dar
Responses from dar
| Recommendations of best violin recordings performances Hard to satisfy both criteria, but for fantastic performances with sound good enough to avoid distraction, I vote for i) one of the later Heifetz recordings of the Tchaikovsky concerto; ii) Oistrakh playing Shostakovich; and iii) Milstein playing ... | |
| Best value speakers available I haven't owned a pair of Maggies for a long time (switched over to Martin Logans, and haven't been disappointed). However, if the sole criterion is value, not absolute sound quality, the Magnepan SMGs ("Baby Maggies") are very hard to beat. They ... | |
| Best headphones under 800.00 USD There are lots of great choices within your price constraint. The Sennheiser 600 already recommended is an easy choice, and well worth the premium over the next most expensive Sennheiser. Both the Grado RS-1 and RS-2 are worth considering, especia... | |
| Revox Reel Tape Recorder At one time (2-3 years ago?) there was a seller on ebay who did a lot of work refurbishing old Revox open reel units. I don't know if he is still active, but that might be a place to start looking. | |
| Buidling a Classical Library - MUST HAVES! I'll take your post literally and recommend some warhorses, mostly in boxes today (and therefore especially suitable for building a library from scratch). These seem to me very mainstream, eminently safe choices, but, if you are building from scra... | |
| Hottest Wife or World's Best System?? Its the same question audiophiles in out of the way places have had to face for years: what are you supposed to do when the tubes go? | |
| Opinions on Counterpoint Amps/Upgrades I owned the sa-7/sa-12 combo about 12 years ago. The sa-12 failed twice, bigtime (once taking out a speaker in the process); the sa-7 failed once, but under circumstances that may be understandable. Right out of the box, they sounded great for the... | |
| Best Sub to mate with magnepan 3.5 Sorry to be contrarian, but I think that the answer to your question is "no sub at all". What you give up in speed and consistency just isn't worth it. My advice would be to spend the same money on electronics that are better controlled at low fre... | |
| Are You Addicted to Audio? LJGJ, haven't heard the Quads or Soundlab, but have lived with MLs for about 10 years and heard much of their product line--admittedly not the 75k flagship, but most, if not all, of the rest, and I've got to disagree with you when you line them up... | |
| Are You Addicted to Audio? Have had the original Sequels for years (bought new within 1 year of their original release) and have been very happy with them. However, my bias for electrostatics got stood on its (my?) ear(s) when I recently heard the Revel Salons auditioned ag... | |
| preamp/system help Agree very strongly re: ARC SP-9. Despite an acute case of upgrade fever for the rest of my equipment, my SP-9 stayed in my system nearly forever, and only got removed in favor of a much more expensive unit. ARC is a standup kind of company, too, ... | |
| Most achingly-beautiful music Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto; Janacek, First String Quartet; Bizet, Carmen | |
| Best blues guitarist, Clapton or Green Buddy Guy is real living legend stuff, and a great teacher of blues history, but the real thing today, this minute, is Son Seals--nobody hotter that I know. In my opinion (and I don't delude myself into thinking that its more than an opinion) Clap... | |
| Best Pre-Amp with Phono Stage With these preferences, I think you are needlessly constraining yourself by looking for a preamp with a phono stage built in. You can get a spiffy phono pre for around 1k used (I like the ARC PH3, but it isn't the only choice) and materially incre... | |
| Top manufacturers! Audio Research, Mark Levinson, and Theta without restriction. Restricted to price points, Magnepan and Grado are very worthy. I agree with the earlier post that Pass is a great product, but don't think the brand has been around long enough for pur... |