Advice needed building a system over time???


I'm new to AudiogoN, but happy to have found it. Long back, I got a taste for HiFi, but then had a very long hiatus. Always dreamt of the killer system, but other priorities reared their heads. About 7 years ago I bought some gear to drive the speakers in the ceiling throughout my house, without too much concern. Ended up with ROTEL separates which I even used to watch TV, again with the speakers that were in the cieling. Finally got a 5.1 home theater system which satisfies my needs using an integrated amp and MK speakers - I consider watching a movie a passive listening event and if it sounds pretty good I'm happy. It does.

So I had these ROTEL parts sitting around and decided to buy some speakers for them, to dedicate a room for active listening. At first the room was going to be a small space ~14 x 14, so I thought some stand mounted speakers would be best for that small space. I purchased some Usher BE718's that I thought sounded great. Apparently many reviewers have thought the same. My thoughts were to get a good sounding speaker at a reasonable price, then build up my components around them, finally getting something along the lines of Wilson Sophia 2s or Watt/Puppys.

Maybe not the best logic in system design. The room, however, changed. The acoustics in that room were not good, and the WAF (wife acceptance factor) limited anything I could do in terms of acoustic treatments, so I moved my audio room to a "bonus" room that is roughly 17 x 23. The Ushers still sound great the bigger room can handle more volume which seems to make the speakers even better.

Given I have a ROTEL pre- and power amp, with a ROTEL 5 CD changer, what would you all recommend as the first piece to invest in when moving to class-A or reference components.

Buy the way, long back I had an Audio Research tube pre-amp mated to a GAS "Son of Ampzilla" and I see ARC is alive and well (though recently acquired). Their gear seems to get tremendous reviews and I have a soft-spot for ARC. I plan to audition the Ref CD player and Pre-amp soon. I've also heard some great SS gear like Parasound HALO amp, T&A gear too. I listen to classical (my great great uncle was Antonin Dvorak) and a little bit of rock, Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Van Morrison, Norah Jones - broad range but no HipHop, metal, etc. I like musical sounds and sweet sounding vocals. I tend to dislike jazz when it gets too wierd.

So where would you spend your first upgrade $$ ???
bobvin

Showing 1 response by lapierre

Forget the components for 5 minutes and evaluate your listening room. Then consider:

Two or four dedicated 20 amp circuits using either (PS Auido Power Ports, Shunyata SR-Z1 or Oyaide R1s) AC outlets

Double check grounding and line noise from the main electrical panel and determine if you can add sub panel for the listening room

This was by far the smartest decision I've made. The cost was around $300 plus adding two 20 amp lines from my main panel. I did not add a sub panel.