The good the bad and the ugly

only bit of kit i ever loved was acoustic energy ae109 speakers..and vdh cs122 speaker cable..2 real awesome bits of kit..

I was also smug until my amp went on the blink. Think I had about 5 weeks of awesome sound. Just enough to start getting used to it. I had still not got past the point of being amazed at everything I played on it but I still had it long enough so that going back down was hard.

In fact stuff going bad on me has forced me backwards many times. I posted the other day about my Systemdeck/Nagaoka/Denon system. Amp went tits up there anorl. Bought a brand new mark 2 version thinking with it being mark 2 it would be even better. But no.

Knowing F#ck all about hi-fi didn't help. I liked what the mark one Denon did but I had no idea why it did it and other amps didn't. That doesn't help when trying to select a new amp that will have the same qualities. To be honest even twenty odd years on and having read everything I can find about hi-fi, and having owned about a zillion amps I'm still none the wiser about exactly what it was about that Denon.


You know when you soend years trying to find the answer to a question, do all the research, try almost everything, and then you find out that the reality is that no-one really knows. Or if they do, they ain't telling. 

As Alexi Sayle used to say, 'It's crap this really, isn't it?'

But I don't think it is unusual. I think if you know exactly what you want and you have the money to just go and buy it without pissing about trying to get it second hand, or trying to find cheaper equivalents, then its easy. Not many of us could do that though. We have to buy second hand to get the best at a price we can afford. That slows things down a lot. Like decades in some cases. Certainly in mine anyway.

I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad sound using Exposure amps.

I have liked all the kit i have had for a period of time but moved on in the end. Still got my first serious cdp that i bought new in 1997 and it is still going strong even though i have modded the nuts off it. Still got all my old gear actually - i never sell stuff.

My current cdp, amps and speakers are goona be it for me. Well happy with them. Everything needs building properly but the parts are all there. Just the vinyl spinner to play with and possibly some Pi action.

My problem has always been letting go of some great gear in the pursuit of the holy grail of sound, with that realisation hitting me only when that gear was boxed up and sent off to it's new owner. By heck, if I was an olympic runner I would have chased many a courier's van down the road to get it back

NVA AP10P + Rega Planet MK1 + Royd Sapphire. Fucking hell, that system tortured my ears. Then one week later I swapped in some Neat Petite III. So much better and enjoyable. Could happily live with that system in a small room.

For a very short while I used Royd Minstrel with NVA AP10P and Naim CD5si. Bit flawed sounding but not bad.

Looks like I'm a bit of an AP10 fan!

S.

Spendor D7s. They replaced an ancient pair of Mordaunt-Short MS20s that conked out and I couldn't be arsed repairing. Upstairs are a pair of the tiny Harbeths. I tried them with the Devialet, but they didn't gel. 

Mine were just under a grand when I bought them, but I've never regretted the purchase.