Welcome to retirement life. No more schedules and “I must get this done by...”.
The main thing is to buy what you like and what you enjoy to listen to. There is no such thing as a perfect system and it is very subjective too.
As a retirement present to myself, I bought myself a simple and non clutter system because I no longer want to have multiple components and cables running among them. I purchased the Devialet 1000 Pro with a pair of Focal Maestro to simplify my home. The source is a custom built cube PC by my son-in-law with two dedicated 6TB hard drives with Tidal / JRiver as digital music management. I will later re-condition my 40-year old turntable as analogue source and same vintage NAD CD player for my CD collections.
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retired-hank3 posts01-27-2018 4:17pmWelcome to retirement life. No more schedules and “I must get this done by...”.
Ah, not quite right. There's always the dreaded fridge list, from the missus. Cheers George |
The fridge list is short and leaves plenty of time so perusing HiFi forums. The list is short because it says "a new house"...from the missus Mine says "new stereo". Men are simple beings. |
Listen to PS AUdio gear. Great prices from a great company, American made. |
Don't get sucked into the cable hype. They are high profit items pushed by dealers. A $2000 amp does not need a $500 cable.
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Congrats on retirement, I’m a few years behind ya! I would agree with suggestions here of “let your ears decide what’s best for you”. My wife and I flew from Michigan to Colorado to the RMAF show and had a blast listening to all that’s current. We already had a new system but was looking for improvements. Ended up falling in love with some Zu Audio Soul Superfly speakers but I just couldn’t pull the trigger as they were a bit more than what we recently purchased. Well, my wife didn’t tell me until we got back home but SHE bought them! A while later we went to another Audio show in Toronto and ended up finding a TT we really like(German made Acoustic Solid brand). My wife fell in love with the beautiful bubinga plinth so we picked that up. So, the moral of the story is... bring your wife with you!
Rick |
OP: If you are really willing to start from scratch, there are so many angles to consider and places to start - and twice as many opinions! You are likely to get many suggestions that have merit and are worth considering. Here's mine (distilled down to four suggestions):
1. Take your time (as someone else suggested).
2. I agree with the conventional wisdom (?) that the two most important components of a SYSTEM are the room and the speakers. So, spend a disproportionate amount of your budget on your main speakers and setting up and treating the room (to work with the speakers you chose and vice versa)
3. If you have stereo and surround sound ambitions, focus (effort and $$) on getting the 2, 2.1 and 3.1 channels to sound the best they possibly can; and then round out the effects channels and equipment (and add subwoofers, if need be). I believe that L, C and R channels are the most important channels, in terms of sound quality and impact in a HT/surround system.
4. Leave room in the budget for speaker and room correction software/digital processing (whether it comes in the form of computer software, components, built into speakers or some combination thereof). Not everyone agrees, but I think modern speaker/room correction options are really great for tweaking and fine tuning a room/system and getting it just right.
Have fun and keep us posted on your progress, please.
Scott |
Congratulations !! I retired 18 months ago and am really enjoying it !
I also treated myself to a new system as a retirement gift to myself
I wanted a high end system for a not outrageous cost. I chose the following :
Rogue Cronus Magnum 2 integrated , Golden Ear Triton Plus 2 speakers, Musical Fidelity V90 DAC , NAD CD player , Rega Planar 1 turntable
Best !!
Russ in Pittsburgh PA |
You don't have to spend mega-bucks. Get a tube amplifier system-rogue audio, Prima Luna, or tubes4hifi--all good stuff. Some Vandersteen speakers, or Focal or Dali. Or call Kevin at Upscale Audio--he will steer you where you want to go--he loves stereo--good guy. |
Before you start spending money on gear, determine for yourself what kind of midrange and ’presentation’ you like. You may really like something like the disappearing act and clean presentation of a small Harbeth P3esr mated to a good single ended triode amp. Or other, more high efficiency speakers like Audionote; or horns, or single driver speakers. With or without a little subwoofer. You may really prefer a paper cone midrange or soft dome to polypropylene or more exotic material (I do). If you’re in Australia, you are in a very good location to get some great deals on high(ish) end clones coming out of China - like a dartzeel clone or FM acoustics clones on ebay (both less than $1000). And also the tube integrateds like Line Magnetic, Cayin, etc. http://cattylink.com/ Finally, you should be able to find very good DACs as well, for equally cheap (less than $1,000) coming out of China and Singapore. Just do some reading and listen to as much as you can. Try to keep it simple and enjoy the journey. :) |
@amg56 You have a very good advantage, as you are building your home from scratch, if I understand correctly. Your room/treatments is the most important part of the system that you will be putting together (IMHO). It seems that you have some good $$ to spend, so deal with the room first. It’s the single most important issue that most of us have to had to "tame" with the conditions that we have with our existing rooms. You have the opportunity to get the room dealt with before the gear. After that, well, it’s all about your personal preferences sonically for the gear that you fill the room with. Good luck, and please keep us notified on your progress. |
If you can, spend the weekend at AXPONA in Chicago (April 13-15 2018) before you buy anything. It will be the largest collection of hifi gear in North America (I think) and will enable you to hear many, many systems and figure out what sound you like and don't like. Before you part with $50K or $100K, buy an inexpensive ticket and hotel room and then immerse yourself in the magic AXPONA affords. I'm certain you will have a much better idea of what you are after once you hear lots of different systems.
Have fun.
Al |
A lot of good advice to think about. Do as much listening as you can.Trust your ears only! I was glad to see many suggestions on how to get good synergy.Which means so much.
Many will suggest you get what brands and models they like or have.Or because they read a good review on.Take it with a grain of salt.Again ,trust Your ears . A system that is a good fit for the room means a lot. Good luck and have fun! Ray
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@cymbop +1 on the room dimensions |
seriously stop reading about gear and fix the room dimensions and construction ! |
Thank you one and all for the friendship, comradery and interest. Forget retirement. There is so much on this audiogon forum, it will be a full time job reading the interesting bits first and then onwards. Its like reading a book a few pages behind the author as (he/she or she/he) writes. This is going to be one heck of a good trip. Again, thanks.
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