Florian
10-29-2005, 03:45 PM
Well i start :-)
I was about 16 years old living in Houston Texas. On a lazy dog dangling afternoon i went to my best friends house, Kinman Chan (god thank the 16 year old drivers license and curse the 21 year old drinking limit) to play some CS. So i got there and we were bored as hell. So we decided to watch a movie, and i think we watched Speed 2 on a kick ass surround sound setup. A Sony STDR receiver with a Toshiba DVD player and BOSE 501's in the front a BOSE center channel and some Optimus speakers as surround.
I was floored, all that bass and kick ass sound. Man i wanted something just like that! So i went home and i had 5 Alarm clock radios and i placed them all around the room and tuned them to the same station. Wasnt quite the BOSE sound, but what the hell. So when X-Mass came along i begged my father to death that i want a system like that. A few days later we were for some reason in Wallmart and i saw a big boom box. 5000 WATTS of power with kick ass blinking lights with MEGAWOOFERS and i almost cried...well as a matter of fact i did cry because i didnt get it. I dont know why the heck i cried, but oh what the hell i have to admit it :p thats how the story goes. My father said that he will not spend money on that **** and i was quite pissed and expected that id get some other cheap crap. We did go to Circuit City and there i saw stuff like the Sony STDR and Infinity and Kenwood and all that other stuff i never heard off. We went into a demo room and my eyes sparkled like a x-mass tree when i saw the stuff they had. My father made me pickup a Sony STDR and said
Dad = Do you feel that?
Flo = What?
Dad = Go over here and lift the Onkyo!
Flo = Man that thing is heavy!
Dad = Exactly, thats because it has good parts!
Flo = What parts?
Dad = The power supply!
Flo = Cool...
Well it went on and he explained to me that these things have to feed 5 channels from one power supply and one amp and that the good ones eventough rated lower had this for all channels total. Aha, if the Sony has 500 Watts of peak power for all 5 channels means that it will do something like 100 watts per channel peak. And the Onkyo only has 120 watts but for each channel....cool so its actually more and since it has more reserves it can handle the peaks more. I was starting to learn more about. So i got a Onkyo TX-DS555 receiver with some Infinity RS3 bookshelfs.
I had to wait a few days until x-mas was here and i could actually use it. But man it was awsome when i heard it. So clean and defineded. Solid knobs and a good build quality. But this was not to be the end, i wanted more. A family friend was over from germany and he said he had speakers that were open from the front and back and put sound out without boxes. I never got what he meant until years later! He explained that there was a thing called Stereo image, and i placed the speakers in a triangle and that was my first time ever i got hooked on it. I had a STAGE....a real stage and sound coming from the middle of the speakers. It never let me go and i searched the internet and actually stumbled across www.audioreview.com (http://www.audioreview.com) where there was a add for Magnepan and really flat speakers. Of course 550 bucks was a ****load of money back then and still is today but those flat speakers were very interesting, but like everyone else i bought into boxes. But the High End bug was soon to bite me!
I brought my manual of the Onkyo TX-DS555 to school and read it, i dont know what i was looking for. But my math teacher also had a manual on his desk from a Onkyo TX-SV919 THX....the biggest baddest and most kick ass receiver on that day. Well i talked to him and bugged him like all hell. So i actually got invited and when he opended the doors i was greated by a big tasty rack [hifi you perf ;-) ] of Marantz THX Monos, DVD players, dolby digital and DTS decoders, laserdisc players, steward projection screen and a full blown THX speaker system. The Onkyo THX-Sys1.....wholy crap my jaw dropped the floor. I never saw something like this and when i felt the power of two THX subs along with a Velodyne HGS10 my life was forever changed. He had a NEC SW300 subwoofer which i could have if i mow his lawn the summer.I did mow the lawm in 104 degrees outside with his rotweiler in the backyard to get that subwoofer. ( it died later because i played it too loud) And god knows i cut more yards and saved enough money to buy a Onkyo TX-DC340 disc changer.
The setup was growing and i was soon to have some luck, there was a ebay auction for the big Onkyo THX System 2 Front speakers. THX Ultra certified and man those things rocked. We bid 160 bucks on it and won the auction too. So know i had some THX speakers and set them up in the room and played with the stereo image and sound etc... I couldnt legally work since i only had a VISA but somehow i managed to get a Denon DVD1500 DVD player since the store closed down. ...Oh wait i remember how i got it. Our friend owned a pair of Genesis 350SE with a Wadia CD player and he gave me a present which was a CD from Massive Attack. I played that on the Infinitys but couldnt hear anything at all, so cranked the volume up on to meet my 6 1/2 bass driver wiggle like crazy and he eventually died. The frequency was so low that it couldnt reproduce it audibly and i cranked it and killed it. Well i had a friend which was basically a moron, he bought the Denon for me and i gave him my broken Infinitys. This guy was so dumb, he later bought the same speaker again to repair my broken ones...oh well i guess some people are just too dumb :(
I think i sold my broken NEC subwoofer to a idiot at the pawn shop and my dad paid the rest for a Velodnye CT100 subwoofer, which kicked ass for the money.
Anyways, times were hard and god knows after my second stepmom and constant hatred in my family i moved back to germany. My childhood sucked out the ass in terms of family. But thats another story! I went back to germany with my stuff and got spoiled by my mom. She bought me a equipment rack, and a center channel and some surrounds. And my HT was finally completed. Everything sounded great, but i wanted more. More finess, more bass, a better soundtage and wanted to reach the high ends of audio heaven. I got a job in a supermarket and put food in shelves for a long time for 600 bucks a month and went through these fine babys here. The Onkyo TX-DS555 changed into the 919 and then into a 838 which then turned into a Harman Kardon AVR7000 which then got replaced by the Marantz SR8200 and then later moved to the Onkyo Integra TX-DS989! I sold my entire setup and bought the Onkyo THX System 1 used on ebay which starts of as my first Higher End setup.
On a lazy as hell visit to my grandmother (she is nice, but its damn boring) i visited a audio shop in Kassel which changed my audio life altogether another time. I enetered the showroom and listend to some Quadral Vulcan Titans and the Hotel California soundtrack. It sounded really good and killed my setup at home, but i saw some very flat speakers in a closet. They looked very much like what i had seen on audioreview.com a few years back. I asked them to hook it up and they did, to some Denon electronics and from that moment on i never looked at a box speaker again. The music flows, it flys around the room and sooo many details just absolutly wonderfull music. Needless to say i called my mom and asked for 1200 bucks...LOL she didnt go for it. But i promised that i will sell my HT setup for this and god knows what else i promised. Anyways, i got my Magnepan .5's and worked my butt off to pay them off.
I used the second speaker output on my Onkyo TX-DS939 to power the Maggies but was not satisfied. I looked for more toys and stumbled upon a NAD 320BEE which i bought..but it clipped horribly and had no balls at all. A coworked is into PA stuff and he sold me a Bell Audiolabs power amp (huge with fan) and a Kenwood Basic C1 preamp which also clipped horribly. I called around and found a Magnepanstudio which helped me a lot and i was in for a treat when i sold the PA stuff and got a Cambridge Audio C500 and P500 which drove them very nicely. At that time i had cables from Wireworld and a Marantz CD56 CD player which i traded for some computer work. The system sounded great, and i could have lived with this setup to the end of my day. No B&W, or Dynaudio or any other system was a option. I can always hear the color and the box resoance no matter how much the system was. I auditioned the Magnepan 1.6 with a Pathos Acoustics Classic one on my 19 birthday and was sure to get that setup someday. The Pathos was 2500$ and the Maggies where 2800$ so not exactly cheap. But you better believe that the sound is soo beautiful, so majestic fast and musical. Stunning! My next upgrade was after i sold my Marantz CD56 and i saved more money from my work in the supermarket and my computer help was a Rega Planet 2000 MKII which is a really really good player for the money. I got this puppy and was very proud of it, and still am today. I have a fetish for exotic things, and also for extremely high powered computers. My system at the time was a Dual 3.2Ghz Intel XEON setup, completely watercooled with SATA raid setup in a 300$ Lian Li chassy. The owner of the Maggie studio, agreed to trade in my computer and i bought a Pathos used for 1200€ which came from me selling the Cambridge gear and more saved money from work. This is my first High end setup. The 1.6 Maggies, the Rega and a pathos classic one.....damn that sounded good!
But this was not to be the last! One year later on my 20th B-day i had sold the HT system saved enough money to buy a used Magnepan 3.6R/SE for 6000US here in germany. I paid 4500 bucks and paid the rest off in the following 9 month. 1 week after i got the speakers i went to america for a journey that never happended to anyone twice on this planet. Needless to say, i missed my maggies big time and sitting in the house all day was boring as ****. So i asked my parents if they wanted to buy my system and since the dollar is so weak i can get new stuff in the US. They agreed and i bought my Maggie 3.6's, a Krell KSA-150 (from NY), the Jolida JD3000b from a person in Switzerland (who is my friend know and owns Apogees too, reviewer). And a Audio Analouge Paganini CDP. The system was kick ass and its a shame that those wooden houses in the US have horribly acoustics and those huge ass windows didnt help either. I couldnt fix the sound. It was very good but not like it can be, and i wanted more. So i sold the speakers and bought some VMPS RM30 speakers which in my opinion are very good but not as good as the speaker i sold. Oh well, life and learn i guess.
I moved back to germany and brought my toys with me. My parents got the VMPS RM30 which is more room friendly and a lot smaller. I got my 3.6SE Maggies back and well didnt like the match with the Krell at all. But here goes the clue, when i picked up my Krell KSA-150 in NY i heard a Apogee Duetta that blew me away. Incredibly fast, enourmas bass..details over details and oh my god that system was so damn good. So i went into the Apogee forum and found a Apogee Scintilla for sale fro aprox 7000US which i then traded my Maggie in for. The person builds his own tube amps and well a 1ohm speaker aint gonna work with a normal tube amp. So we traded and i got the scintilla. This was a ear opener and is still to this day the second best speaker i have heard in my life. Nothing i know exept the DIVA touches it. Some like the Scintilla over the DIVA and vice versa, but these are the two best speakers i have heard in my life. Nr 3 and 4 are Duettas and Calipers. Well so my setup was almost complete. I did open a hifi shop and sell VMPS speakers and actually bought a TACT RCS 2.0AA digital room correction device to get the VMPS to sound good in my room. I bought it used form the USA and it was quite interesting indeed. I saw the inroom frequency response and played with it a bit. I then traded the Jolida JD3000b, the Tact RCS2.0 in for a Krell KRC-2 preamp and the Audio Analouge Paganini for the Audiolab CD8000 and DAC 8000. That system is still one of the absolute finest systems i have ever heard and many of my audiophile friends.
My Scintilla did have a problem with the bass ribbon tough and needed a repair. (transport) and the repair was too expensive. There was a Apogee DIVA Reference for sale here in germany completely restored for aprox 9200US and i wanted to hear it. I could never have afforded it but i listened to it anyways. My friend now, has all the top dogs from Audio Research, Krell, Conrad Johnson, Jadis and Goldmund and a Magnepan MG20, a Apogee DIVA and a Duetta. He listened to the Scintillas and liked him more, so he offered a trade. 1000 bucks plus the Scintilla for the DIVA. Well i said yes and here we go. !!! The finest speaker in my opinion right up their with the Fullrange, Grand, Alon Grand Exotica, Megaline, Scintilla, 20.1R, Dunlavy SC-V, Wilson X2 and son on. I changed equipment here and there and now ended up with Wadia as a DAC, VRDS T1 as a Transport, Sphinx amps and preamps along with a complete lineup of Ampzilla 2000 Mono and stereo blocks. Needless to say this is almost at the top of the food chain and only better by very few systems on this earth component wise. But speaker wise, this is pretty much it...right up their with the legends. I am not a spoiled rich bastard, i got lucky and worked my ass off. I wrote this to firstly entertain and tell more about myself......replies welcome :D
I was about 16 years old living in Houston Texas. On a lazy dog dangling afternoon i went to my best friends house, Kinman Chan (god thank the 16 year old drivers license and curse the 21 year old drinking limit) to play some CS. So i got there and we were bored as hell. So we decided to watch a movie, and i think we watched Speed 2 on a kick ass surround sound setup. A Sony STDR receiver with a Toshiba DVD player and BOSE 501's in the front a BOSE center channel and some Optimus speakers as surround.
I was floored, all that bass and kick ass sound. Man i wanted something just like that! So i went home and i had 5 Alarm clock radios and i placed them all around the room and tuned them to the same station. Wasnt quite the BOSE sound, but what the hell. So when X-Mass came along i begged my father to death that i want a system like that. A few days later we were for some reason in Wallmart and i saw a big boom box. 5000 WATTS of power with kick ass blinking lights with MEGAWOOFERS and i almost cried...well as a matter of fact i did cry because i didnt get it. I dont know why the heck i cried, but oh what the hell i have to admit it :p thats how the story goes. My father said that he will not spend money on that **** and i was quite pissed and expected that id get some other cheap crap. We did go to Circuit City and there i saw stuff like the Sony STDR and Infinity and Kenwood and all that other stuff i never heard off. We went into a demo room and my eyes sparkled like a x-mass tree when i saw the stuff they had. My father made me pickup a Sony STDR and said
Dad = Do you feel that?
Flo = What?
Dad = Go over here and lift the Onkyo!
Flo = Man that thing is heavy!
Dad = Exactly, thats because it has good parts!
Flo = What parts?
Dad = The power supply!
Flo = Cool...
Well it went on and he explained to me that these things have to feed 5 channels from one power supply and one amp and that the good ones eventough rated lower had this for all channels total. Aha, if the Sony has 500 Watts of peak power for all 5 channels means that it will do something like 100 watts per channel peak. And the Onkyo only has 120 watts but for each channel....cool so its actually more and since it has more reserves it can handle the peaks more. I was starting to learn more about. So i got a Onkyo TX-DS555 receiver with some Infinity RS3 bookshelfs.
I had to wait a few days until x-mas was here and i could actually use it. But man it was awsome when i heard it. So clean and defineded. Solid knobs and a good build quality. But this was not to be the end, i wanted more. A family friend was over from germany and he said he had speakers that were open from the front and back and put sound out without boxes. I never got what he meant until years later! He explained that there was a thing called Stereo image, and i placed the speakers in a triangle and that was my first time ever i got hooked on it. I had a STAGE....a real stage and sound coming from the middle of the speakers. It never let me go and i searched the internet and actually stumbled across www.audioreview.com (http://www.audioreview.com) where there was a add for Magnepan and really flat speakers. Of course 550 bucks was a ****load of money back then and still is today but those flat speakers were very interesting, but like everyone else i bought into boxes. But the High End bug was soon to bite me!
I brought my manual of the Onkyo TX-DS555 to school and read it, i dont know what i was looking for. But my math teacher also had a manual on his desk from a Onkyo TX-SV919 THX....the biggest baddest and most kick ass receiver on that day. Well i talked to him and bugged him like all hell. So i actually got invited and when he opended the doors i was greated by a big tasty rack [hifi you perf ;-) ] of Marantz THX Monos, DVD players, dolby digital and DTS decoders, laserdisc players, steward projection screen and a full blown THX speaker system. The Onkyo THX-Sys1.....wholy crap my jaw dropped the floor. I never saw something like this and when i felt the power of two THX subs along with a Velodyne HGS10 my life was forever changed. He had a NEC SW300 subwoofer which i could have if i mow his lawn the summer.I did mow the lawm in 104 degrees outside with his rotweiler in the backyard to get that subwoofer. ( it died later because i played it too loud) And god knows i cut more yards and saved enough money to buy a Onkyo TX-DC340 disc changer.
The setup was growing and i was soon to have some luck, there was a ebay auction for the big Onkyo THX System 2 Front speakers. THX Ultra certified and man those things rocked. We bid 160 bucks on it and won the auction too. So know i had some THX speakers and set them up in the room and played with the stereo image and sound etc... I couldnt legally work since i only had a VISA but somehow i managed to get a Denon DVD1500 DVD player since the store closed down. ...Oh wait i remember how i got it. Our friend owned a pair of Genesis 350SE with a Wadia CD player and he gave me a present which was a CD from Massive Attack. I played that on the Infinitys but couldnt hear anything at all, so cranked the volume up on to meet my 6 1/2 bass driver wiggle like crazy and he eventually died. The frequency was so low that it couldnt reproduce it audibly and i cranked it and killed it. Well i had a friend which was basically a moron, he bought the Denon for me and i gave him my broken Infinitys. This guy was so dumb, he later bought the same speaker again to repair my broken ones...oh well i guess some people are just too dumb :(
I think i sold my broken NEC subwoofer to a idiot at the pawn shop and my dad paid the rest for a Velodnye CT100 subwoofer, which kicked ass for the money.
Anyways, times were hard and god knows after my second stepmom and constant hatred in my family i moved back to germany. My childhood sucked out the ass in terms of family. But thats another story! I went back to germany with my stuff and got spoiled by my mom. She bought me a equipment rack, and a center channel and some surrounds. And my HT was finally completed. Everything sounded great, but i wanted more. More finess, more bass, a better soundtage and wanted to reach the high ends of audio heaven. I got a job in a supermarket and put food in shelves for a long time for 600 bucks a month and went through these fine babys here. The Onkyo TX-DS555 changed into the 919 and then into a 838 which then turned into a Harman Kardon AVR7000 which then got replaced by the Marantz SR8200 and then later moved to the Onkyo Integra TX-DS989! I sold my entire setup and bought the Onkyo THX System 1 used on ebay which starts of as my first Higher End setup.
On a lazy as hell visit to my grandmother (she is nice, but its damn boring) i visited a audio shop in Kassel which changed my audio life altogether another time. I enetered the showroom and listend to some Quadral Vulcan Titans and the Hotel California soundtrack. It sounded really good and killed my setup at home, but i saw some very flat speakers in a closet. They looked very much like what i had seen on audioreview.com a few years back. I asked them to hook it up and they did, to some Denon electronics and from that moment on i never looked at a box speaker again. The music flows, it flys around the room and sooo many details just absolutly wonderfull music. Needless to say i called my mom and asked for 1200 bucks...LOL she didnt go for it. But i promised that i will sell my HT setup for this and god knows what else i promised. Anyways, i got my Magnepan .5's and worked my butt off to pay them off.
I used the second speaker output on my Onkyo TX-DS939 to power the Maggies but was not satisfied. I looked for more toys and stumbled upon a NAD 320BEE which i bought..but it clipped horribly and had no balls at all. A coworked is into PA stuff and he sold me a Bell Audiolabs power amp (huge with fan) and a Kenwood Basic C1 preamp which also clipped horribly. I called around and found a Magnepanstudio which helped me a lot and i was in for a treat when i sold the PA stuff and got a Cambridge Audio C500 and P500 which drove them very nicely. At that time i had cables from Wireworld and a Marantz CD56 CD player which i traded for some computer work. The system sounded great, and i could have lived with this setup to the end of my day. No B&W, or Dynaudio or any other system was a option. I can always hear the color and the box resoance no matter how much the system was. I auditioned the Magnepan 1.6 with a Pathos Acoustics Classic one on my 19 birthday and was sure to get that setup someday. The Pathos was 2500$ and the Maggies where 2800$ so not exactly cheap. But you better believe that the sound is soo beautiful, so majestic fast and musical. Stunning! My next upgrade was after i sold my Marantz CD56 and i saved more money from my work in the supermarket and my computer help was a Rega Planet 2000 MKII which is a really really good player for the money. I got this puppy and was very proud of it, and still am today. I have a fetish for exotic things, and also for extremely high powered computers. My system at the time was a Dual 3.2Ghz Intel XEON setup, completely watercooled with SATA raid setup in a 300$ Lian Li chassy. The owner of the Maggie studio, agreed to trade in my computer and i bought a Pathos used for 1200€ which came from me selling the Cambridge gear and more saved money from work. This is my first High end setup. The 1.6 Maggies, the Rega and a pathos classic one.....damn that sounded good!
But this was not to be the last! One year later on my 20th B-day i had sold the HT system saved enough money to buy a used Magnepan 3.6R/SE for 6000US here in germany. I paid 4500 bucks and paid the rest off in the following 9 month. 1 week after i got the speakers i went to america for a journey that never happended to anyone twice on this planet. Needless to say, i missed my maggies big time and sitting in the house all day was boring as ****. So i asked my parents if they wanted to buy my system and since the dollar is so weak i can get new stuff in the US. They agreed and i bought my Maggie 3.6's, a Krell KSA-150 (from NY), the Jolida JD3000b from a person in Switzerland (who is my friend know and owns Apogees too, reviewer). And a Audio Analouge Paganini CDP. The system was kick ass and its a shame that those wooden houses in the US have horribly acoustics and those huge ass windows didnt help either. I couldnt fix the sound. It was very good but not like it can be, and i wanted more. So i sold the speakers and bought some VMPS RM30 speakers which in my opinion are very good but not as good as the speaker i sold. Oh well, life and learn i guess.
I moved back to germany and brought my toys with me. My parents got the VMPS RM30 which is more room friendly and a lot smaller. I got my 3.6SE Maggies back and well didnt like the match with the Krell at all. But here goes the clue, when i picked up my Krell KSA-150 in NY i heard a Apogee Duetta that blew me away. Incredibly fast, enourmas bass..details over details and oh my god that system was so damn good. So i went into the Apogee forum and found a Apogee Scintilla for sale fro aprox 7000US which i then traded my Maggie in for. The person builds his own tube amps and well a 1ohm speaker aint gonna work with a normal tube amp. So we traded and i got the scintilla. This was a ear opener and is still to this day the second best speaker i have heard in my life. Nothing i know exept the DIVA touches it. Some like the Scintilla over the DIVA and vice versa, but these are the two best speakers i have heard in my life. Nr 3 and 4 are Duettas and Calipers. Well so my setup was almost complete. I did open a hifi shop and sell VMPS speakers and actually bought a TACT RCS 2.0AA digital room correction device to get the VMPS to sound good in my room. I bought it used form the USA and it was quite interesting indeed. I saw the inroom frequency response and played with it a bit. I then traded the Jolida JD3000b, the Tact RCS2.0 in for a Krell KRC-2 preamp and the Audio Analouge Paganini for the Audiolab CD8000 and DAC 8000. That system is still one of the absolute finest systems i have ever heard and many of my audiophile friends.
My Scintilla did have a problem with the bass ribbon tough and needed a repair. (transport) and the repair was too expensive. There was a Apogee DIVA Reference for sale here in germany completely restored for aprox 9200US and i wanted to hear it. I could never have afforded it but i listened to it anyways. My friend now, has all the top dogs from Audio Research, Krell, Conrad Johnson, Jadis and Goldmund and a Magnepan MG20, a Apogee DIVA and a Duetta. He listened to the Scintillas and liked him more, so he offered a trade. 1000 bucks plus the Scintilla for the DIVA. Well i said yes and here we go. !!! The finest speaker in my opinion right up their with the Fullrange, Grand, Alon Grand Exotica, Megaline, Scintilla, 20.1R, Dunlavy SC-V, Wilson X2 and son on. I changed equipment here and there and now ended up with Wadia as a DAC, VRDS T1 as a Transport, Sphinx amps and preamps along with a complete lineup of Ampzilla 2000 Mono and stereo blocks. Needless to say this is almost at the top of the food chain and only better by very few systems on this earth component wise. But speaker wise, this is pretty much it...right up their with the legends. I am not a spoiled rich bastard, i got lucky and worked my ass off. I wrote this to firstly entertain and tell more about myself......replies welcome :D