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What were your upgrades of 2021?

wylton

wylton

Naim and Mana member
I don't upgrade often these days, but I had a few nice improvements in 2021:

  1. I bought a Naxo 2-4 from @gary1064 sent it off to Naim HQ to be re-set for my active Kans and it was a nice little upgrade over the older, single rail, CB Naxo that I already had and a nice price too - cheers Gary!
  2. I bought a set of the excellent Ryan Soundlab Naim plug-ins, initially in a NAC12S and luckily, during the loan period, I bought a NAC32.5 to go with them - @RyanSoundLab many thanks for the loan!
  3. Thanks too, to Jeff Spall for rewiring my Audiomods Classic and the counterweight decupling mod - I couldn't wish for better service
  4. A thumbs up to j7 at Audio Origami for the rewire of the RB202 that I use on the Stanton - a really quick turnaround and very favourable price too!
  5. Last but not least, a big thanks to @Tony L for keeping PFM going; I've bought tons of LPs and CDs from the pfm record shop this year, to say nothing of the stuff I've bought from the classifieds over the years!
 
Naim Intro to Allae
Allo Boss dac to Rega Dac

Sounding fantastic after those upgrades so sticking with Rega Elex r amp for the time being as it’s great, but am dreaming of trying Aethos, Supernait or XS3.
 
My biggest changes in 2021:

Auralic Aries G2/Vega G2/Leo GX --> dCS Bartok (better, not massive differences I just preferred the dCS over time)

Lyngdorf TDAI3400 --> Luxman L-590AXII (took a while and some swapping back/forth over several months to finally decide and sell the Lyngdorf)​

Loads of other used buys/sales and also bought shed loads of LPs due to the amount of spare time with Covid/Lockdown/Shielding.

All the best to everyone and their families for 2022 and a big thanks to Tony!
 
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Added an extra psu board into each of my monoblocks and moved to thicker speaker cable. And I added an old cd transport, cos I prefer playing a disc to playing a file via pc
 
I bought a Marantz SA8005 to use it’s USB input with my Roon Nucleus, and also to gradually get back into CD/SACD.

Best upgrade would be that I’ve found so many great artists this year (via Roon/Tidal) so I enjoy my hi-fi more than ever.
 
Lifted my ESL63s from around 20cm to 40cm up off the floor - end state sound quality now, at least in the current room.
 
Merry Xmas!

Epos ES14’s back into the system from my Event Opals.They haven’t lost their magic.

Avondale Grad 1 and TPX2. Pre-amps do add something having not had one for ten years.

TA Plateau and Linn Karousel

Fidelity Audio linear psu for my Node2i.

Covid has resulted in more tweaking and more record purchases!
 
No upgrades, downgrades or anything really, just a few items arriving or ongoing projects being finished to add to the options available. Most notably the second Leak TL12 Plus to make a really nice clean sympathetically rebuilt pair, plus a pair of LS3/5As and a Pass Aleph 3 class A amp arriving. The latter two out of curiosity as much as anything. One 3009 left to a new home, but other than that everything else as it was aside from a lot more vinyl stacked all over the place.
 
ELAC Uni-Fi 2.0 UB52 to DALI Opticon 1 Mk 2
PS Audio Sprout100 to Rega io & Schiit Audio Modi 3+
iMac/Audirvana 3.5 to Bluesound NODE (2021)
 
Earlier in the year I built a set of Ergo IX speakers (designed by @James), and more recently finished my mono amps with Avondale NCC300 using their NCM1 power supplies. That's my main system in my office.

The system in the family room got the Royd RR3 from my office, and is currently running an Avondale NCC200 stereo amp, with a stacked Meanwell SMPS power supply. I'll soon move my NCC220 QUDOS Voyagers from my office into there, as soon as I finish a modification to remove the inductors from the output stage's power supply (converting it from CLCLC to CCC).

My office's computer is running with my FrankenAmp: a dual mono affair with some old Hammond laminated transformers, spare Avondale CAP6 modules, and the old NAPA5 amp boards from my Naim NAP110. I think I switched the speakers from the Royd Seven to the Royd Sintra. Oh yeah, and I also have a MiniDSP 4x10 running as a pre-amp between my computer and the FrankenAmp. The MiniDSP may eventually be pressed into active crossover duty, with the upcoming PFM Special speakers that I'm finally going to build next year.

All sounding great, and lots of fun! Happy Ho Ho everyone!
 
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