Over a decade ago, a friend of mine introduced me to his two channel audio system. At the time, I was just getting into home theater audio so I had just invested in a system for this purpose, but hadn't given much thought to the audiophiles chasing that special sound out of just two speakers (or 2.1).
Here was the gear involved:
Soundwave (later Vero Research) Grand Soliloquy tower speakers
Marantz CD-53 CD player
Audible Illusions Modulus 3 tube stereo pre-amp
McCormack DNA 0.5 amp
When I came to visit him in Atlanta, we used to listen to the setup for hours. It had originally belonged to a friend of his and he had acquired it from him. All of the gear had been purchased in the 1994 time frame.
Since then, we've both gotten married and had families. For my friend, he didn't have enough room in his house for the two channel setup, so I took possession of the amp and pre-amp to which one day I would come with a large vehicle to bring back the massive speakers. After six years, I finally got ahold of them last week. But after so long in storage, would they even play?
Turns out that after all that time, they played rather nicely. It's been a very long time since all of this gear was in one place again, and it sounded just like our bachelor days. There was one new wrinkle in all of this though: high definition music.
Back a decade ago, there wasn't much HD music and it was pretty much all SACD or DVD-Audio. My friend didn't have a universal player so we spent all of our time listening to Redbook music. When got the pre-amp and amp from him, I hooked it up to an Oppo 970H universal player I'd had in my home theater rack years ago with the purpose now to use it strictly for music. Originally the only speakers I had to use in this application were AV123 ELT towers. There were (and still are) nice speakers, but hardly two channel material and they never could go low enough to make bass heavy music really groove.
The Grand Soliloquys have large enough drivers to handle the low stuff without a subwoofer in all but the most demanding low frequency music (like pipe organs). Combined with the HD music showed what kind of detail and clarity they have with the right source material. And that source material is my small library of SACDs and DVD-As that had been gathering dust in recent years. Regardless, I now have a new respect for two channel.
So what's next? I think I can do a few nominal upgrades. First, the McCormack amp is great, but I think I can do a little better. I have another amp of the same vintage, a Parasound HCA-2200 MkI. At over twice the power of the McCormack (220 wpc vs 100 wpc @ 8 ohms) and designed by John Curl, the Parasound has been a great amp for me and up until recently, was driving the front speakers in my home theater room. But in recent months, the right channel had been showing problems and finally I put it in the shop for repairs last week. Hopefully by next week I'll have it back and then I hope it'll be a sonic upgrade for the Grand Soliloquys. I cannot return to the Parasound to its original application since I have a new receiver there with no pre-outs.
The next upgrade after that might be a good DAC. I've auditioned a DAC or two ages ago, but considering how much Redbook music (Apple Lossless) I have now that is on my iTunes server, I'm thinking I can unlock some of the potential there. Right now, I have an Apple Airport Express (3rd gen) that is supplying music to this rig. And I'm dealing with the consumer grade DAC in that device. Still, ALAC allows for 24bit/192khz source material just like FLAC and AIFF which does play through, so I have a taste of what I can do with the few HD source files I have.
The big question now is what to look for in a DAC? My budget isn't infinite. Spending $2K on a DAC is not in the cards. I've seen some interesting stuff in the $700 and under range. Does anyone have a favorite?
Here was the gear involved:
Soundwave (later Vero Research) Grand Soliloquy tower speakers
Marantz CD-53 CD player
Audible Illusions Modulus 3 tube stereo pre-amp
McCormack DNA 0.5 amp
When I came to visit him in Atlanta, we used to listen to the setup for hours. It had originally belonged to a friend of his and he had acquired it from him. All of the gear had been purchased in the 1994 time frame.
Since then, we've both gotten married and had families. For my friend, he didn't have enough room in his house for the two channel setup, so I took possession of the amp and pre-amp to which one day I would come with a large vehicle to bring back the massive speakers. After six years, I finally got ahold of them last week. But after so long in storage, would they even play?
Turns out that after all that time, they played rather nicely. It's been a very long time since all of this gear was in one place again, and it sounded just like our bachelor days. There was one new wrinkle in all of this though: high definition music.
Back a decade ago, there wasn't much HD music and it was pretty much all SACD or DVD-Audio. My friend didn't have a universal player so we spent all of our time listening to Redbook music. When got the pre-amp and amp from him, I hooked it up to an Oppo 970H universal player I'd had in my home theater rack years ago with the purpose now to use it strictly for music. Originally the only speakers I had to use in this application were AV123 ELT towers. There were (and still are) nice speakers, but hardly two channel material and they never could go low enough to make bass heavy music really groove.
The Grand Soliloquys have large enough drivers to handle the low stuff without a subwoofer in all but the most demanding low frequency music (like pipe organs). Combined with the HD music showed what kind of detail and clarity they have with the right source material. And that source material is my small library of SACDs and DVD-As that had been gathering dust in recent years. Regardless, I now have a new respect for two channel.
So what's next? I think I can do a few nominal upgrades. First, the McCormack amp is great, but I think I can do a little better. I have another amp of the same vintage, a Parasound HCA-2200 MkI. At over twice the power of the McCormack (220 wpc vs 100 wpc @ 8 ohms) and designed by John Curl, the Parasound has been a great amp for me and up until recently, was driving the front speakers in my home theater room. But in recent months, the right channel had been showing problems and finally I put it in the shop for repairs last week. Hopefully by next week I'll have it back and then I hope it'll be a sonic upgrade for the Grand Soliloquys. I cannot return to the Parasound to its original application since I have a new receiver there with no pre-outs.
The next upgrade after that might be a good DAC. I've auditioned a DAC or two ages ago, but considering how much Redbook music (Apple Lossless) I have now that is on my iTunes server, I'm thinking I can unlock some of the potential there. Right now, I have an Apple Airport Express (3rd gen) that is supplying music to this rig. And I'm dealing with the consumer grade DAC in that device. Still, ALAC allows for 24bit/192khz source material just like FLAC and AIFF which does play through, so I have a taste of what I can do with the few HD source files I have.
The big question now is what to look for in a DAC? My budget isn't infinite. Spending $2K on a DAC is not in the cards. I've seen some interesting stuff in the $700 and under range. Does anyone have a favorite?