What is Your End Game System?

My office system, for a small room, is now done after about cycling through 10 amps, 4 preamps, 6 DACs, 2 speakers in the last 2 years. I listen to this system all day while I ’work’:

- Magnum Dynalab 108T tuner

- Accuphase T-101 tuner (modded)

- Musetec 005 DAC

- Sony SCD-1 SACD player modified by Vacuum State to Level 5+

- Benchmark LA4 preamp

- Benchmark AHB2 mono amps

- KEF LS50 Meta + KEF KC62 sub

- Audience FrontRow speaker cables, Audience Au24 SE RCA and XLR, and Benchmark XLR between preamp and amp

I know this is end game in the office, because it sounds the best to me compared to all the other gear I had in there. Almost all the other gear cost more money.

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In my office I have a great headphone system. I am done for now. If RAAL comes up with something better in the next decade I will upgrade to that.

- RAAL SR1a earphone and CA-1a headphone

- RAAL VM-1a headphone amp

- Benchmark DAC3B

This is end game because it is incredible sounding. I am not a headphone expert, but I think I have the best headphones and amp at ANY price. The comparison is based on the comments on Head-fi on the RAAL vs other TOTL headphones.

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My Livingroom system is also done but not completely purchased. The only thing I have for that so far is the Musetec 005 DAC. Everything else is figured out but either too expensive or not yet released.

@kota1 I learned that I can fit any speaker (within reason) into a small room. Though you will not get 100% of that speakers ability to shine, as in a bigger room.

So a big speaker can be fit into a small room without fatigue. It took room treatments placed in certain spots, and DSP using Convolution filters. Later on, I managed to remove the Convolution filters and rely only on the treatments.

I also learned that most DACs are satisfying to my ears. My price limit on a DAC is around $3K now. Though for my Livingroom I am considering a preamp with DAC that cost a bit more, just for convenience sake since it would eliminate about 4 boxes. In the Livingroom this is more of an issue

I like Class A or Class A like (Benchmark AHB2) amps more than anything else. Amps do sound different.

Gear supporting the AES48 standard save me on expensive consumer XLR interconnects. In my case the 15 foot XLR connection between the Benchmark LA4 and AHB2.

Try to remove large reflective surfaces from in-between the speakers. Adding a bookshelf with books behind my speakers helped me in my small room (a bit surprised at that).

Convolution filters are pretty amazing and my safety net for my Livingroom if I have to move my KEF Blade 2 (future speaker) too close to the front wall. I have no concerns now about placement of that difficult to place speaker.

Fibre optical cable is the best for streaming. If you use that even a cheap computer can work as a music server. The best part is you can place the music server many rooms away from the audio gear. I use ROON and nothing else., though JRiver is a viable option for all the things I do or may do (Convolution). Adding a cheap FMC in front of the Fibre cable improved the sound slightly though not essential.

BTW - this is a smart question to ask. 

One last point. My FM tuners pickup my 2 radio stations with way better  quality than the streams of the same stations. It is not even close.

@lalitk All comments are pertaining to my findings. I am not speaking of a general consensus. We all hear differently.

Though to my ears the Fibre Optical cable was the biggest improvement in my streaming setup. Adding a FMC in front of the Fibre also had a minor improvement. I would not even consider streaming without Fibre, such as RJ45 Ethernet input on DACs.

Both of these streaming options were from the posts by the designer of the Ethergen and OpticalRendu. It turned out from what he suggested the improvements on my rig were easy to hear.