Setups
I wanted to share with you some of the particulars of my home setups -- to put a face so to speak on some of the things I talked about more abstractly on the System Overview page.
Your system may look very different, because it should be tailored around you and your preferences.
My home is a place filled with music and I'm now happy with the musicality of my audio setups, so I haven't made any major changes in awhile.
It's been a journey of sorts while I explored and experimented with various systems.
But at this point for me, it's about just enjoying the music -- that to me was always the end goal, versus constantly being in a cycle of updating and tweaking equipment. That all the equipment is there solely for the music, and not the other way around...
So if I had a recommendation, it would be to start by working with what you have, experiment some... listen to lots of stuff, get to know what you like. Enjoy your music. Take your time if you are so inclined (I took a number of years to build up my systems). It isn't necessarily about spending lots of money. You might be surprised how just a certain combination of lower cost equipment might sound really good together. Take that first step, if you haven't already done so, and start your journey...
Living Room Setup
Decware Torii MK2 tube amp (24 watts), Decware MG944 speakers, LARS DAC, Dell Zino HD 410 PC Foobar2000 server.
In the lower left of the photo, there is also a totally separate home theater system using a Yamaha AV RX-V667 receiver and Oppo DVD/SACD player. The Dell Zino small PC is connected thru the Yamaha via HDMI to the wall TV.
I can feed the Decware Torii amp audio from either the Foobar2000 server running on the Dell, a Njoe Tjoeb CD player, or a turntable assembled from kit/parts from DIY HiFi Supply.
The turntable output I have routed thru a Bel Canto Phono1 phono stage and also thru a small KingRex pre-amp before it goes into the Torii tube amp.
The audio rack - Samson V.3 - is solid maple and steel and is from MapleShade Audio.
On the lower right is also a dedicated Decware tube headphone amp. I use a line router selector box built by MapleTree Audio Design, to switch inputs & outputs.
Interconnects, power cables, speaker cables are from MAC (My audio cables), Decware, and AntiCables.
Decware MG944 speaker (a mid-tweeter-mid MTM speaker) on right. This is the original version of the speaker. The other small black floor speaker is an Acoustic Research speaker I use separately for home theater audio. I've been extremely happy with the hand crafted Decware MG944 speakers.
Turntable DIY HiFi Supply
Den Setup
Decware SE84CS tube amp (2 watts per channel), Eastern Electric MiniMax DAC, Dell Hybrid small PC running Foobar2000 and using a Mimo 7" touch screen as the PC monitor.
But other than checking the boot up, most of the time I don't use that PC touch screen, since I am using the PC exclusively as a Foobar2000 server, and remote control music playback using my Foobar2000 Copilot mobile app.
This is a near field listening setup, suiting the smaller room size and power of the amp. But the Decware SE84CS is a beautifully resolving amp.
The Hornshoppe Horns and bass augmentor.
MapleShade Samson v.2 Audio Rack
Vintage Dual turntable 701 routed into a Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 SE phono stage
KingRex Pre-amp -- additional gain stage, but also acts as a two way switch selecting either the phono or Foobar2000 audio output before it is fed into the Decware tube amp
Loft Setup
Carina EL34 tube amp... very fine sounding amp hand crafted by Eddie Vaughn, but sadly no longer made. Eddie, know that all your hard work and artistry as imbued in your amps are loved and appreciated to this day...
It took awhile for Eddie to build it -- about a year -- but I was never in any hurry. I've always been appreciative of the artists among us... I always saw Eddie as an artist and I know what a difficult time artists can go thru to remain true to their art. I have enjoyed this amp many years now, so way longer than its 'gestation' period...
I've always looked at audio that way... it's a blend of technical, and of course there are cost and business aspects, but I've always felt audio is closer to 'art' than engineering... All you have to do is hear something just so beautifully moving ... well it's spellbinding. And I say this even though I was trained as an engineer...
Know that a lot of these tube amps like Eddie's and all the Decware amps are hand crafted, hand soldered with point to point wiring...hand built component by component -- each and every one of them...
I'll stop editorializing, but I just wanted to convey that these hand crafted amps can sometimes take awhile to receive versus going to a general electronics store and picking something off the shelf that day... So you have to weigh what you are willing to wait for...
For speakers : The Hornshoppe Horns (a 2nd pair I have, this pair has the newer Fostex 126en drivers). I couple the Horns with a smaller open baffle subwoofer, consisting of a Hawthorne Audio 10" Augie driver driven by a Rythmik Audio plate amp. Sadly Hawthorne Audio is no longer in business.
I also use in this setup a small desktop FiiO E09K/ E17 DAC and headphone amp combo which I can also feed from a laptop via USB running Foobar2000.
Or sometimes I just feed the Fiio setup, connected to the Carina tube amp, with my Colorfly C3 portable music player, playing uncompressed WAV audio files.
The turntable is an Audio-Technica AT-LP-120 - about $300 on Amazon. I replaced the phono cartridge with a Shure M97xE. That turntable/ Shure cartridge combo sounds good and is fairly low cost at about $100.
Bedroom Setup
Decware Torii I tube amp (12 watts) on bottom right (only about 25 of these were made before Steve Deckert started making the Torii Mk2 model), Decware CSP tube pre-amp and headphone amp, Sony CD/SACD player Decware tube modified (Dec 685), DIY DAC from some Ebay parts put into a wood teabox, Macbook running Foobar2000 server in Windows bootcamp, Decware RL 1.5 Speakers (shown below).
The Decware RL 1.5 Speakers couple a point source tweeter with an omnidirectional driver projecting sound radially in 360 degrees -- these speakers do well with room reflections and so can be positioned flexibly to accommodate your room layout.
