In Reply to: Magnepan 1.7 setup posted by yemtig@yahoo.com on October 29, 2015 at 12:24:46:
Congratulations the 1.7i is a fantastic speaker.
I really like tubes for the pre and SS for the amp with Maggies. However if I was starting from scratch at this point, I would look real hard at the Emotive XSP-1 preamp. It's SS but has a sh-tload of features including phono (MM and MC) inputs, unbalanced (4) and balanced (2) inputs, balanced and unbalanced outputs, headphone jack, remote control, etc all for $800.
I second the W$4 ST-500 for the amp. I haven't listened to the others you mentioned, but they all have gotten good press on this forum.
A general guideline: 200-250 WPC at 8 ohms with ability to double down or nearly so at 4 ohms.
Save money on speaker cables - I am using magnet wire (16 AWG not 12 AWG like Speltz Anti-cables). I bought a 1/2# roll from Remington Industries for ~$10 plus. Lightly twisted pairs with plenty left over. Bare terminations.
Save money on the DAC as well. I download FLAC files and have converted some of my CDs to the same and placed on a hard drive. I convert the FLAC on the fly to DSD using JRiverMedia ($50 for license) and a Schiit Loki DSD DAC ($150). I tried converting FLAC to DSD and storing but the few files I did were not as impressive - I really need to go back and review this. You could also use Foobar2000 for Windows (freeware) instead of JRiver. Foobar does not support Linux which is what I use.
Got you running for <$1000 (cables, pre, DAC) plus the amp.
If you need any more help spending your money, just call me :).
"Our head is round in order to allow our thoughts to change direction." Francis Picabia
Edits: 10/29/15 10/29/15 10/29/15 10/30/15
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Follow Ups
- RE: Magnepan 1.7 setup - neolith 15:51:19 10/29/15 (1)
- RE: Magnepan 1.7 setup - josh358 07:43:23 10/30/15 (0)