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Help me spend $100,000 on a new system

I’ve recently been considering moving and downsizing my home. While exploring how much I might sell my house and land for, I was shocked that I might have an excess of $100,000 after selling and buying a smaller new home with less acreage. I’m 71 years old and can’t take it with me, so I’m trying to figure out how to spend that potential resource.

One possibility would be to purchase a new stereo system with all that cash. I would like to demo a system costing that much to see what sound quality you could get for a stupendous amount like that. But I don’t have any idea what brand/model components to look at. Perhaps you could suggest components you might consider if you were setting up a system at that price point. Also how would you budget the total amount per component including wiring.

I am not interested in adding streaming or anything else I might not already have to the system. I would be open to buying separates to replace any single component such as the integrated amplifier. Maybe a separate DAC, phono stage, preamp etc. Please tell me what you would do.

Following are the components I already have to upgrade. My system consists of Magico A3 speakers, a Luxman 507uX MK2 integrated amp, a Marantz Ruby KI CD/SACD player, A VPI Classic 2 turntable with a Fatboy tonearm and a Lyra Kleos cartridge. Wiring consists of Audioquest Rocket 88 speaker cables, and VPI house brand wires that connect to the tonearm. I forget the brands of the other wires and cables, but they are of similar quality to the above.

I also have a Shunyata Hydra Denali 4000 power conditioner with a Venom power cord (I think) that I will continue to use without upgrading.

I would welcome any of your suggestions and utilize them next time I go up to Washington DC to visit dealer showrooms for demos. Thank you much.

It does sound weird to consider spending that much on a system costing over three times what I paid for my first home, so I hope I’m not sounding uppity here.

Mike

 

 

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Showing 9 responses by scottwheel

scottwheel
184 posts
 

Have you zeroed in on the actual home you are going to buy? I think you can get a lot of mileage out of a dedicated listening room that you are free to modify. In wall and in ceiling bass traps would be a great way to spend some of that money. 

scottwheel
184 posts
 

“I honestly don’t want my listening room to look anything like a studio as it is my primary living space. But I am fully open to using what I have in terms of furnishings (many books on shelves furniture, rugs, artwork etc. as well as designing room dimensions and wall materials) to augment the acoustics.”

Do you have an attic space above your he ceiling? You can build a state of the art wide band bass trap into any ceiling that has a large space above it that is yours to modify as you wish. And you can make it virtually indistinguishable from  normal ceiling.

scottwheel
184 posts
 

“I honestly don’t want my listening room to look anything like a studio as it is my primary living space. But I am fully open to using what I have in terms of furnishings (many books on shelves furniture, rugs, artwork etc. as well as designing room dimensions and wall materials) to augment the acoustics.”

Also there are active bass traps from PSI in Switzerland. You can get 8 of them and place them strategically throughout the room. They are relatively small and very effective in a w swarm array. That would cost around $30K

scottwheel
184 posts
 

And another option. The brand new Trinnov wave forming DSP with subwoofer arrays on the front and back walls. 

scottwheel
184 posts
 

They absorb bass and reduce bass standing waves and reverb. There are different kinds that target different bass frequencies. 

scottwheel
184 posts
 

One has to be careful with absorption. If used it needs to be broad band otherwise it can become a passive equalizer with dull high frequencies 

scottwheel
184 posts
 

Sure. Absorption is not uniform across the frequency spectrum. It depends on the absorptive material, how thick it is and how much space if any there is between it and the reflective surface behind it. If one haphazardly puts 1”-2” “acoustic foam” on the walls the result will certainly be duller highs and no improvement in the mid range 

scottwheel
184 posts
 

“Some of the "best mastering rooms" use tuned resonators to address all the strong room modes (It may have been quite discreet, i.e. you may have thought there wasn’t anything there).”

indeed, there is no “naturalistic” way to manage room issues in the bass. There are ways to keep bass traps out of sight. 

scottwheel
184 posts
 

There are numerous approaches to bass management none of which are perfect. Personally I favor trapping over all others. Although I am very interested in the Trinnov Waveforming technology for bass management 50 Hz and lower. I’m betting on a combination of Wide band absorptive traps focused diaphragmatic traps, active bass traps and the Trinnov system to be the best solution. The goal is an even impulse response uniformly bellow 150 milliseconds with flat frequency response using minimal EQ. 
 

But no bass management is going to be a problem. 

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