audiophiles?

[robr]

I gave it up when I had kids and sold off my higher end gear. My setup prior to kids was

Lexicon DC-1 (had an MC-1 briefly but the wife noticed the backlight color difference and it had to go... stupidest marketing move ever. Had Lexicon kept the backlight orange instead of changing it to blue, the wife NEVER would have noticed ).

2x Parasound amps (I forget the model off the top of my head)

I sold those and replaced them with a $400 Onkyo HT receiver, that was extremely painful, but I needed the HDMI switching anyway I guess and the DC-1 was getting pretty long in the teeth.

and in the basement I have

B&W CDM-7SE mains
CDM-CSE center
ASW3000 sub

and I'm using my rears as mains in a 2 channel set up (CDM-7SE). They're stuffed into a cabinet about 2' apart at floor level. Sucks, but no room for home theater, and with 2 kids and 4 cats, my stuff would just get trashed. Maybe someday.........

 

[steveny]

What is a really good receiver to buy?

 

[Duffer]

What is a really good receiver to buy?

If you have to purchase a receiver (as opposed to separates), I would look at B&K. Their receivers sound good - not as good as separates, but good. Certainly cheaper, too, compared to separates.

 

[sca037]

If you have to purchase a receiver (as opposed to separates), I would look at B&K. Their receivers sound good - not as good as separates, but good. Certainly cheaper, too, compared to separates.

I absolutely agree that B&K makes high quality great sounding hi-fi gear, and bonus- it's an American company
Their motto has been that their equipment is "future proof" because they will upgrade software and hardware as things evolve.
Well, they won't upgrade our AVR202 for HDMI throughput, so I'm a little unhappy with that :frown:
Their new line (AVR 705 & 707) now have that capability, so at some point I might have a rendezvous with destiny.........

http://www.bkcomp.com/products/home...=35&tx_ttproducts_pi1[cat]=3&cHash=7317c927a4

Brian

 

[bfrank1972]

IMHO I wouldn't go with a receiver - too much complexity in one box. If something in the preamp/decoder/etc goes south you have to have the thing repaired. Seperates, aside from typically being better overall, are easier to deal with in case of failure and offer more flexibility. And you can find some great deals on seperates if you are on a budget - B&K, Rotel, Parasound, Citation make some nice older SS amps for not much money at all and from there you can pick/choose your pre/pro based on what you want and your budget. For instance:

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampsmult&1236794753&/Parasound-HCA-1205A-5-ch-amp--

and

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?homeproc&1236273630&/Parasound-AVC-25009(Reduced)-d

would blow away any receiver out there. Doesn't have HDMI but component should be just as good.

Or this:
http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampsmult&1236829746&/B-K-Components-Video-5-Sonata-

and this

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?homeproc&1237226685&/B-K-Silver-REF-50-ac3/dts/thx/


The amps would outperform even the high end B&K/Rotel receivers rated at the same or more wattage. Go seperates.

 

[hondacuraplanet]

What is a really good receiver to buy?

If you love your Carver stuff, I'd be happy to send you my Carver 6250 receiver to play with and try once you get settled. It's a very musical receiver, without being fatiguing or overbearing. I run it with Paradigm Titan speakers.

Audio equipment is so room specific and specific to musical genre taste, that it's difficult to pick something and say "that's the one", although I have to tell you that at AudioKarma Fest 2008, I was in the Jaton Audio room demoing their Operetta amp and speakers, and I have to tell you that it was the most impressive thing that I heard at the show. And, you can get the whole system from soup to nuts for under $3,500.

 

[steveny]

Tim, You need to stop. Every time you post about something new I go to another site and BOOM there is more stuff I want and should not be buying. A search for "Jaton Audio room demoing their Operetta amp and speakers" brought up this site http://www.audioforce.biz/ and now I want 13k speakers. LOL

Thanks for the offer for the carver receiver. What I am thinking now is keeping the carver amps, buying a better pre amp but I want to find a classy amp rack that is contemporary which will also hide the wires. I don't want a band roadie rack looking thing. I am going for the contemporary look in the new house but think I will keep the amps at this point, maybe sell the speakers and get some crazy looking speakers, space age looking stuff you know. Any recommendations. And I think since we live pretty close we should catch up this summer.

 

[hondacuraplanet]

Definitely...I can't say that the Chris Craft will be in the water by then, but we can always climb aboard in the driveway and make motor noises over a few Coronas :wink:

The Carver that I have isn't an expensive unit, in fact it was gifted to me by an AudioKarma member, but what I love about it is that it retains the Carver sound in a compact package. I think the going on them is around $200 or so on eBay.....if minimalist is your goal, it's a good way to get there. Offer's open if you become tempted.

Huge speakers and systems have one problem, listener fatigue. Then some systems are as bland as oatmeal. I hear some "audiophiles" oohing and aahing over some systems and I sit and think, I've got AM radios that sound better than this.

I'm kind of an audio "renegade" when I go to meets, but my status as AK's founder means that people listen to me, or at least put up with me :biggrin:

I remember at a show back in 04 I went into a listening room where there was a Silverline Sonatina SET amp and Cain and Cain Voigt pipes playing, real low power efficient stuff, and they were playing some live folk guitar. Like most, I walked from room to room with CDs to hear my music on different systems. Imagine their horror when I hand them Enigma :biggrin:

I figure that if I'm spending a few thousand on a system, it should do everything that I want it to do, reasonably well. I want to appreciate music I like, rather than to sit in a room and pick out instruments in tracks that I'd never listen to otherwise. I'm into Memphis blues, jazz, Steely Dan, James Taylor, et al......but if I get in the mood to hear some 80s hair bands, I wanna do it, especially for the price of admission.

As far as the wires, you can go the route of hiding them, but you can also go the route of celebrating them. I once had a pair of cryo-treated 24K gold plated interconnects that came in a case with boxwood inlays that cost over $1700 (not that I paid that, mind you). People spend thousands on wire alone, but here you're getting into the realm of diminished returns.

Here's a link to Jaton's website:

http://www.jatonhp.com/index.html

The neat thing about the Jaton Operetta is that you can purchase it in two and five channel arrangements. And, the two channel is upgradeable to the five with just the addition of extra circuit boards.

 

[sca037]

I managed to successfully integrate a media type computer into our A/V setup, and it's working well so far.
I've got it connected to the TV by HDMI cable, and (for now at least) a 40+ foot run of TOSLINK optical cable to the (not HDMI-ready) stereo system.
For the immediate future the computer (running Vista Ultimate and Windows Media Center software) is sitting behind the TV, due to packaging constraints.
We've been enjoying using it among other things to watch Top Gear episodes (both UK and Aussie) :biggrin:

Brian