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Audio and the "jet set" - please help

Hi all,

It's looking like my life will be global for the foreseeable future, with 2-3 year stints in countries all over the world (including the U.S.). This poses some challenges for my audio obsession. Constantly changing voltage requirements and shifting room sizes mean that long-term planning is difficult. Are there others in this situation? How do you cope?

I've tried a few things. Shifting away from speakers to great headphones is what I'm doing now, especially because space is very limited, but in the end, I'm a speaker guy. I've also tried to focus on components with switchable voltage, but in the end this is just really limiting. I've thought about relying on step-down transformers, but this scares me a little (should it?).

Anyway, I'd love to hear from any of you in similar positions who have found ways to make it work.

Thanks!
lousyreeds1

Showing 1 response by lousyreeds1

lousyreeds1's avatar
lousyreeds1 OP
286 posts
 
Thanks all. One thing working in my favor is that I tend to go for high sensitivity speakers with low-powered amps, which means I can use amps that don't have huge current draw.

One thing I'm pondering, for instance, is basing my system around an amp. Check out the Luxman SQ-N100: 12W EL84 integrated with supposedly excellent headphone jack and MM phono stage built in. This would give me great flexibility to rely on headphones when necessary and hook it up to high-sensitivity speakers when possible. It draws 95W at full throttle, which seems reasonably easy to deal with on a step-down transformer. A similar option is the Leben CS300x. Thoughts?

Thanks again!
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