Checking out a band from my alma mater. MGMT sounds pretty good. A bit of Talking Heads in there I think. Not as good as listening to the new David Sanborn “here & gone” album though, which sounds great on my sound system, which I don’t think I’ve documented. I haven’t heard a home system that sounds better…
Source: iTunes on a mac, songs ripped from CD via apple lossless format (or bought in highest resolution available – usually 256-bit from emusic.com, Amazon, or iTunes). I buy CDs when possible for maximum resolution but sometimes get lazy. With my entire library available from a server I can load songs into my ipod or iphone, listen to them via the mac mini attached to my home theater in the living room, and so on.
Connection: USB out to a little USB converter box – Hagerman HagUSB – this outputs SPDIF
DAC – LITE DAC-60 – vacuum tube-based digital to analog converter takes the SPDIF and sends it to my integrated amplifier. The whole chain is digital until the vacuum tubes do the conversion and add a bit of sweetness and smoothness to the sound.
Integrated Amplifier: PS Audio GCC-250. Pure, clean amplification power. Just back from repairs so I’m happy.
Speakers: Acoustic Zen Adagio
Subwoofer: the AZ sound terrific but I needed a little more low-end bass so I added the MWF-15 subwoofer from AV123.
I use a variety of cables for interconnecting, some also from Acoustic Zen.
With this setup I can listen to any artist, album, or playlist built from the CDs I’ve ripped from my collection (almost all of them). Of course the setup is a bit expensive, and I had to rip all the CDs. They now sit on a ZFS-based file system with RAID protection (don’t want to have to re-rip) and I have a copy stored off site (really don’t want to re-rip!). Total space taken up by my itunes library – a little over 1TB!
Obsessive? Over the top? You make the call. But it’s very convenient, and sounds great. And check out the Sanborn disc if you want to check out how your system sounds (and listen to some great jazz). Do the horn players sound like they are in the room with you?!
