Not really a "System" as much a snapshot of what has been rotating through my living room this last year. This is the major portion of my speaker collection, at least the big ones. Missing are a pair of Advent Prodigy towers, my Utah/Americana 2-ways (with horns), the Infinity Kappa 6.1 Series II that I just sold a friend of mine and too many pairs of bookshelves to mention:





Left to right, top to bottom are M&K SX-4 bookshelves, Teledyne AR9LS, Yamaha NS690 (baby brother to the NS1000 of fame), Cerwin Vega D9, ADS L810 and Dahlquist DQ-20i. Hoping to be able to photo a pair of decent electrostats in my collection by this same time next year

Pre-amp is a Yamaha RX-V663 which I use primarily for it's blueray, DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD handling abilities.

Amps are currently an Adcom 5500 (usually connected to the ARs) and an Adcom 555 that runs whatever else I have in rotation.

Source is generally my tried and true Roku Soundbridge M1000 serving lossless FLAC rips from Slimserver (on my PC) via 320kbs wav but sometimes I just pop a CD in the Sony PS3 (up to 24/96 via HDMI) or listen to the music channels off the cable.

thats a lot of speakers

Couple of big ones in there.

very nice and all keepers too!

do you stand to watch tv or movies?

Movies?!?! Is that what that thing in the background is for?

I think I'll narrow it back down to the ARs and the DQs again, once I get my storage space all figured out.

Lots of quality either.
Congrats and tanx for sharing.

Thanks.

While I think the ARs are my all around favs and I have to give it to the DQs for best sound stage and female vocals I really enjoy them all (listening to the ADS almost all day today) and exploring how they differ from each other.

So the question that's been itching in the back of my brain for awhile now... Maggies, Martin Logans or?

Why are you feeling the need for that step up on the hi-fi ladder?

...big Infinity, Quad ESL, Tannoy?

Well, specifically I'm interested to see if electrostats are "all that". I've only heard some Martin Logans in the demo room of a hifi shop and not under ideal conditions. I've never owned a pair so that will be a notch to carve in my belt, or something.

Maggies seem to show up fairly often on the local CL, so do Martins although they tend to still demand a pretty hefty price. I've seen some exotic Infinities and Carvers with ribbons so those might be a possibility too. I suppose this should be it's own thread but I'd be interested to hear what other members have heard, in the way of electrostatics, and their opinions?

I've owned a fair amount of systems, my current system includes a pair of ML speakers (Aerius). I've listened to MLs in the past that blew me away, so when I found my pair for sale I snatched them up right before I got married. I guess you could say it was my own personal wedding gift!

I'm very pleased with my purchase and dont expect to change anytime soon. The key ingredient when moving to an electrostat is placement. They are very finicky and require pinpoint accuracy. If your room is not spacious and ideal, dont bother. I'm sure any other ML owners can chime in and agree that placement can make these speakers either very good or very bad sounding. While this is true for all speakers, its even more prominent in electrostats.

One more thing to mention, electrostats are power hogs and require strong amplifiers. I wouldnt waste my time trying to power them with a receiver.

Good luck!
Mike

All first rate speakers there.

I feel your desire to explore planars. Though I've not been able to successfully mate any to my room and my extraneous other constraints.

Tough to choose your favorites when so many good speakers are at your fingertips, eh?