Here are some pictures of the new gear.
A step down...especialy in price (which is good). Honestly though, i'm really enjoying the hell out of this system. Its certainly not the rock-n-roll rig I had w/the monsterous VR4s and 250wpc of slammin' ICEpower, but its sweet, smooth and images like a picture.
Consisting of....
MusicHall Mambo integrated amp, which looks WAY better than this picture. Every smudge was caught in the camera flash. 50wpc class A two channels. built in burr-brown based DAC that upsamples all digital inputs to 24/96. Perfect for me, as my source for 90% of what I listen to are FLAC files on the DELL next to the TV stand.
Toshiba POS universal player. awesome for movies....and SACD sounds pretty good. funny, running analog out and digital out I can switch back and forth w/the remote for the Mambo (which is a solid piece of metal weighing nearly a pound!). the Mambo DAC litterly smokes the analog output of the toshiba. no surprise there. I didnt' buy that for its sound. its upsampling 1080i video output is freakin' awesome. happy w/the $90 I spent on that!
Epos M12.2 monitors on Dayton stands (those things were only $40!). They are a two way, rear ported british speaker. Quad posts for bi-wiring. They are handsome as hell, even w/the grills on (which are a metal piece, a real grill). I cant believe how much bass comes out of these suckers. They are not the VR4s of course, but they dont leave me feeling as though I'm missing any portion of the music. Well...the first week they did, but now i'm very used to it. I'll probably add a sub though. I need a little more slam.
For the first few days I had them, I was running them through my Symphones+ > ICEpower amp and they sang like Tony Bennet! The lack of power in the MusicHall piece was very evident, but again...i'm used to it.
Cables, all home made HYDRA silver clads. Check out those beefey bi-wires in green techflex! 6ga wire w/ 19 braided strands of silver plated OxyFree copper. They are very beefy. I need to get spades for them and a crimp tool. Anyone have a crimper I could borrow?
They sound fantastic though. I'm very pleased w/them. They were the ones I made out this stock I scored on eBay:
http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=72088.0rediculously cheap price for this HQ cable. I've never seen jackets like this stuff had. outter layer of clear plastic, then teflon, then cotton w/some other funky material, then the shielding, then more teflon..then the actual wire under all of that.
I'm hopeing John is bringing new speakers of his own over tomorrow to play with (vr1s he picked up locally), so i can see if these Epos's need to go...or stay. I bought them because I got a hell of a deal on them. I was intending to go w/the VR1s in the first place.
Eventualy, i'll probably get rid of the Mambo and move up to a Manley Stingray....my favorite of all integrateds. Then I'll need a DAC as well, but I'll cross those bridges when I get there.
as for right now, i'm happy as a pig in a poke. Even though i'm already looking ahead...i'm not really. that stuff was going to be my goal at first after selling my other gear, but it would have been an even swap investment wise, and I wanted to pay some bills.
total into this rig, about $1015.
all pieces used (except the toshiba) from agon, which should be EVERYONES best friend on this forum.
Topic: new gear pics (Read 2141 times)