The BEST system you've ever built !!!!

Purist Audio preamp, Purist Audio 4 piece speaker system (biamped using Lamm 1.1 on satelites and Krell power amp on bass modules), Purist Audio Dominus interconnects and speaker cables, Krell MD-10 transport and 64 processor.

The system I use now is Welborne ApolloII single ended mono amps fed by a Levinson 390S CD player through JPS interconnects. These play through Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage speakers and a REL woofer. I have a Gatekeeper power conditioner and dedicated mains. I really enjoy this system, BUT, I had years ago a modified Dynaco Stereo 70 and a REGA Planar turntable with a cheap Grado cartridge hanging off a Grace 707 arm. This was hooked up to an old Marantz tube preamp playing through original Quads. I could kill myself for starting the upgrade quest. I'm not sure I've ever improved my enjoyment from that system!!

It was the following:
Audio Research SP6b pre-amp.
Audio Research D52-b power amp.
B&W DM 302 monitors
Klipsch SW8 sub.
Piece of crap pioneer CD player(old as dirt)
Very good RCA cables and speaker wire.
There was something about this combination that would
bring chills to your spine.It was fantastic.I should have
never broke it up.
89vett

Interesting to hear many of you mentioning your love of vintagey components and old systems.

I would vote for a system I had in high school in 1979: Kenwood KD-500 with SME III and Grado Signature/Dynavector Ruby, Yamaha C-2a preamp, Hafler DH-500 power amp and Magneplanar MG-IIbs -- much more musical and enjoyable than many other mega buck systems I have had in recent years including Levinson, Audio Research, Martin Logans blah blah blah.

I used to listen for hours and now I just stumble around this forum and high end stores like some bleary eyed junkie searching for some relief.

I am not normally a sentimental guy. Has audio quality actually gotten WORSE in 25 years?

Hmmmm......maybe it's just that nasty little binary code --that we keep trying to improve?!?

CW--Ah, nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.... Seriously, I've found the trend you noted interesting also. I really don't think the quality of audio has gone downhill (putting aside digital, analog is vastly improved over the stuff I had in college 30+ years ago), but perhaps it hasn't, in certain areas (such as amplification), improved as much as the industry would like to have you believe, and perhaps in our obsessiveness to improve the sound quality of our systems we've lost touch with what got a lot of us into this hobby in the first place, the ability to just kick back and enjoy our favorite music in the comfort of our own homes without worrying about whether the power feeding our equipment is clean, the effect of different shelving on the sound of our CD player, etc., etc.