Hi, Rrgordon. One evening 6 years ago a friend from peak audio, dropped in with a ugly little single-ended triode preamp, the N.E.W.p-3. He had brought it over as a lark, to try on my simaudio 4070. The speakers were newformresearh, sim pre, vandenhul lst and 2nd interconnects, monster sigma speaker wire and a Bruce Armstrong nopariel cd player...a kenwood 5040 with a complete analogue giutting and rebuilt..analogue was roxan zerxes. When he put the N.E.W. in the system the shock was unanimous.....you could reach out and touch, as he said when he left, "that was a religious experience" I now understood and admired the single-ended triode sound....but every cd sounded good....even so-so cds sounded no less than conpelling....however the vinyl playback was not as convincing....also when he changed tubes and sent it back again it had lost much of its magic......but that's another story.....for 3 glorious hours i was in love with an inanimate object.....however the Sonic frontiers SL-1 which I bought, returned some of that magic, especially on the bypass mode......happy listening, bluenose..how good was the new &sim combo? My nephew said he could count the rivets on the cymbals, he turned to me and laughed,"you'll have to buy it".....
Combinations that exceeded your expectations?
Putting the right equipment together is a real art--mixed with a good bit of dumb luck. Fortunately, experience sometimes does help get really stunning results by matching equipment from different manufacturers. I'd like to hear what equipment (like speaker/amp or interconnect/speaker cable or source/preamp) when paired together others found elevated their system to another level. Though entire systems are interesting, I'd prefer to narrow it to the juicyest equipment you've had the good fortune to pair up--and by all means name names.