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In Reply to: Upgrade to Audio Note System posted by UtilityMan on October 25, 2006 at 05:02:17:
This is one man's opinion, but a man who has been monkeying around with Audio Note gear for a couple of years now.
FRONT ENDCDT 2 II: A superb transport. Good enough to carry you up to a Dac 4.1 Balanced and not fall short. Keep it.
Dac 2.1 Balanced: This is probably the former model, which is no longer made. A new one is due out early in 2007 that will likely be as good as the current Dac 3.1 Balanced, which is also no longer made, to be replaced by a new model later this year. Sell this one and get the new 2.1 Balanced when it's available. Actually, get the best dac you can afford. Significant differences at each step and the improvements are carried through the whole system. Duh.
Connect them with a one-meter single run of Sogon, which will make a dramatic difference. I recommend Sogon digital interconnect in the cheapest systems I sell and it always has a huge effect. VERY big bang for admittedly big bucks.
At some point, get an Arm 3/Vx, a moving coil IO1 with a S4 step-up. Much more refined. The cartridge change is a knock-out.
AMP
The OTO is a great little amp and one of the best values in the line. Keep it until, as Budrew suggests, you're ready to jump to an M3 and Quest Silver or Silver Signature.
SPEAKERS
The J/LX's are very good, much better than I thought as I listened smugly to my J/SPe's. Keep them until you upgrade your amps, then go for the new E/SPe HE's. Or E/LX Signatures. Be sure to put a mixture of lead shot and sand in your AN stands. Cheap and impressive upgrade.
CABLE
If you're going to upgrade cable, begin at the source end. Sogon between the transport and dac as I said above; VX between the dac and OTO. Lexus is fine as speaker cable, it's what your speakers are wired with. When and if you move up to the SPe's, then convert to SPe speaker cable.
Follow Ups:
Bob,
Where would you insert biwiring in your list of improvements ?
At the beginning, if possible, mainly because while the improvement, while noticeable, is not dramatic, it's hard to turn a single-wired rig into a bi-wired one, especially with Lexus, which is has a great many strands of wire to contend with!
I've cut open Lexus wires to reterminate, and I'm not sure how you would biwire this cable. There's virtually no design in the AN-Lexus cables, or most of their cables from what I've seen. It's just one litz grouping of stranded copper conductors.
Good advice and clears tne order of importance for this journey of mine.
My only issue with seperates is the space needed, my electronics sit in a small bay window with TT to side(speakers out in main room corners either side of bay) to squeeze everything in may be impossible.A meishu would fit on the lower shelf of my rack, I doubt Quests would? So would a Meishu Silver be up for the job long term?
I guess I should't think of room aesthetics but it creeps in (my wife has grown to my way of thinking - used to have B & W 803 in this room!)
The Meishu is a good amp, but its preamp section is comparable to an M2, if memory serves. There has been talk about upgrading the Meishu, but nothing is imminent that I know of. (It's also a VERY heavy component which sometimes has trouble surviving the loving care of shippers.) The Meishu Silver is good upgrade from the standard Meishu, the Silver Signature is a fairly dramatic upgrade, which I concede it should be for the price. But it truly is. Budrew, who was a little iffy about Quest Silvers at one point, had his doubts removed by Silver Sigs. You might ask him about that. The move from Silver to Silver Sig in the Meishu is essentially the same as it is with the Quests...and Conquests.The usual move is to put monoblocks on maple amp stands near the speakers rather than on the main equipment shelf, thus shortening the speaker cable run. When one is bi-wiring with silver cable (down the road in your case), it's nice to have that run as short as possible! I don't know how wives feel about monoblocks on amp stands, since mine is a model of indifference on such matters.
Again, I would put an amp upgrade after an upgrade to the source. That will give you more time to mull over the amp question. And who knows? By then the Meishu may inherit a preamp section upgrade, though it might also become bigger yet!
For what it's worth, a customer of mine with a CDT 2, OTO, and J/Lx's just upgraded his transport to the Mk II and put a used Dac 4.1 Balanced into his system and is crowing about the transformation they brought. Linn's Ivor Tiefenbrun (sp) preached for at least a decade about how a Linn LP12 could do more for a system than any electronics or speaker upgrade he could imagine and frequently demonstrated this bit of wisdom at shows. Source, source, source. Especially when you have a little jewel like the OTO and J's to complete the tale.
Actually it was the Meishu silver I did not like. But the Conquest Silver Sigs paired with the M3 preamp are on another planet. Simply outstanding.I agree with Bob that I would start with the source. The biggest change and improvement in my audio education was getting an Audio Note DAC. I started with the 2.1x balanced and now have the 3.1x balanced. This DAC (paired with the AN CDT2/2) has made virtually any amp I've had sound good. In effect, the rest of your system is only as good as your source. A level 4 DAC would be a dreamspot, but that level enters the stratosphere of cost. For the rest of us, as Bob says on his web site, most audiophiles would be happy to land forever with the 3.1x balanced.
Funny, I should know better - having gone through the full active Linn thing years ago, source source source says it all.I get clouded by system balance thinking, but I recall having an original Naim Nait on the end off a fully Armargeddon/Aro LP12!
I aim to spend wisely and your advice will be taken on board.
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