Speaking of Maggies, the Tympani line of Magneplanars is a special case. The speaker had become too expensive to manufacture to allow Magnepan to continue offering it without raising the speakers retail price above either A: what they wanted to (to keep their image as a value-orientated company), or B: what they thought the market would bear. They reportedly have admitted that the Tympani T-IVa was (actually, is---they are available used, and can still be repaired by Magnepan) superior to any of their current models, even the $14,000 MG 20.7. The cost to manufacture a Tympani model Magneplanar (three 16" X 72" panels hinged together per speaker) now would require Magnepan to price the speaker above what they are willing to, for the above reasons.
"Vintage" high end gear vs new and upgrade path?
I'm pondering a couple issues that relate to each other. Let's start with vintage vs new part. The system is ripped straight from the 90's but was pretty much a Stereophile "A" class setup in its day. Here it is:
Issue 2: Despite improvements in digital I'm also skeptical about how much real sonic improvement there has been in high end DACs, especially when it gets beyond 24b/96khz source material (system above is good up to 24/96). I'm also skeptical about the claimed improvements from DSD over PCM, so I'm ignoring that for the time being. Obviously connectivity, music servers, the digital audio chain and computer anything has improved greatly and is vastly cheaper than in 1995. But how far does that actually extend to the sonics? My sense is not so much.
At the end of the day I'm interested in any upgrade(s) that would create a real, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck improvement without spending $10k. But I've convinced myself that so much of what I read about would be only yield an incremental sonic improvement, and maybe even a downgrade. I need a strategy - which might just be "leave it alone and just enjoy." Any comments welcome, thanks.
- Rega P3 with numerous upgrades & Exact 2 cartridge (new)
- Threshold FET10/pc phono preamp,
- Sonic Frontiers SFT-1 => Assemblage D2D-1 ==> SFD-2 Mk3
- Krell KBL preamp (recapped) ==> ML No. 332 amp (recapped)
- Maggie MGIIIa's (recent factory rebuild)
- Music server (repurposed HP server) w/ Asus Xonar card feeding D2D-1
Issue 2: Despite improvements in digital I'm also skeptical about how much real sonic improvement there has been in high end DACs, especially when it gets beyond 24b/96khz source material (system above is good up to 24/96). I'm also skeptical about the claimed improvements from DSD over PCM, so I'm ignoring that for the time being. Obviously connectivity, music servers, the digital audio chain and computer anything has improved greatly and is vastly cheaper than in 1995. But how far does that actually extend to the sonics? My sense is not so much.
At the end of the day I'm interested in any upgrade(s) that would create a real, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck improvement without spending $10k. But I've convinced myself that so much of what I read about would be only yield an incremental sonic improvement, and maybe even a downgrade. I need a strategy - which might just be "leave it alone and just enjoy." Any comments welcome, thanks.