Just saw this post, let me add my two cents here.
I was also looking to downsize my home office rig but really wasn't interested in giving up a whole lot. The system I wasn't looking to compromise much from was not chopped liver:
MBL Corona C15 mono's, MBL Corona C31, MBL 6010D pre, MBL 116F speaks, all tied together with Wireworld Gold Eclipse 5 (pure silver) wires and a Dynaudio Sub 500. 18x24ft room, speaks short wall with 5ft from each sidewall and almost 3 ft behind, a nice 6-7 foot center fill. Talkin a 100k retail system all in.
Just to be clear and honest, I am and have been a huge MBL fan for years, I'll likely never buy another box speaker again for live music, but I have no financial interest in promoting their gear, I just love it to listen to. The above mentioned rig was better in many ways than my full reference MBL rig with 101e's. It was just set up right and really sweet for this room. (no treatments).
In an effort to get rid of way too much gear hanging around and streamline this system, I made two basic changes after months of research and chat with others.
-I replaced the C15 mono's and the 6010D with Hegel H360, and
-I replaced the C31 CDP with a Esoteric UX-1pi
Stripped out 60k in retail and replaced it with a 4k almost new Hegel and a $3200 older Esoteric, and accomplished my goal of giving up ALMOST nothing, and got a universal with HDMI to boot.
ALMOST means the overall sound of the new rig is still phenomenal, the Hegel has produced excellent results with one exception. While streaming from my desktop compared to going through the C31 CDP, the sound took a dump, a pretty bad one. Seems as if the biggest downside to the Hegel is the USB input., it just sucks. And that considers I bought a new Wireworld Starlight 7 USB wire that I thought would be an upgrade compared to the old generic piece of junk i was using, wrong- and it's not the wire- it's the Hegel.
ANY SUGGESTIONS ON A GOOD VALUE USB DAC??
My only other significant observation is the sound stage is definitely set back form the previous set up. Not necessarily a negative as the center fill is tremendous(as it always is with the MBL speakers, just abit different. I may also add that with my 84db 4 ohm speaks, the hegel doesn't even start to sing until 40 or so on the volume knob- but between 50 and 85 it sings really, really well. Alot of product here for the $.
Jackaroe
I was also looking to downsize my home office rig but really wasn't interested in giving up a whole lot. The system I wasn't looking to compromise much from was not chopped liver:
MBL Corona C15 mono's, MBL Corona C31, MBL 6010D pre, MBL 116F speaks, all tied together with Wireworld Gold Eclipse 5 (pure silver) wires and a Dynaudio Sub 500. 18x24ft room, speaks short wall with 5ft from each sidewall and almost 3 ft behind, a nice 6-7 foot center fill. Talkin a 100k retail system all in.
Just to be clear and honest, I am and have been a huge MBL fan for years, I'll likely never buy another box speaker again for live music, but I have no financial interest in promoting their gear, I just love it to listen to. The above mentioned rig was better in many ways than my full reference MBL rig with 101e's. It was just set up right and really sweet for this room. (no treatments).
In an effort to get rid of way too much gear hanging around and streamline this system, I made two basic changes after months of research and chat with others.
-I replaced the C15 mono's and the 6010D with Hegel H360, and
-I replaced the C31 CDP with a Esoteric UX-1pi
Stripped out 60k in retail and replaced it with a 4k almost new Hegel and a $3200 older Esoteric, and accomplished my goal of giving up ALMOST nothing, and got a universal with HDMI to boot.
ALMOST means the overall sound of the new rig is still phenomenal, the Hegel has produced excellent results with one exception. While streaming from my desktop compared to going through the C31 CDP, the sound took a dump, a pretty bad one. Seems as if the biggest downside to the Hegel is the USB input., it just sucks. And that considers I bought a new Wireworld Starlight 7 USB wire that I thought would be an upgrade compared to the old generic piece of junk i was using, wrong- and it's not the wire- it's the Hegel.
ANY SUGGESTIONS ON A GOOD VALUE USB DAC??
My only other significant observation is the sound stage is definitely set back form the previous set up. Not necessarily a negative as the center fill is tremendous(as it always is with the MBL speakers, just abit different. I may also add that with my 84db 4 ohm speaks, the hegel doesn't even start to sing until 40 or so on the volume knob- but between 50 and 85 it sings really, really well. Alot of product here for the $.
Jackaroe