Man! I just want to say THANK YOU! To Amir, and all of the people that put this site together, answer posts, do measurements, et al. I am just blown away by the information, and how much this site, and Floyd Toole's book, have helped to clear up so many questions that I had. Since joining ASR, I have discovered Roon, the Loxjie A30, and I just ordered a pair of JBL Stage A-130 (difficult to find those for sale at list price right now).
Tonight I setup a parametric equalizer in Roon that I tried to tailor to my Grado SR60's, and they sound so much better. It is probably a bit crude, but it definitely is a very big improvement:
By way of background, I'm a lifelong New Orleanian, have played trumpet since I was 7, dabble in piano, and love jazz. Also, married 37 years, have four kids, three grandkids (with the 4th due this week). I have had a lifelong love affair with jazz (as a trumpet player, how can you not), and a pretty good collection of classical as well.
I bought my first stereo at Wilson Audio here in New Orleans when I was in high school in the 1970's (Technics SL23 Turntable, Technics 25W amp, and a pair of Epicure 1's). The turntable crapped out sometime in the mid 90's, and by then I had moved onto CD's (and we were raising four kids, so the stereo took a back seat to many other things).
The next time I bought a fairly decent system was in 2008, which is what I have now: OPPO BDP80, NAD 326BEE, Cambridge Audio DAC Magic, what is now a very old Toshiba laptop with JRiver with about 650 ripped CD's (Flac), and a pair of stand-mounted speakers that were made by a guy here in New Orleans. All of these components were purchased from the same Wilson Audio here in New Orleans (no affiliation with the speaker company). The speakers have been fine, but they lack bass and I have no idea what the specs or sound curves for these look like, so I'm flying blind there.
About three months ago I decided that I would like to get new speakers for the main system, and to put together a decent desktop audio system. The impetus for this was that in my current setup - and I think this is a lot of systems - a piano doesn't sound like a piano, it has a slight electronic tinge to it (like someone is playing a Roland keyboard, particularly in their right hand, when I know that they were playing a Steinway). I want a system where I could mistakenly think that someone is actually playing the piano in my living room. That may not be attainable in my budget (upper limit for floorstanding speakers is about $2K or so). The JBL A-130's will go on the desktop, and the search continues for the right pair of tower's to go in our "music room", which shares space with an upright piano, my trumpets, a couple of acoustic guitars. It is also the venue for "family band" sessions with my 4yo and 5yo granddaughters on many a Saturday morning.
The research began by revisiting Robert Harley's two books, but I quickly grew tired of hearing about the soundstage that a pair of $1,500 interconnects could bring. That led me to looking at a few basic online audio classes via Berklee on Coursera. It also led me to read Mark Waldrep's book - some good information there, but the man desperately needs a good editor.
A number of other books had me start looking at vintage speakers to get the sound that I'm looking for - I was considering finding some original advents and stacking them. But after reading Dr. Floyd's book, and I won't pretend to understand all of it (I'm an architect by training, not an engineer
, I think my best chance is through the research on this site.
Thanks,
Robert
New Orleans
