Your thoughts about an upgrade

gdnrbob, I might take you up on that. Got about $1K invested in the Kimbers. In fact the dealer did recommend AQ Yosemites for the interconnects.

noromance2,472 postsI am curious though about where your Rega P3 is located in a corner and if it will be subject to acoustic feedback.

The Rega is in fact in a corner, although it's mounted on Rega's wall mount to a reinforced exterior wall. My location choices in this room are somewhat limited. What are the effects of acoustic feedback?

Thanks to all who responded for your thoughtful insights. I went to the dealer (Stereo Unlimited in San Diego) yesterday and they didn’t have the setup in the store. They’ll call me when they do, and I’ll go check ’em out with a couple of recordings I know pretty well. I’ll report back when I do.

Well, after a couple of listening sessions with my own records, this week I went ahead and did it: Quatro Wood CT speakers, M5-HPA monoblocks, Rogue Audio RP-9 preamp, balanced interconnects between the preamp and amps, new balanced interconnect for the exaSound e32 Mk II DAC. Will keep my existing Kimber 8TC bi-wired speaker cables but shorten them up from the current 10-foot. Dealer will take the Treos and VTL integrated in trade. Should arrive in a few weeks.

tomic601: I’m bi-wired now with the 8TC and Treo CTs. The new ones, like the old ones, will be cherry, because I love it and it goes well in the room. I'm looking forward to expert advice on speaker placement and tuning all the EQ on the Quatros.

It’d to get together when the plague is over; I’m in La Jolla.

So I took the plunge and got the Quatro CTs in cherry, M5-HPA amps, a Rogue Audio RP-9 pre-amp and Audioquest balanced interconnects for everything but the Rogue Audio Aries phono preamp and Rega RP-3 turntable, which are unchanged. The exaSound e32 DAC and Sigma streamer are also unchanged except for a new Audioquest "Earth" interconnect which replaces a Kimber Hero. The Kimber 8TC speaker cables I was using are cut down to 5' and still bi-wired.

It took about six weeks for all the pieces to arrive and everything was installed yesterday. There was a scary-but-then-hilarious moment after the guys from Stereo Unlimited (San Diego) had everything hooked up. We turned it on and got nothing, not from the phono, not from DAC. At long last we turned up the volume and learned that the Rogue RP-9 volume dial goes well above 100, and a setting of 75 is inaudible, at least in this system.

I'll post some pictures on my system page but can say that the Rogue Audio pieces and Vandersteen amps are low-glitz black boxes. That kind of suits my tastes visually, which of course has no effect on the sound but is the stuff you sit and look at while you listen to music. The Quatros look almost identical to the Treos they replaced, which was what I wanted.

The installers set the speakers at the vertices of an equilateral triangle with my listening position, and slight toe-in. Of course I'm already noticing substantially more bass. The drill is that they will come back in a few weeks and tune the equalizers on the Quatros after everything is broken in.

Which brings me to my question:  how long is a reasonable break-in period for this setup—40 hours, 50 hours, 100 hours? I really don't know, and would appreciate any theories/suppositions/hypotheses that anybody cares to offer.