my lust for better vinyl sound.
Harris
) and a second-hand Pioneer tuner, and some JPW Gold Monitors on stands. A lot less fuss than my more-recent systems and sometimes I wonder why I bothered moving on from it!
