DRC's Audiophile Systems 02Feb21

I am a mid-range audiophile. I don't like to pay a ton - but I really like to have my music sound better and more realistic than anyone I know personally. I've been this way since college. Come show me; invite me. I depend on digital sources and long ago sold (somewhat ignorantly) my vinyl and turntables and I don't want to lose the incredible convenience that digital sources offer. Some appreciate what I have done, very few would even go as far as I have. I've assembled, sometimes even designed and built, five strong stereo, 2.1 or 5.1 audio systems. Here they are from sweetest to oldest, with as many "design" choices as I think are relevant.

Nest Theater - The sweetest, most recent, and most customized system is the Nest Theater, or NestT. This is a high efficiency 2.1 audio system featuring custom designed and built back loaded horns somewhat derived from the D37 cabinet design and employing  the fine Japanese Fostex 168es 6.5" full range drivers. The high efficiency full range horns are complimented by a musical 600 watt HSU ULS 15-Mk II subwoofer and a pair of high efficiency Russian Viawave SRT-7 ribbon super tweeters to hit the lowest lows and the highest highs. I'm driving the DRC horns with a custom hand-built 8 watt 300B single-ended-triode integrated amp (all tubes - power/rectifier/pre-amp); I'm delivering stereo line level to the sub and driving the super-tweeters from a "European" NAD D3045 hybrid amp. Behind that is a sweet liquid sounding Chinese Denafrips Pontus discrete ladder (R2R) D/A connected via AES. After sourcing bit-perfect from a PC modded for timing and media via a Topping 10S,  I have a mini-DSP DDRC 22D signal processor which uses DIRAC measurement and correction to yield a keen and balanced stream to the DAC. I source mostly FLAC or DSD files from a Win 10 PC running JRiver Media Center - this is a great library and bit-perfect source but alternatively I can use YouTube on the Roku as a source - again corrected via DIRAC. I've dampened the room reflections acoustically with rugs and augmented the audio with a keen 77" Sony XBR-A9G monitor - excellent virtual concerts this past year. This system is the best I've done and is my reference... though it's location directly below our master bedroom sometimes keeps Kala awake.

Blodgett Schiit - The 2nd best system in the quiver is my headphone gear in Colo Spgs. This setup, most often featuring closed headphones, does not suffer the incursions into folks' personal space that the NestT does. My preferred drivers are the awesome Mr Speakers EtherC Flow planar magnetic over ear headphones with balanced cabling. Alternatively, when dynamic driver sounds are warranted, I am stocked with Sennheiser 600HD dynamic open back headphones for this system, also with balanced cabling to the amp. Driving the cans is a hybrid Schiit Mjolinar 2 tube amp. I've evaluated many driver tubes and my favorites are all early 1960s: the Amperex "Holland D Getter" E88CC (fun) and the Telefunken E88CC (clean). The good news is that I can blow my mind either way - Apple would adjust my cum dB consumed down to protect me I assume. Again I selected a multi-bit design (vs delta-sigma) DAC... to me they sound more organic (at least when the resistance ladder is very accurate). Matching the amp in the Schitt line is the Gungnir MB version. Notable is that I've balanced the system all the way from digital stereo sources to my ears - meaning each channel is driven directly from source to ears via separate  circuits (except for any initial signal processing). We come to the cans from 4 wire XLR connectors and cabling and prior through the amp, via XLR interconnects between amp & DAC, and then back from that, fiber or USB digital stereo sources inbound to the DAC from the mac or PC. The source, mostly flac, material is again from JRiver MC25 as bit-perfect streams. For my headphone system corrections for abnormalities (non-flat frequency response curves) are applied by Sonarworks directly in the mac/PC via digital signal processing. I used this because I can't do the measurements on headphones myself - I send my headphones to Lithuania for measurement and they send me correction curves! This is definitely my reference headset and Kala sleeps soundly.

Mobile Nirvana - I futzed with identifying portable audiophile quality for many years as a frequent business flyer. There are much more expensive systems than mine. There are much more esoteric earbuds than mine; I've owned & sold some. There are wireless setups even I use, but never to achieve desired, or say required, frequency range and dynamics - they are for convenience - biking or skiing or auto. You can't get them anymore but my earbud transducers are Japanese Sony ex1000 dynamic buds - ok, call 'em IEMs if you want. Yeah, as mentioned, I've owned Shure and other tech, including multiple drivers per ear but one keen 16mm driver driven balanced from a good amp is the best for listening to music on the go IMO. It took a while to score some PureSound balanced cabling for the Sonys, but I did, and my player has a balanced out port via a 2.5mm 4 pole jack. I need a great integrated player for mobile hifi, not "just" an iPhone ~ though I sure have tried that source and it is excellent when backed by a keen amp. I prefer a high def, high rez player which pumps out WAV, PCM, FLAC, DSD and really anything I chose, and which organizes material in a keen library as quickly as I load my tracks; I have 2 x.5TB cards onboard, so plenty. It's nice they give me a good UI & nav and some appropriate artist images as I use it. I chose the universally cool Onkyo DP-X1 Android-based hifi player with Onkyo music player app. This integrated 150mw <1%THD watt headamp, 24-bit/192KHz DAC, and music player is awesome. I don't use any measurements or DSP on the IEMs beyond the "tone controls.

Nest Woo7y - My 2nd tube headphone setup purchased was based on 2nd gen Audeze open planar magnetics and a Woo Audio Fireflies hybrid tube amp/dac. So good... I found a 2nd home for this headphone setup in Summit Co when my main rig went to Schiit. Sure I've sold a number of uber-sounding can systems prior but I chose to move and upgrade this one... initially I used a brick transformer but replaced it with a matching tube power amp; it's smoother now. I also sent the main unit to Woo Audio and updated the DAC and USB to a better circuit. So my Audeze LCD-2 open planar magnetic headphones are wired to the amps that support balanced cables using a set from Amplifier Surgery - the WA7 is unbalanced only though so I most often used the stock cable. I do have a keen dynamic alternative as well in Summit in the AKG 702s. Source material is from JRiver MC25 from local or streamed remote FLAC files, or YouTube from the mac.

Blodgett Theater - Finally, in the audiophile realm (as I do have other systems in other rooms, but they can't compare sonically), we enjoy the Paradigm Reference setup when listening & watching in Colo Spgs. The entire 5.1 setup employs Paradigm Reference speakers, including a bass reflex center channel with 3 drivers, LFE via a 18" sub with its own 1200 watt amp, 2 bass reflex mains with 4 drivers each (same driver compliment as center) and 2 surrounds with 2 drivers each (I didn't get the sides in the picture below). The system throws a great soundfield, perhaps a smidge light on the highest end, and stellar low frequency effects from movies. I'm driving the system from an awesome electronics kit from Integra Research (highest end Onkyo) with the spectacular RDA 7.1 (7x150w transistor power amp) and the clever RDC 7.1 pre-amp/controller. I bi-amped the main towers, using 4 rather than 2 channels of the amp - why waste some amps. Music and movies comes from a tiny Lenovo nettop running JRiver MC25, or Roku, or the BluRay player, an Ingegra BDS 50.3. The theater monitor is a 65" Pioneer plasma.

These are my HiFi systems. Wherever I go I can be surrounded with gr8 music or movies. Of course selection in tunes has something to do with enjoyment and appreciation of the gear - but that's part a matter of taste, and mine is impeccable, and part discern for the original production quality as well as the stored format & quality. I've tried most innovations as to format and processing and always come back to flac and dsf files and modest processing.