Jump to content

What’s New In Our Listening Room


TerryO

Recommended Posts

Having moved to Queensland last year for work and renting several places since we finally have managed to purchase a house and thankfully that means being able to set up the listening rooms properly and sorting out what works and what doesn’t.

Like with most houses everything is a compromise and the room I thought would work a purpose built media room that measures 6m x 4.2m is struggling to sound good, but a three walled room with high ceiling that was the tv room and opens onto a long 11’ stud hallway that shouldn’t work sounds bloody awesome.

 

Anyway it’s the start of the journey which I’ve been looking forward to. 

 

This is the existing media room where the main system now lives.

 

28A4B0B6-D6AF-4F20-A01A-84A864120B30.jpeg

 

Below is the original TV room, less a TV, this room sounds excellent but shouldn’t.

 

5A52E112-C30E-4337-9502-3463B9EA4021.jpeg

 

In the old TV room this morning I finally hooked up the PL power amp as I had been using the 7watt integrated Weston Time Machine previously as the main amp and it sounded extremely good and had plenty of decent volume and bass, anyway for now the Weston is back to being the pre. I was quite disappointed when I started up the PL with el34’s fitted, it sounded harsh and a bit boomy and not at all engaging, so I swapped the el34's out for KT150’s just to hear the difference, which if anything should have sounded even harsher and more boomy, but not so. The SQ improvement was huge with this mornings harshness gone, the bass is now tight and deep with no booming.

 

I have been collecting and trading gear for a little while now in anticipation of finally having a decent dedicated room, I did get a bit carried away and ended up collecting enough for two systems, luckily for the pocket much of the HT gear came with the house.

 

Anyway it’s great that we finally have a house that we can get sorted and we won’t be packing up and moving and then resetting up the stereo every six months.

 

Ill try to take some better photo's later on and put them up with a list of gear in each room.

 

cheers Terry

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 19
  • Love 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



32 minutes ago, TerryO said:

I'm all ears Wimbo, can you please explain.

 

cheers Terry

Yeah mate.NB: This is my experience only, (not snake oil or Snake Science or Snake Double Blindness.) I used speaker comparators  for over 30 years. Up to 30 pairs of speakers sometimes in the same room. Sometimes only 4 pair. When the customer finally had narrowed down what they like, (not what I recommend) I did a single speaker room test. 9 and a half times out of ten, the customer noticed that the speakers were more focused and less busy. In other words, they could here the music better. When you have sound waves bouncing around in one room, the other speakers start to move or get excited in a very marginal way. The more speakers in the room, the more this happens. Hence a lack of detail and vagueness in the soundstage. This is why I personally have never combined an A/V system with my music system. Hope this helps and please, people with different opinions, I don't care☺️

  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here are some pics and a brief list of the gear in the main listening room and some of my observations. One thing I have learnt in my short time in this hobby is synergy is extremely important and it has taken me quite a bit of gear swapping to get to a stage where I have a system where the separates work very well together and compliment each other.

 

Starting with the TT which is a Oracle Delphi Mk iv with Mk v suspension upgrade, SME V arm and Kiseki Blue Cart and separate PSU.

403F63BB-7622-48CC-A850-5CD86897A803.thumb.jpeg.02fd1fe470843c6c78fd26709be3a823.jpeg

 

RCM Sensor Prelude phono stage this is my fourth phono stage in a year and my favourite so far. Behind the RCM boxes in the plain aluminium box is the Australian made PSU for the Oracle that was sold by the distributor. I intend to have Clay build a new PSU in the New Year.

 

49571760-3457-4662-9574-08DD963858E7.jpeg

Amplification is a PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium HP Integrated with the Jupiter Copper Foil Cap upgrade done by Mike Lenahan. The PrimaLuna got me into tubes and I now prefer a tube amp sound over ss. My favourite tubes in this amp are KT150’s. Various NOS 12u7’s see time in the two centre gain tube slots depending on what music we are playing. And yes the amp is levitating, well nearly, it has three of Mikes isolation coil springs under it. Most of the other gear has Les Davis 3D(2) constrained dampening pads under their feet.

 

CF0524B1-9C90-465A-A179-5240B0E3A524.jpeg

Below a Oppo UDP-205 looks after CD and SACD playing duties and is one of my favourite bits of gear,  the 205 in my opinion is a very underrated 2-channel player.

 

480E0DF0-AD25-46B9-85DA-20BBB950F2C2.jpeg

Klein Grob DAC with the new Kraftwerk DC PSU upgrade, Coaxial feed to the DAC. The DC PSU up grade makes a truly impressive difference, the Grob is great on its own as the many owners will testify, with the Kraftwerk its on a whole nother level.

 

031EB14C-46AC-409C-877A-607DF6B169F6.jpeg

PS Audio P10 Power Regenerator. Everything in the system plugs into the P10 and even with everything playing it rarely runs at over 30% capacity. I know that some say that power regeneration does little except cost a lot, that is not what I have found, the P10 really added detail and separation in my system.  The striped skinny brown snakes in front of the P10 a Mike Lenehan’s Foilflex speaker cable.

5E8E05F4-6CDF-486A-B994-A4B24800257F.jpeg

Speakers are Vienna Acoustic Beethoven Concert Grand SE versions, I have a real like for VA speakers, I reckon they produce an amazing sound at a reasonable cost, anyway it’s a sound that I like and I’m very happy with.  Again the speaker cables are Lenahan Foilflex cables and they work so well in my system. The speakers next to the VA’s are JBL ES80’s which came with the house and look after HT duties.

 

F7FC1652-7569-4F3E-B4BD-9E622CBE3730.jpeg

While we have now been in the house for several weeks I am still setting up both

the room and the system to my liking. When we were renting prior to moving in we mainly played CD’s, now its great to be once again be able to play records on a regular basis. Both the better half and I prefer to listen to records, having said that in general we would listen to CD’s more, but a lot of that is convenience or when we are feeling to lazy to keep jumping up to turn records over.

 

Thanks for looking and putting up with my, as per usual, crappy pictures.

 

I’ll take some pics of the second system in a few days time and put them up as well.

 

cheers Terry

 

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 17
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • 1 month later...

The Weston Time Machine received a late Christmas present in the new year, four lovely sounding TJ Full Music Mesh plate 2a3’s. I sometimes enjoy listening in the dark and these tubes do look great when lit up.

 

cheers Terry

2473D265-5BD3-4487-A525-B9BCD5923A28.jpeg

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, TerryO said:

The Weston Time Machine received a late Christmas present in the new year, four lovely sounding TJ Full Music Mesh plate 2a3’s. I sometimes enjoy listening in the dark and these tubes do look great when lit up.

 

cheers Terry

2473D265-5BD3-4487-A525-B9BCD5923A28.jpeg

Ok nice system, read it three times and still haven't worked it out, so gotta ask. "look at my lovely system the Prima Luna is the amplifier" Nek Minute " the time machine got some new valves" Eh??!!

What the? Where did that spring from, did you forget to post some changes? Did you wake up one morning the Prima had Morphed into the Time Machine? Is the Time Machine a real time machine and we have gone back or forward in time to another system?

Who knows hopefully these questions will be answered in a future instalment.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, russell66 said:

Ok nice system, read it three times and still haven't worked it out, so gotta ask. "look at my lovely system the Prima Luna is the amplifier" Nek Minute " the time machine got some new valves" Eh??!!

What the? Where did that spring from, did you forget to post some changes? Did you wake up one morning the Prima had Morphed into the Time Machine? Is the Time Machine a real time machine and we have gone back or forward in time to another system?

Who knows hopefully these questions will be answered in a future instalment.

Hi Russell,

 

Yes I see that it could be a little confusing, I actually have two systems, the Time Machine is in the second system and as of yet I have not listed the gear in it.

This is a pic of it from a few weeks ago. The previous owners of the house took the TV and the wall brackets, thus the wall with holes in it. 

 

cheers Terry

image.jpeg

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, TerryO said:

Hi Russell,

 

Yes I see that it could be a little confusing, I actually have two systems, the Time Machine is in the second system and as of yet I have not listed the gear in it.

This is a pic of it from a few weeks ago. The previous owners of the house took the TV and the wall brackets, thus the wall with holes in it. 

 

cheers Terry

image.jpeg

Oh I see, now you say that, yes I think it was obvious. Somehow reading it the first time I though that was a pic of your old house. And i didn't even notice the amp sitting there.

Thanks for putting that all together for me.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • 2 months later...

My main system is going through one of those transition stages at present with the arrival two weeks ago of a Mystere CA21 Pre and PA21 Power amp, they are very impressive sounding amplifiers but didn’t quite have enough power to drive the VA Concert Grands, so in the end I decided to cheat a little.

Last week the Oppo 205 got parked once a Consonance Droplet 5.0 CDP was added to the system, the Droplet is a real surprise sq wise to say the least, then today a pair of Music Fidelity 550k Superchargers turned up to top up the Mystere’s lovely but slightly underpowered tube magic.

 

While everything is working well I have not managed to yet stack and rack it properly, so it’s a bit of a mess,  still a very lovely sounding mess.

In the next few days I will roll the PrimaLuna HP Integrated back in replacing the Mystere’s and try the Supercharges with it, that could be a interesting combination.

 

cheers Terry

 

A5A364ED-A65B-45CF-A278-7D6344F26C26.jpeg

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, givita_burl said:

Make sure you tell us about your superchargers experience once they've had a chance to settle in.

I definitely will, when I first turned them on they actually sounded pretty ordinary and I wondered what I had got myself into, but after a couple of hours of playing they are now doing what they were designed to do.

Still I’ll want to give them more time to settle in before feeling game enough to pass judgement.

 

cheers Terry 

Edited by TerryO
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Last night SNA member Mhel who I purchased the Mysteres from popped over with some speakers from his interesting collection of vintage gear. I have to admit these quite rather odd looking speakers sounded bloody amazing. They have four tweeters, one per side of the pyramid, which are basically facing up and which made for a very interesting top end delivery that almost floated high up in the room and was very separate from the mid range and bass which occupied the lower third of the room, as I said quite amazing and very different in their sound delivery.

For the life of me though I can’t remember the name of these lovely sounding speakers from the 80’s. 

 

Cheers Terry

38FDC04C-114F-47AC-88B2-1DF79F4C479F.jpeg

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • 2 weeks later...

Finally got a chance to properly organise the main listening room this evening and man what a pain in the butt with so many bits of gear to run interconnects between and plug in to power even with a P10 power source.

I still have not had an opportunity so far to match the PrimaLuna HP Integrated up with the Superchargers, that may have to wait a week or so now I have the system organised.

 

cheers Terry

 

 

5DE512D9-B73A-44D9-A6A4-0C3731E739E7.jpeg

  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Finally I have stage one of the main listening rooms acoustic treatment done. 

As previously mentioned the room seriously suffered from high frequency reverb, the slap test almost made your ears bleed.

So after having a couple of ‘professional experts’ provide quotes I went with the bloke who actually bothered to measure the room (Corsini Audio). As I said this is stage one, as per normal I choose to go against everyone’s advice on what to treat first and got the walls and ceiling treated rather than corners. So far the improvement has ranged from confusing to truly impressive, while the room is much calmer detail has been greatly improved and is now truly impressive along with clarity compared to what it was.

 

Its taken quite a bit of speaker shuffling to get it sounding the way I wanted it to and needless to say there is still more to go as I figure out how this works. 

One thing I didn’t quite expect is the room upgrade has changed the rooms acoustics that much that a number of the components that used to sound best in the room have now been moved to the second room and swapped around with other components that previously came second sq wise, this swapping gear provided an instant improvement, again this brings home it’s all about synergy and that includes the room. 

 

The steep learning curve continues on.

 

 

.... cheers

 

3770E41B-9191-424E-9148-17D1CF5EB7EF.jpeg

AD0F8771-959C-48CE-95DB-828DC7C05686.jpeg

A82FF762-7D01-4F21-A4DA-48D4C384B219.jpeg

6B186698-158B-41ED-8A58-4223E881046E.jpeg

Edited by TerryO
  • Like 15
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...


1 hour ago, TerryO said:

Just sitting here chilling out with the better half enjoying a Cohen cd and are really pleased with how good the system is sounding at the moment. 

 

 

F79789D0-88DF-4C8C-9B03-9889CAD3B077.jpeg

Bit cold there tonight? ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Pops110 said:

Bit cold there tonight? ?

Yep got the Sheep feet on, notice I didn’t say Ugg boots as I don’t want to get sued by the Yanks. ... :angel:

  • Like 3
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looking great Terry  – room and your system that is I mean : )

 

Just got back from the Kimberleys in Kununurra 2 days ago no need for sheepskins slippers up there – it was 37C everyday!!

 

Would love to know what colour the walls are in your room?

 

Cheers

 

Chris

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...
To Top