Equipment that has made you 'stop' looking?

The dishwasher

I would like to add to the CJ Art Stereo 150 wpc tube amp that made me stop looking.....

I started putting my current system together in earnest in about 1994 and in a few years I had a CJ PV12 pre-amp, MV-55 tube amp, Rega Planar 3 w/ Exact cart, EAD digital, JM Labs/Focal Daline 6.1 speakers and MIT cables.

Around 2000 I started doing more with power and interconnects with the discovery of what Shyunyata, Siltech, Transparent and Tara mid-level (but costly for me at the time) could do to enhance everything.

By a couple of years ago I was up to a pair of CJ Premier 12 monoblocks, CT-5 pre, a maxxed out Linn table with a Shelter Harmony cart, ARC Ref2SE phono-pre, Naim digital, Wilson Sasha DAW’s, newer and better Siltechs for interconnects and speaker cables and Shunyata for power along with Synergistic fuses. It sounded really good so I was surprised when my local audio dealer mentioned that I should audition the CJ Art Stereo 150. I figured why not at least give it a listen after I realized that my Premier 12 monoblocks were many generations back from state of the art.

I give this background so you’ll understand that I’ve done a thousand upgrades and have typically experienced real, gradual improvements and sometimes tradeoffs. But in this case the improvement was light years ahead of what I had and what I expected to hear. The Art Stereo 150 brought everything up. Not just more bass, cleaner realistic mids and treble, great imaging, slam, inner detail, pacing and the rest of the audio-speak. It sounds very good cold, but once its run for an hour or so the music almost glows. I don’t mean tubey slow burnished warm glow, I mean realistic ’the players are in the room’ sound. Albums that I’ve played for 40 years seem like I’ve never heard them before kind of sound.

If there’s a better amp I don’t want to know about it. I’m done.

Looking at the components that have remained over the past five years:

• McIntosh MC275 tube power amplifier
• McIntosh C2300 tube pre amplifier
• McIntosh MCD500 CD/SACD/DAC
• Blue Jeans Cables interconnects and speaker cables
• Panamax M5100 EX Power Conditioner

Speakers, turntable and cartridge subject to change. Currently Magico A5's / B&W DB3D, VPI Aries 3 and Audio-Technica ART9XI.

Soundlab speakers. The star in my solar system!

Even being this thread pretty old, and as I´m new at this community, I wanted to participate.

I´m "done" looking for bookshelf speakers, I have the Dynaudio Confidence C1 Platinum, and after having had heard a lot of options, I believe I won´t sell them ever.

Hello to everyone, I will probably say "Hi" at the specific thread / segment to do so.

Best!