Back to my happy place, subtitled I finally got the wife to let me upgrade some stuff

quadzilla · October 2021

Been away for a good bit in large part because I'd gotten very dissatisfied with my 2 channel. It didn't sound bad, per se, but it just wasn't doing it for me. And seeing others upgrade, hearing great systems just generally put me off my rig to the point that I didn't even turn it on for a couple of years. I mean, when the factory stereo in your car is more engaging, well, that's where I listened to music. There and through a decent set of Westone IEMs plugged into the DAC on my PC.

Ah, but this too shall pass, as they say. I finally turned on the rig a few weeks ago, and the wife commented about how nice it sounded. And it did, but there still wasn't any real bottom end and giving it any volume always made it sound a bit strained and compressed. This was, I suspected, mainly due to running my heavily modified and upgraded 2.3 TLs on a set of boutique 50 watt monoblocks (so much for "50 tube watts are plenty for any speaker"). Well, a bit of extra money came a long, as it does from time to time, and I finally convinced her to give the OK on a new power amp, the cost of which would be mostly covered by selling off an extra Marshall Plexi I had laying around. Ended up with a Conrad Johnson Evolution 2000, a 250 wpc hybrid amp. Put that in the system and I was no longer sad. This, mainly because all the strained, compressed character was gone even at the highest sound pressures I listen at. And all the bottom end I always knew the 2.3s were capable of was there. Greater dynamics, increased air and separation, far more micro and macro detail, these things were simply icing on the cake at this point.

Next, she's listening and starts going on about how she wants to play her playlists through this system because it's sounding so good now. And you know your system is moving in the right direction when your wife remarks on how much a changed component improves the sound. Anyway, my pre was a Conrad Johnson PV2a. Basically 2 usable inputs plus a MM phono stage, and since I had an SACD and phono pre hooked up, no free inputs. So says I, we can do that, but I'll have to upgrade the pre to get some more inputs. And that's how the CJ ET3 SE made it into the mix. And yeah, the wife even spotted when I swapped out the PV2a for the ET3. One thing I gotta say, the woman does love good music reproduction almost as much as me. Just part of the reason I married her.

So now I'll be adding a streamer with Bluetooth for her and I have a Marantz SA14-S1 SACD on the way for me to replace my DV-79ai. The Marantz will do double duty as my digital front end and also the DAC for the streamer. I'm also on the waiting list for a new phono stage that'll get built sometime early-ish next year, which should be about the time I have this round of upgrades paid off.

But suffice it to say, whole house remodels are very dear, and so I get why she didn't want to let go of any cash over the last several years while we get the pile this remodel is going to cost together. I was largely of the same mind, which is why we never fought about it. But after I got to looking back through everything, I realized the system had been unchanged for nearly 10 years, and that's just too dang long, bordering on tragedy.