Really Inexpensive Systems That Sounded Great?


I think there is a big difference between "cheap" and inexpensive. I have blown money on "cheap" cables and immediately regretted it when my ears started bleeding from the brightness in my digital components. I also don’t mean "bargains" like the time I scored $2000 speakers for $200 on Craigslist, that is basically luck.

I am talking about inexpensive (less than $1500) for a system that sounded really great to you.

I fell into a whole house audio system from DTS Play-Fi because I wanted to try and compare different brands. I picked up Play-Fi amps, preamps and active speakers made by Polk, Paradigm, Klipsch, Onkyo and DefTech all for less than $1000 a pop. For what it is, whole house audio/casual listening it sounds great.

What inexpensive great sounding systems have you tried?

 

kota1

For work, we spend one or two nights a week at another place outside of Dallas.  It’s an old frame farmhouse that we remodeled/rebuilt.  It’s mostly just to have a place to eat supper, relax and sleep, then leave for work at sunrise.  Rooms are smallish - 12 x 14 bedroom and 10 x 22 sun porch.  Systems are Luxman R114 receiver with AR 4x speakers ($700 total) and McIntosh Mac1700 receiver with BMR Philharmonitor speakers ($2300).  Both are excellent sounding, if limited, systems.  We stream Qobuz from a smartphone to either system.  Really, the more we play our smaller systems, the more we appreciate how much quality can be had for so little.

Best inexpensive combo I had was NAD326BEE driving Monitor Audio GR10’s - amazingly good sound.

Get a book on vacuum tube design and go for SET in the preamplifier and amplifier. They are easy to design and to build. You can do the same with open baffle speaker designs using full range speakers that require very little power. 2A3 or 45 triodes can be heated with AC that is center tapped for the cathode to ground through a dropping resistor and polypropylene capacitors. Use polypropylene capacitors in a vacuum tube rectified power supply with Hammond chokes and transformers. 

There are $10,000 tube amplifiers that use the inferior electrolytic capacitors in the power supply and what you build will probably sound better.

@drbarney1 

Get a book on vacuum tube design and go for SET in the preamplifier and amplifier

Can you post a link?