Similar floors too!!
Front speakers
- Thread starter LTIII
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Wow! What are the odds of that?
what can i say ... we have excellent taste. for those who have never listened to planar speakers - magneplanars sound more like live music than any other speaker IMHO. they are airy. you don't feel the bass beating off your chest, but you hear every note. when i bought my first MG-1 speakers, the thing that sold me was listening to a demo record and there was a clear note with a triangle ... it sounded like somebody struck it in the room - pure and natural. there is a downside for the speakers, they are a bit power hungry ... not going to get away with a 100 watt receiver. i've got 250 / side of balanced power ... what is hiding under the cloth cover is a Linn turntable.
I don’t have anything quite as fancy as the Linn, but right there with you with the turntable - before I spent most of the past year involved in the car restoration most of my time/money was spent on the vinyl collection…
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i haven't bought much vinyl in a while ... when i was in college, the house i was living in was burgled and they took away 300+ albums. i was sick ... they took my thorens turntable too. i probably have 300 or so now ... but a lot of the classic jazz was not replaceable ... and neither were 1st pressings of great classic rock.
Sorry to hear about that - it’s always those things that are the worst, where something that had such meaning to you was likely deemed worthless by the person who took it
Well, there's a bit of thread drift.. but hey!!
This is my first set of Maggies bought new. I had other sets of SMGs that ultimately died from wire separation and cracked mylar. I power my 1.7i Maggies with a NAD C298 power amp. It has about 185 watts per side. I do support the lower end on each side with box loaded 12 inch subs I built myself.
I have a Rega Planar 6 turntable, but nowhere near the vinyl collection you folks have. A lot of my music is Hi Def digital files stored on a 4 TB hard drive in the stereo cabinet. Those are accessed by a NAD C658 streamer (which also supports various internet streaming apps (Tidal, Pandora, iTunes, Apple Music, etc.). The 658 is cool in that it supports Dirac Live dynamic equalization. So when the system was first set up I used a calibrated USB microphone to measure the room dynamics (all of this is built in to the 658). This creates a digital equalization filter that then balances the sound inthe room. The results are fabulous. Much as @rsporsche describes. Crystal clear separation of instruments, amazingly dynamic sound. Truly a pleasure to listen to. I originally did the DiracLive room equalization using a DIY MiniDSP unit, which worked well, but it was limited in the range of input sources, and required an expensive external DAC.
I must say that my wife, who is something of an audio skeptic, was blown away by how good vinyl sounds through this system. If you have not listened to it, Joan Baez Diamonds and Rust on a live LP (Diamonds and Rust in the Bullring) recorded in Barcelona is amazing. The recording itself is amazing, but through this system the instruments just jump out into the room.
I also went through a period of restoring Adcom 565 mono bloc power amplifiers. These bad boys are DC coupled 350 watt mono amps. Each one weighs about 50 Lb. They were available on eBay about 7-8 years ago for about $100-$200 because most of them had failed (bad, leaky capacitors). A friend and I developed a new control board (chronicled on the DIY Audio Forum) that resurrected them. He went off and formed a small business selling the boards (hoppesbrain.com). Now they are again hard to find and expensive, because they can be resurrected. I don't use them because I am not sure I fully trust them. When they fail, they deliver 8 Amps of DC current directly to your speakers!! I have seven of these if any of you are interested in another project!
hey its a bit of a drift ... but at least you know where we are coming from. i don't expect to have maggie level sound in a coupe ... but you want to have a fighting chance to be as good as you reasonably can. and i want it to look good also.
yes and no ... they reflect off of the back wall and spread - adds depth to the sound. the smaller the planer, the less bass it has - the lack of height lessens the length of the bigger wires for deeper notes.
Sorry I meant in the car (the really small one that were linked above). I’m pretty familiar with Maggies and other planer designs. If I didn’t live in a city house with limited space I might have gotten some when I redid my system.
They also have a pretty high cutoff- 1200 Hz. And yeah directional speakers in the footwell might not be so great
Most of the vinyl I have bought recently is 180+ gram re-masters. I have a couple of records remastered by Mobile Fidelity Labs and pressed onto heavy vinyl LPs at 45 RPM. Natalie Merchant TigerLilly is impressive in that format. Dead quiet vinyl and superb dynamics.
The Rega was a huge step up from my little U-Turn turntable. I still have that in my office, but it is pretty noisy compared to the Rega.
Rega makes a good turntable. i need to sort out a few things on my turntable, phono pre-amp, cartridge ... i haven't used it much lately and something needs a little tweaking.
I've always had Regas. I understand why some people don't love them (lack of adjustability etc.) but hard to beat for the money. I have a P8 right now with a Hana ML cartridge running through a Bob's Devices SUT and then through the tube stage of a Herron Audio phono stage. I opted for Gallo Acoustics Strada 2 speakers, very close sound in speed and transparency to planar/electrostats but without the space needs and the cylindrical tweeter (blocked off to 120 degrees in the Gallos) provides a freaky, holographic soundstage. We're living in a vinyl paradise right now, the selection of equipment, cartridges, high quality reissues is amazing.
A few years back I started a hybrid tube preamp (FET input stage and tube amplification) that was described in detail in a series of articles that were posted on the DIY Audio Forum (The Equal Opportunity: A Balanced Moving Magnet Phono Stage, by Stuart Yaniger). I got it working about the same time I got the NAD gear, which already had its own phono preamp, so it sits in a box in my garage mocking me..
That's what the Herron does, FET first stage if you are using moving coil into a tube second stage (moving magnet only uses the tube stage.) Unfortunately material costs got too high so Keith Herron stopped producing it. Replacing the first stage with the SUT is subtle but did add some air, space and detail. My 11 year old ended up with a Rega P1, my old Vincent phono stage and NAD receiver, so she lucked out! In case you are interested... https://www.soundstageultra.com/equipment/herron_vtph2.htm
That was an interesting read! Odd that these are single ended preamps, given the level of sophistication.The Equal Opportunity preamp article is posted below. SY pays particular attention to many of the same aspects that it appears the Heron does. I may need to dig out my unit and finally finish it!
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