Thinking about a Steinway Lyngdorf system

@mcroth I love the system I have, the PS Audio BHK Amps are very good with their hybrid tube design and I love ½ of my Paradigm 9hs the tweeter and mid drivers are wonderful but I had to replace the low end with the JL 113 subs and they buzz, I've got 20k of power regeneration and 2x filters the subs still buzz and the BHK preamp is simply to noisy, PS Audio has replaced it twice. I have 30 or so speakers in my listening room and one system is dead quiet but sounds not as warm and inviting the other system is more analytical. I know the home system is not as accurate but it sounds better, I'm also very tired of replacing all those stupid tubes, I feel like as soon as I put them in they start to degrade and where do I step in and say ok now replace them. I'd rather send money on my last system what ever that may be.

@mofojo You would think the 9hs would have a ton of bass the speakers really punch above their weight, hybrid design, beryllium tweeters, with large beryllium mids, and 4 woofers with balanced opposing frames and 2700W peak but in my case no, I bought them new and was always disappointed in the bass, although they have a tone sweep button in them and when I push it the room shakes but I can't get that sound out during music. Oh well. I've never heard better meds and tweeters, the 9hs are the first speaker I've hear that actually use a near field deflector that actually worked, high frequency beryllium tweeters always sounded harsh (Focal) but these didn't, I bought the 9hs assuming the bass would be great I have 4x Bs for my surround sound speakers they are wonderful, I should have simply used those as my main speakers and spent the money somewhere else.

@kota1 thanks for the info, Peter L is quite the designer, I have a Lyngdorf 60.2 I think it's there best processor and at 15k$ it 10K less than the Steinway and it seems to do more but it doesn't have the network connectors for the "system" I'm such a sucker for everything working together. I did buy an Naim "class A" am and a Focal Stella headphone setup that I don't like either, thought they would go together since they are the same company. 

@kota1 I think where Peter L is possibly a bit wrong about not having a center channel is that so much dialog is 100% sent to the center and music sounds good with the lead in the center, if you don't have a center channel but only rely on a center image created by L and R you won't hear anything if the mixer sends important parts the the CC. In theory you only need 2 speakers we only have 2 ears. 

@mijostyn Thank you I appreciate your experience.

@rick2000 Interesting speakers, hope they do well.

@kota1 The main sales person from Steinway came to the house and listened to my sound system. He gave me a few good notes but I don't think the Steinway system is for me, everything is proprietary I would have to get rid of all my equipment. He gave me some pointers about Room Perfect but it didn't make much difference, I guess that means my room is good already. Best

@kota1 I would really like you to tell me how you are remastering in DSD? Are you using it as a playback format from other formats, or are you getting DSD originals? I'm probably misunderstanding, how would copying to DSD make anything sound better? 

@prof I cleaned my Steinway grand for the first time yesterday, I was amazed at the craftsmanship every part of it was perfect.

@kota1 You'll appreciate this, the Steinway salesmen goes all over the world listening and talking to people about very expensive sound systems, we talked about how I felt it was so important to have the amps, crossovers, and speakers designed for each other and that Steinway was the only company that did that in a complete way, you can't even insert a normal speaker cable or interconnect every single piece of the system is designed by Lyngdorf / Steinway. He did say that there are problems with amps in the speakers because of the vibration and they don't even want you to put the equipment on the wrong material. They took a piece of equipment with long cables (network cables) and set it on 5 different types of material like glass wood stone and such and each material sounded different. This guy form Steinway was not an audiophile that was into esoteric accessories with non scientific tendencies, in fact he said the engineers at Steinway / Lyngdorf are all old school scientific and numbers people they are testing all the time. 

@kota1 Thank you. Why doesn't everyone use DSD, SACD, I would worry that there will be no equipment to play it back on in the future. When I started in the studios 2 inch audio tape and even 2 inch video tape. You really can't playback any 2 inch video tape now and it was the ultimate cutting edge format in its day. Reminds me of the huge underground caverns that the government use to hold records they did a study and ended up using paper and ink for holding records, In Hollywood there are sealed vaults that you put your old master movie in usually on film and mag for the sound, won't be able to play that back soon either. Apple ruined the pursuit of quality in the entertainment industry in place of convenience, sad.

@kota1 I really didn't like my headphones when I first got them and a Naim HP amp. What was wrong was I didn't burn them in long enough they sound great now. I have the Focal Stellia they are comfortable and are closed which is what I wanted open headphones don't make a lot sense may as well use speakers. Sony makes great headphones, Sennheiser HD-25s are a little dark but are comfortable very consistent and the industry standard for production sound, the more expensive Sennheisers sound bad to me I never liked them. I would say go with some very good Sonys they should be set up for your amp perfectly. I did listen to many very expensive headphones at the last audio show and they were very different sounding and the power amp requirements were very different. 

I would say definitely buy the normal headphones, I bought some in ear phones 1500$ by Sure and they sounded good but simply didn't have any air at all, I think in ear phones are useful in very noisy situations but for normal listening they are missing the air around the musicians.