Enjoyed the system walk through... some bizarrely salty comments in the chat; it's just a guy with a nice setup saying why he chose this and that. I bet 'Gimme All Your Lovin' sounds epic!
First things first. Congrats on the aesthetics of that room! It is off the charts beautiful and I really dig the vibe it portrays. Secondly, and as an authorized VPI dealer, what I am seeing there is a stock original VPI Prime with original stock feet. You keep referring to them as an "upgraded" feet but I assure you that's incorrect. Those are the original feet that all Primes came with from the factory. A recommendation is to upgrade the OG feet for the latest HW-40 feet developed for VPIs magnificent 22k HW-40 Direct Drive turntable. Believe me, you won't be sorry. They retail for $475 but I think VPI is still offering a trade-in deal to upgrade. The only place where Upscale Audio upgraded may have upgraded you was from the standard JMW-3D to the upgraded JMW-10 3DR tonearm wand which uses Nordost "Reference" internal wiring. But other than that, it is pretty much a standard OG Prime. And thirdly, you do not mention the REL sub in your overall system description? I suspected you might be using one when I spotted the big bulk of coiled cabling under your cabinet which took me aback since I knew that couldn't be a long power cord or your speaker wires since I see the Nordost flat ribbon speaker wire in the shot. Then you zoomed out into the wide again at the end and I spotted the REL. It is not one of the big ones either. Given your vintage Infinity's sport large 12" bass drivers as is, why did you feel the extra sub was necessary? Just curious. Are they bass shy without the REL in the room? Thanks in advance, Oz LTBS
@LetThereBeSound1 You could very well be right about the feet, yes, this is the JMW 3dr with Nordost wiring, I've had "better" turntables and the "hip" thorens and Garrard tables, and I love the prime for it's simplicity and adjustability on the fly. There was a section I edited out where I was talking about a Rega I borrowed for like a week and what a light weight unadjustable toy that can never really sound good, I didn't want to sound harsh. I talked about the REL in the video and showed it, Honestly it is turned off 95% of the time. The IRS are true full range and reach deep, sometimes it's fun to cross them at 30hz when listening to Autechre or Alva Noto. Nice chatting and have a great day! G
Nicely built system. A question: you explained that using stock power cords gives a more open airy sound to vocals etc. Have you discussed this with others? Is it a known thing? Not challenging you just interested because I’m currently trying my Naim system back with stock cables. Cheers
I firmly believe good power cords will for sure change the sound of your system, It's just a matter of whether the change is better or just different. A stock poer cord is like a flat line, that's all.
Beautiful system. I too have the Prime as my front end but everything else is nothing close to this 😊. I do use a Mc SS integrated to some Sabrinas. BTW Tool sounds spectacular. Greg
Nice tour. Completely agree with you about needing the space/power to recreate the scale of the original performance. I've heard some big systems at local dealers that just blew me away with orchestral music. My system does very well with most music, but it doesn't scale the way a mega system in a large space scales.
Hi, Melbourne Australia here. Thanks for going through your system, fantastic. I have learnt so much and made a number of very enjoyable purchases based on your insights into classical vinyl, and from your discogs comments as well, so its great to see your room and system, very much appreciated. I have an all-analog system in a room very similar to yours, concrete walls and floors with treatments, maybe a bit wider and deeper than yours, but an amazing listening space. I have been through so many preamps and phono amps; passive, tube, solid state, over the years it’s almost been divorce several times! I have been using the XLR version of the below for some time now and it’s a keeper. From your description it may be what you are looking for. I am not sure of its availability in the States, but it’s not badly priced for what it delivers. Hope this is useful and thanks again, Cheers, Martin viniusaudio.pl/
Never heard Kappa but all the Infinity I have heard from this period are fantastic! For the money... I sold a pair of cornwalls and bought these and had money to spare!
That Musical Fidelity really is a steel fist in a velvet glove! It can easily handle the drop to 2 ohm loads. Your room does sound a little live though. I really like your descriptions btw.
@Gez492 I love this amp and I got it for half price. I went to go listen to a PS audio BHK and didn't really like it and then the guy played me the musical fidelity through some KEF blades and I just knew it was going to sound good in this system. It is a bit live, which I like, I think what most people are hearing really is that the mic is several feet away from me and i'm sitting on the wood floor not the rug, whatev, you can't explain everything to everyone, haha.
Really amazing system. I appreciate your description of the sound qualities of the various gear. I could imagine with a large room like that when the big orchestral moments happen, with all that power on tap it must sound glorious !!
What a fun video! I so relate to your comments about how much the room and speaker placement affect sound. (my room is a sprung wood floor over a half basement, with plaster walls, built in 1930s, and it is sonically glorious - not sure I can ever move). It's interesting that you have gone SS for your amplification after clearly favoring tubes, but hardly surprising given the size of your room. I suspect I favor a more colored, "tubey" sound than you do. I actually started out my audiophile journey with lower powered single ended amps (Manley 300Bs), then feeling frustrated with lack of power and grip for big orchestral and rock tried out bi-amping, with a Gamut D200, but it never quite gelled. With the arrival of my fantastic Genesis 60 watt mono blocks (manufactured very briefly) I got the best of both worlds and have never felt I needed to change. I use Aural Symphonic cables that I adore, but again I suspect they would be too "colored" for you. But I am dying to hear your system. The Malcolm Arnold sounded amazing at the top of the video, BTW!!! (grrrr!!)
You know it is a fact that almost everyone likes a little distortion, something about it tickles our stereocilia in the right way and tubes add just enough of that. I mean I do have a tube phonostage and I love the sound, would even consider a tube preamp if I could find one with enough voltage out. These speakers are HUNGRY for power and are actually notorious amp killers! I read an interview with Harry Pearson and he said he had sigmas for a long time and blew up amps and also blew the ribbons out of the speakers all the time and would call Arnie and have him send over more. I got a real minty copy of metal box not long ago and was really trying to crank it and even w/ the 870 watts i could feel like if I didn't chill out Jah Wobbles bass was gonna kill something in the chain! The only downside is you really do have to play things at a certain volume for it all to come into focus, it doesn't sound great quiet at 2 A.M. For the M Arnold, sometimes you get a "grail" record like that and all the hype is true and it just captures you and you can really feel why it's such a special recording. I love it when that happens.
@musiconrecord6724 P.S. in my painting studio I do have a little cheap 50 watt tube amp going through old klipsch quartets and cables off of amazon. I stream qobuz straight out of my macbook and It actually sounds wonderful, don't tell anyone...
@sspe You know a great recording is always gonna sound great and a bad recording is always gonna sound bad regardless of the gear, I just think there are degrees of how great and how bad they can get, I have more clarity now and that's both good and bad in either direction.
So a $1000 cartridge didn't sound "good"? Well, that's proof positive of what a rip-off expensive equipment can be! That's disturbing! Somebody's got too much money. Spend more of it on your 'music vocabulary'. Your choice of words for describing musicality is pathetic. Seriously, work on it. Unsubscribed.
@zizendorf didn't sound good to "me" listening to the repertoire that I enjoy, doesn't mean it wouldn't sound amazing to someone else listening to what they enjoy. Trust me I have heard plenty of far more expensive gear that sounded awful to me, It's all to each their own, I'm just honestly sharing my journey!
@@FLOWERINGSPIKES Sounds to me like you change equipment as often as one would change their dirty underwear...can anyone define 'pretentious audiophile' ?
@@lonepalmislandDo you even know what having a hobby is? Name me any other hobby that it's once and done. Cars, nope. Photography, nope. Coin collectors, nope. Astronomy, nope. Guns, nope. Album collecting, nope. And of course I could go on ad infinitum. THAT'S WHAT A HOBBY IS, playing around with the equipment, the results, discovering new things. I get tired of idiots feeling they are smart as they display their ignorance.
Wow! 5000 dollars for a cartridge! You’re system that can fill a gymnasium with sound! Don’t listen to CDS or anything but vinyl! Don’t stream anything!! You’re the textbook example of a snooty audiophile!!!!
@davepounds8924 what a great compliment, thank you! I just live the life i wanna live and do and speak from the heart and let the chips fall where they may. Most days I consider it a great blessing to be alive and healthy and happy! My son is 3 and he loves to listen to the police and devo on the stereo and dance around, does that make him a snob too? :)
Don’t listen to the haters. Awesome video. Love the attention to detail/mid century decor you have going on as well. Maybe I’ll see you around one of the shops here in LA!
@petekutheis3822 I hope that's not all you got out of the whole video, that I'm speaking in a live room :) You know I do find it tacky to brag or name drop but I have recorded albums in some of the best studios in the world and you know what? They are all big open spaces with high ceilings and hard walls...anyhow, noted and I will do better next time!
I've watched some of your vids a while back and even left comments some months ago, always enjoy your take on certain recordings and have you to thank for discovering.. Counterpoint Records and Books. The one thing that I miss more than anything is being able to listen to great recordings with someone else who appreciates great classical music or even ZZ Top or Led Zeppelin or the Stones. I know you must find someone asking if they could come and listen to music with a complete stranger probably odd , but I assure you I'm a harmless 70 old ex-hippie (I'm also a painter and photographer) I live in Inglewood near LAX (it's much cooler here) The one thing I'm pretty sure I commented about previously is that my sister manages East West Studios, 6000 sunset Blvd. and I would love to be able to give you a tour of one what is probably the greatest recording studio in America. You could call and ask for my sister Candace if you wanted to reciprocate and possibly set up a time when we could get together to hear great music. Cheers, David R. Smith
@DavidSmith-tl1qh That is the achilles heel of being an audiophile is that you spend most of your listening time alone! It's not like the old days when we'd all sit on the couch and take bong hits and drink beer and blast tunes! Anyhow I have a lot to say but not in the comments so email me ofaire@gmail
@@FLOWERINGSPIKES Now that’s an interesting topic-listening alone. That’s typical. However most recently my 34 year old son was visiting, got in a mood and said “Pops, I want to listen to Tool on your good system!” He even sat in my listening chair and loved it. He remarked, “Wow! I’m hearing things I never heard before!”. He was reflecting on the detail and soundstage. That’s what he gets listening to streaming music in the background of his life.
Very nice insights... I went through similar process when setting up my system in my new place here in Valencia, CA. And I also liked a lot your decor, particularly the paintings. Looking forward to your reviews! Enrique
Well that's what a big room sounds like, sir! Trust me I've had all the bass traps and wall absorbers and thick carpets, does nothing but kill your sound. It's a Rode mic on top of a Nikon DSLR, I also despise zoom lenses and only shoot with fixed focal lengths of 35mm and 50mm so the camera has to go where it has to go! The next ones will be in the studio again where it's more damped, don't worry.
A room that sounds just fine on the spot - because your brain filters out a lot of the reverb - will sound very echoey through a mic. If you make a recording from your listening position it will sound nothing like the real thing.
I must admit to have become a big Monteux fan. I can't think of any of his recordings that I didn't find enjoyable. Always well-balanced with excellent pacing and, of course, great sound...
Excellent Video thank you. AhhhH that makes sense now! I kept passing on the mono Munch/Boston I would come across in the wild, nope holding out for the stereo version....
With regard to the Reiner, a recording engineer friend of mine once mentioned some of these lousy sounding albums were the result of having the polarity ass-backwards. Another example which comes to mind is the XTC record Skylarking. The original album sounds awful, but the CD is great. If I'm not mistaken, they got around to remastering the album like 25 years later, and put the "poo-ta-tee," on the cover. I can't remember the procedure to remedy the thing, so I just listen to the RCA CDs instead. Which sound amazing.
record surplus has a lot of varied inventory and a visit there has always been productive for me. I think it benefits from the location and excellent curation from the staff.
Hey, Greg. -Hope that all is well with you. Do you think that you will have any new content soon? I really appreciate your perspective on recordings and look forward to your videos.
@clem-trumpet Hello! I think I will resume this week or next, I got new speakers and moved my system to a different room so have really just been enjoying listening and getting it dialed in. See you soon!
@FLOWERINGSPIKES Good news. Thanks. I'm interested in hearing about your new speakers and set up. I think that you previously mentioned having Cornwall IVs which are pretty great.
I live in L.A. and there's like 25 record stores around town and I see most of these all the time. It could be much different in your city or if you had to buy them online but for me they bare cheap!
I just got my copy of the set of Steinberg recordings and listened to Also Sprach yesterday. I was very disappointed in the sound quality and I agree with your assessment entirely. It sounds to me like they put spot mics on all the brass and cranked up the gain. I find the recording to be extremely shrill and difficult to listen to. I also just got a copy of the Tchaikovsky 4th and it was also disappointing. Again the brass is close mic’d with tremendous gain and the result is a very shrill, hard to listen to, recording. I’ve generally been very impressed with the Original Source Recordings, so this is all very surprising. I guess I thought they would only release their very best recordings.
I've only listened to the Tchaikovsky once so far but I was not blown away by it. It didn't seem THAT bad, haha. One would think you would launch a series with your best sounding not your best selling titles if you are marketing it towards audiophiles but I guess that's the same as when you do a retrospective of Atlantic records and you end up with Hootie and the blowfish and Foreigner. Anyhow, out of the box I did really like the Hindemith a lot.
Thank you for your straight talking review. I have always wondered why the DG recordings were second rate, compared to the Decca, EMI, Mercury, RCA, Colombia and even the Phillip's issues.
Thanks for your insights. I got The Rite and the Beethoven 7 DG OG Source. I… love them. For someone who nodded respectfully but didn’t really have a serious interest in Classical, these two really got me excited to collect more. I like the hot sound of The Rite. Scared the crap out of me-in a good way. Anyhow, in the sense that these DG re-issues get folks like me excited about Classical-I say bravo! Thanks for turning us all onto some other, and even better recordings, though. What did you think of the Klieber Beethoven seven? Also, I love your listening room. It looks exactly what I would want. I have a Vintage system that is a far cry from advanced, but still allows me to hear enough of the differences and various pressings that it’s enjoyable. Been mostly collecting jazz since the pandemic. Lots of tone poets, and blue note classics and acoustic sounds series stuff.
I think the tone poets did the same thing for a lot of people, a nice gateway drug to put you on the path to discovering other recordings with much better music and sound! I'm really hoping they release the Klieber, Beethoven 5 at some point!
Thanks for the great review. I had the same experience... It sounds terrible. And the same kind of issues I experienced in the Richard Strauss - Gundula Janowitz • Berliner Philharmoniker • Herbert von Karajan - Tod Und Verklärung / Vier Letzte Lieder from the same series... Not good at all!
@enriquedroguett4602 yes, I mean they are terrible recordings to begin with, It would be nice if they just chose to remaster recordings that were recorded well originally.
I have no doubt that these records sound great, but I watched him present these on RU-vid and you have to laugh at the idea that this guy thinks he has the best sounding copy of every record he owns
@henryoliver2833 Haha, I know, I must say that the majority of them are stunning, mint like copies of originals but there were a couple in there that were duds with noise and clicks and pops.
Excellent Video thank you for this. I fancy myself a narrowband appreciator as well, they are just so consistently fantastic sounding for usually a decent price. Judging from your extensive collection you may know of these already but on the topic of budget audiophile on Decca may I suggest the ballet works from Richard Bonynge / National Philharmonic. He recorded a lot of lesser known ballet works much of it (if not all) was recorded in Kingsway hall with Kenneth Wilkinson. Le Cid and Meyerbeer Les Painteurs is a standout disc for me and has a really great presence CS 7032.
My favourite Sacres are: Dorati/ Detroit SO/ Decca Chailly/ Cleveland/ Decca Davis/ Concertgebouw/ Philips Tilson- Thomas/ BSO/ DG Markevitch/ Philharmonia/ EMI On the contrary I found the Abbado - Sacre one of the worst ever put on disc. Very boring and under played account. In general is Abbado rather boring in Stravinsky. Also the DG-engineering sucks; very muddy and unclear account. I compared the original source version with the first LP issue. There is almost no difference in quality. The original source edition is unnecessary expensive and no improvement at all!
I enjoyed the video, I'm curious to know what the average price you are paying. I realize it's variable but it would be helpful to know some prices to help us novices not overpay. Thanks!
