Hi-Fi: Previous Systems, An Odyssey
My First Taste
My first memory of listening to a hi-fi system was at the age of 15 one summer when wandering down Tottenham Court Road in London, window shopping at all the goodies on display. There were two big electronics department stores opposite each other: Laskys and Lion House (both long since gone). The latter tended to have the more esoteric equipment, such as the early Mini-Moog synthesisers, and many products imported from abroad. It was there that I first heard music reproduction with what was, at the time, leading edge sound quality. I remember hearing David Essex' 'Rock On' on this system and was bowled over by the clarity, the bass and the volume. As far as memory allows, the components I heard were Altec Lansing speakers driven by a Phase Linear amp, with an Acoustic Research turntable playing records. I went back several times just to listen to that system again. I wanted a music system like that one. There was no turning back.
Early Days
Looking back at all the equipment I've owned, there have been some pretty good acquisitions and some dodgy decisions, but few real milestones - as it should be. If this story serves only one purpose, let it be that you must follow the path your love of music takes you along. Most opinion, hearsay and initial impressions only lead you into poor decisions and expensive dead ends.
My first real taste of hi-fi started with a Linsley-Hood 75W amplifier kit from Powertran (the circuit can still be referenced in Wireless World but the company is, sadly, long gone), together with Cambridge R40 speakers, a Connoisseur BD1 turntable and SME3009-II pickup arm. The SME experienced a variety of cartridges from Goldring, Shure, Ortofon, Empire and Dynavector, the latter being my very first moving coil type.
Of course, there were many pre-hi-fi configurations, including some madness with redesigning the amps inside a Dansette music centre (yes, the records really did stack and drop), experiments with a JVC 8-track receiver (da-di-da, k-lunk, di-da), Wharfedale Chevins with the single 8" dual-concentric driver and some truly awful amp modules by a company best forgotten (actually, I have).
Back to the Linsley-Hood. This design was one of the first to use a quasi push-pull topology using all-NPN output transistors - type Sescosem BDY56 (what a memory for trivia). When I stripped out the excessive tone controls and filters from the preamp section I arrived at an amplifier that was really very good indeed, although it did run rather hot due to insufficient heatsinking.
The Cambridge speakers I built from completed cabinets acquired cheap (they had just gone bust) and a set of KEF drive units (B139 bass, B110 mid and T27 tweeters - I'm good at this). They were small transmission line designs, complete with lamb's wool filling, and gave me a taste for wide bandwidth at an early age. They were tonally neutral and gave me excellent service for a number of years.
The Connoisseur was a fun turntable with an undersized platter and a switch-on lever that gave the platter a spin to ensure it rotated in the right direction. The SME, in contrast, was a jewel of design and engineering. I remember that the damped cueing mechanism failed after a couple of years and SME not only replaced the mechanism but also brought the entire arm up to latest revision for the princely charge of £1. That's service that sticks in the mind for a long time.
Cartridges gave me a lot of trouble. The Goldrings were dull, the Shures uncouth. The best match for the SME was the Empire (2000E/III if I remember correctly), but potentially the best sound was the Dynavector except for its lightweight bass and midrange dominant sound. Little did I know then how much the arm choice could improve the Dynavector's sound.
Take One Step Back
A little later, I decided the Linsley-Hood had to go, in favour of something a little more powerful. I started reading up on the (then) new Hitachi power MOSFETs and their circuit notes. I bought a lot of components, and two big cases to house them in, to create a passive preamp and butch power amp. I remember using two 625VA toroidal transformers for the power amp, plus a whole row of reservoir capacitors. Huge overkill, all wasted because the basic circuit was dynamically compressed and flat sounding with little detail. I lived with this disappointing behemoth for too long, constantly tweaking it to try to get better results. It was time to move on...
Valves and Hot Rooms
Sometime later, I was persuaded to take valve (tube) equipment seriously after a friend bought a pair of very rare and expensive Dynavector valve monoblocks. They sounded stunning, with clarity and immense dynamic drive. I was smitten.
When a Croft SIP preamp and Series 4S power amp became available ex-dem from Audio T in West Hampstead, I bit and bought them both. Sometime later, I bought a Mitsubishi direct drive mechanism and made a new turntable out of it, which was more reliable than the Connoisseur, but no better sounding.
An interlude with the launch of CD saw first a Philips CD-104 and then a CD-650
in short order. They were interesting, but gave little clue as to how much
information is locked in a CD. More of that much later in this story.
Then I decided that I had to acquire a 'real' turntable, so bought a Michell
Syncro with Helius Aureus pickup arm. The turntable was a beauty, the arm a good
visual match but, unfortunately, not well built. It had problems with binding
bearings and I had to keep re-setting them to stop the arm from, well, stopping
half way across a record. The Ortofon MC-10 sounded very fine, though, despite
it being my second one. The first cartridge never lived to play anything as I
swiped the cantilever while attaching it to the arm. Exit one cartridge, stage
left.
Also at around this time, I decided to retire the Cambridge speakers in favour
of a pair of JBL L-100T which were large reflex designs with the classic JBL
12" paper cone woofer and titanium tweeter. The smaller L-20T were popular
at the time, but the L-100T was virtually unknown in the UK. The Croft drove
them well and they made a very respectable sound with the ability to go low and
loud without break-up.
A little later, I invested in my first true high end component: a Roksan Xerxes turntable with SME IV pickup arm and Audio Technica AT-OC7 cartridge. Phono preamp duties were courtesy of an EAR834P De-Luxe.
Soon after that, I went down to Covent Garden Records having decided that I had to replace previous CD players with something of the calibre of the Roksan. After listening to Denon and Marantz models from the top of their range, I ended up with a beautiful Pioneer PD-91 Reference Series, a battleship of a CD player.
Low Power and Dead Ends
Some time earlier, I had bought a speaker kit from IPL Acoustics (S5TL), a UK kit vendor. I sent the cabinet drawings to my father in the hope that he would build me some fine cabinets for me to complete with wiring and drivers. He certainly came up with beautiful cabinets, but about five years later. He had been a little busy. Nevertheless, they looked wonderful in Brazilian Rosewood and I completed them in just a few days. They sounded very good, smoother than the JBLs with more insight and extended but not such powerful bass despite being transmission line designs.
I also distracted myself by acquiring a Leak Stereo 20 and completely rebuilding
it with modern components. I also changed the biasing of the phase splitter
stage and replaced the input stage with the more linear ECC82 valve. It also has
soft recovery solid state rectifiers and large polypropylene reservoir
capacitors to replace the original electrolytics. What an extraordinary
amplifier. I learned all I know about soundstage depth and width, microdynamics
and the throwing forward of voice in the mix. It doesn't have much power but
drives speakers very well and sounds like a much more expensive amp. For a
while, I even bi-amped my system with the Croft driving the bass and the Leak
driving the mid/treble.
On the CD front, I went for the Assemblage DAC-3 and, later, the D2D-1 upsampler, both fine pieces of digital equipment. Together with an Audio Research CDT-1 bought used from Heatherdale Audio, my CD replay performance was significantly raised - but not into the realms of extreme high end I had heard elsewhere. For that, I had to wait for the SCD-1. All of these diversions were instructive but ultimately led to cul-de-sacs.
A New Path
Let me say right now that I only entered this phase of my system migration by spending a lot more money than I had ever had to spend before.
I started by ditching the valve gear forever with the purchase first of a Chord SPM-1200C power amp and then a Pass Labs X2 preamp. The whole sound of the system was pulled up in terms of detail, dynamic kick and soundstaging.
I knew that my father's speakers would have to be replaced (but kept in standby for a second system), so I went to Sounds of Music and listened to a couple of Lumleys (nice treble, shame about the complete lack of bass), a couple of Wilson Benesches (cold, hard, lifeless), a Zingali horn loaded speaker (wonderful dynamics but nasal and very two-channel) and B&W 802s (very good all-rounders). Nothing compared, though, with the JM Lab Mezzo Utopia which were devastatingly clean, transparent, detailed and full of the soul of music. I had to have them.
Soon after, I was offered the first Pass Labs X1 preamp in the UK on home loan. I thought the X2 was a good preamp, but the X1 blew it away in terms of detail, dynamics, neutrality and noise floor. There was no way that Sounds of Music were getting it back.
Finally, no amount of transport and DAC jiggery-pokery were going to match what I heard in the sound of the Sony SCD-1 SACD player. I had the SCD-1 fully modified by Audiocom UK and its CD and SACD replay capability were significantly raised, plus the unit itself is a joy to behold. This, plus more esoteric interconnects and power cables from Kimber brings us close to the current system described in the main section. Saying that, almost every component is changed from that described above, but rather than swing towards a new sound, each was just a refinement of what went on before.