Shortly before the holidays hit, I spent a few hours fiddling with my system, adding another amplifier, adjusting the speakers and so forth and ended up with a sound that I was nearly satisfied with for several hours. My absence until earlier this week has meant that this system iteration is one of my longer lasting, though I'll likely change something this weekend to help the bass hump I have where the Maggies (no high pass in this section of the Flatlines XO) are joining with the side woofers and work on some of the comb filtering I'm experiencing due to having one panel leaning against another.

Everything is put together as cheaply as I could manage and based on what I've found sounds good vs. what the advertisements and fans say. This has been a major reason for my not posting my system before, it doesn't have any of the elements and brands that are normally required for a "real" system.

So, here's my current system iteration (some of the gear will likely be different tomorrow just because I tend to adjust the composition to suit my moods, the music, and biological rhythms that effect hearing and preferences):

Main System

Pre Sections:
Pre-amplifier: Onkyo TX-DS696

Amplification:
Amplifier (Subwoofer): Adire AVA-250
Amplifier (Low Bass): Radio Shack MPA-250
Amplifier (Bass): Pioneer SX-838
Amplifier (Upper Bass/Lower Midrange): Kenwood KR-1000
Amplifier (Midrange/Treble): Sonic Impact T-Amp/Fisher SA-16

Sources:
CD Player: Sony CDP-X111ES
DAC: Onkyo TX-DS696
DVD/SACD/DVD-A: Toshiba SD-4960
Turntable: Sony PS-X500
Cartridge: Grado Gold (mounted on aluminum Sony SH-151 headshell) /Grado Black (mounted on plastic Sony SH-151 headshell)
Cassette: Onkyo TA-R22
LD Player: Pioneer CLD-S104
Tuner: Hitachi FT-340

Speakers:
Speaker (Midrange/Treble): Flatline Design Model 175 Ribbon (350Hz-40000Hz)
Speaker (Upper Bass/Lower Midrange): Magnepan MG-I (100Hz-350Hz)
Speaker (Bass): Flatline Design Model 175 Woofer (~40Hz-100Hz)
Speaker (Low Bass): Infinity Quantum 2 Watkins Woofer (~20Hz-50Hz)
Subwoofer (For the .1 bass channel with movies): Adire DPL-12 (16Hz-80Hz)

Accessories:
Rack: old Sony unit stolen from an early '90s "rack" system I started out with
Turntable shelf: Chunk of granite I got from Habitat for Humanity after they received the surplus from a tombstone service
Interconnects: mostly Radio Shack Fusion (bought when closed out for real cheap)
Optical Cable: Some cheap AR brand
Speaker Cable: Sound King 12 gauge with Dayton Bananas or RS Spades/Pins as needed (Some Home Depot 12 gauge Carol brand cable on the Infinities as I ran out of Sound King.)


All the gear is selected on what I find to sound good or at least have minimal sonic impact in the range of frequencies I have selected for it. (For instance, using a HT receiver, an Onkyo no less, as a preamp would get me burned at the stake in some audio circles, yet when I set the source to "Direct" bypassing the tone controls while maintaining it's high-res/large bandwidth topology, I get a surprisingly untouched sound. The DAC is also much more revealing than the analog sections in any of my CDPs, even my beloved Sony, though it comes with a hint of grain that's evident on the ribbons. Besides, it has a remote control, which is extraordinarily useful for an apartment dweller who might need to squelch an unexpectedly loud passage in a hurry before the bass knocks neighbor's pictures off the walls and the like.) It's all largely scrounged, which explains the hodgepodge of gear. Still, for a total investment of under $1000 (under $700 for the main stereo components) for all listed and shown in the picture (outside of the 32" TV that I picked up on a misprice for more than 50% off) including repair/upgrade parts costs over three years, I don't think I did too badly.

The quad amp setup I currently have is not for bragging rights. The midbass in the Flatlines has always bugged me with its mismatch with the ribbon, so I modified the crossover to take the Maggies. At 82dB/w/M sensitivity for the Maggies vs the ~90dB for the old cone, I had to goose the output a bit on the Kenwood. This then made for some boom from the woofer, which meant I had to hack its section of the crossover out and stick it on another receiver to bring the output back down for better integration. After juggling the levels by ear, a quick measurement has shown each to be within ~1-2dB of the other (except for the sub which is run 4dB hotter just because that makes movies a little more fun, though standard practice is to make it 10dB more), which is livable until tomorrow.


Well, that's the basics of my system. The mismatch on the picture is because I had to splice two images together to cover the whole setup. The speakers are 8' apart at the inside edge of the ribbons and 8' from the seating position, which considering their position in the room (16' wide, 15' deep at the couch, 23' deep with the kitchen included) effectively makes for nearfield listening with the line arrays. Suitable room treatments for my room are not currently much of an option, so this minimizes room issues. Strategically placed pillows and blankets (I tend to throw an additional two or four layers on top of the rack, what's already on the TV, and the front of the Kenwood leaving only the receiver exposed for the remote to reduce backwall reflection) are the current room treatments.

- JP

the component list may look like a cluster, but i think what you've done with it all is sheer genius.

for those unfamiliar with JP's critical ear, if he says the sound is "acceptable" then you can be sure the sound is excellent.

Ahh, the "Den of Inequity" finally revealed...

Suprised by some of the components you'vechosen, but I've never doubted that gear exists out there that's stellar in performance, and either not spoken of, or poo-pooed because of name.

I'd like to imagine how nice that sounds.

Nah, the Den of Iniquity is through the door on the right.

As to the components, a lot of it deals with what Goodwill has provided and what works. Had I the cash and option, I'd probably have mostly Krell electronics or at least Bryston instead of what's shown. For instance, the MPA-250 is just an average amplifier, but it's the only one I have that isn't killed by the low impedance (~1.8 ohms), low sensitivity (~81dB/w/m) Watkins woofers in the Infinities during bass heavy passages. A lot of my vintage gear, including some that's well regarded, is surprisingly fuzzy sounding and colored and so doesn't make it into the system. Then there are things like the Onkyo tape deck where quality doesn't matter as I almost never use it.

- JP

that's a hodgepodge I'd like to hear!

What a combination, I'd love to hear it!

Where did the Yorx used to fit in with all of that?

The Yorx used to be my main turntable until I realized the rest of my system just wasn't capable of utilizing that table's full performance. So, I decided to pass it along to someone else and make do with the Sony.

- JP

This man has a heart of gold.

JP,

There´s a detail you have not explained and that leaves me very curious. How do you split the signal from the pre-amp into the 4 power amps?

Then, another doubt. Are you feeding the full bandwidth to each power amp, which, in turn feed full bandwidth to each speaker, making use of the original passive crossover in each speaker?

Jorge

Simple matter, really. When I first planned this system iteration, I took the preamp and amplifiers aside for a chat. I introduced each to one another and told them what frequencies I was expecting each to cover and explained the pre's responsibility to get the signal to each. When all understood their role and agreed, I connected the speaker cables and all have worked well together since.

For sooth, it's a really juryrigged arrangement, one with the potential to take flack and why I was cautious to post in the first place. I'm using the tape monitor outputs in the SX-838 and KR-1000 to divide the signal between the amps. It's a horribly messy way, but there does not seem to be much signal degradation. The frequencies are being passively crossed over for the most part using the internal crossover in the Flatlines, wich modification. The amp on the Infinities is low-passed with a second order, line level passive XO that I built as a proof of concept for Neal's earlier thread. Due to the high insertion losses here and the mismatch of sensitivities of the other drivers, I've had to use the "fool's quadamping" arrangement so I can use the individual volume controls to match levels.

To minimize the sonic artifacts of stacked pres, I keep the amp on the ribbons, which cover from 350Hz to 40000Hz and so cover the frequencies where the ear is most sensitive, in as direct a signal path as I can and as the reference level. I then adjust the other amps, that cover only below 350Hz to match with the grea-*test*-('") possibility of noise insertion being stacked down in the sub-50Hz region.

What I really want to do is go fully active, but things just haven't worked out that way yet. The one electronic XO I picked up in partial trade doesn't work and I can't locate parts (at a price I can afford) for my Marchand XM126 clone just yet, so I'll make due with this haphazard arrangement. Fortunately, the amps combine with sufficient power (add voltages, not watts and so even "fool's ____amping" makes for greater effective wattage) that the setup isn't suffering too badly for it. Still, this setup could do so much better with the proper gear that it's depressing.

- JP

I'll bet its dusty. just my 2 cents.

elroy

Mondays are pretty hard on you, aren't they?

- JP

It is one system I'd really like to hear. It looks really good to me.

Only one thing missing though JP. You need an obsolete Denon cd player. I just happen to know where a couple are located.