Anyway, it would be some years later, when I was a graduate student, that I'd wander into an audio store in Harvard Square with a friend who was looking for speakers. We saw these giant flat things and had no idea what they were. After he'd settled on something sensible, we asked if we could hear them. They were Magnepans, probably 1.6s or something of the sort. We were totally blown away.
I bought a somewhat better amplifier somewhere along the way (an NAD 3225) and, after moving into an apartment on a busy street, a B&O turntable, since it was impervious to vibration. But when I got my first job, at Harvard, in 1991, I decided to treat myself to those speakers I'd heard a couple years before. The shop, Goodwins Audio (not to be confused with Goodwins High End, though there was a connection), had by then moved to Commonwealth Avenue, so I went over there with my then wife and a friend to get my speakers. While we were there, though, I of course had to hear a few other things, including a pair of stand-mounted monitors that couldn't have been more different from the Magnepans. They turned out to be B&W Matrix 1 Series 2s, and after much hemming and hawing I decided I liked those better and bought them. Along with a powerful enough amp to drive them properly (an Adcom GFA-545).
So began my obsession with not just music but sound. Yes, the speakers and amp sounded great, but what about the pre-amp and turntable? One upgrade led to another and to the journey that is now detailed on my website.
After about 15 years, though, my system really settled down. I became something of a junkie for Pass Labs equipment, and by Y2K had Pass amps, and a Pass pre-amp and phono pre-amp. There were some changes that followed, but those were incremental improvements, really. The big change was moving to a music server in about 2009, which only led to my getting another piece of Pass gear for the 'big' system, the Digital 1 DAC (and another for the system in the main living area). In 2010, I built my gorgeous turntable and, after falling in love with Gotham Audio Cable, also changed speakers, to BC Acoustique ACT A2.5s. But after that, I made almost no changes for nearly a decade. (There was a minor upgrade of the phono stage, and I had to replace the cartridge when the cleaners ripped off the cantilever by accident.)
That changed last year (2019). The immediate reason was that my amps, the incredible Pass Aleph 2s, were coming up on their 25th birthday or so. And, according to the owner's manual, that meant it was long past time for the power supply capacitors to dry out (before the universe experiences heat death, apparently---see page 3 of the manual, bottom). In fact, I'd been meaning to send the amps back to Pass for re-capping for a while, but I didn't want to be without tunes. In 2018, I actually 'bought' a pair of Pass XA-60.5 monoblocks on EBay to tide me over, planning to send the amps to Pass after I got those, but it turned out to be a scam!! Fortunately, EBay refunded the $6K I'd paid for them. (As usual, there were all kinds of red flags that I didn't pay enough attention to.) It took me a while to recover.
In 2019, though, it was time to act. After talking with my partner, Nancy, we decided it might be fun to try out some tubes. The best system I've ever heard, in someone's actual house (as opposed to a store)m belongs to my friend and sometime collaborator Robert May. He has, interestingly enough, Magnepan 3.6s, driven by VTL Signature MB-450 monoblocks. So, well, those are a bit steep, but maybe it would be cool to try out the baby VTLs? So we bought a used set of VTL MB-125s (the older version) and sent the Aleph 2s off to see their maker.
First observation: The Aleph amps have always been said to be tube-like, and it turns out they are. There was no night-and-day difference with the tubes.
Second observation: Although the BC Acoustique A2.5s are not terribly hard to drive, like most reasonably big speakers, they would like some power, and the MB-125s were not really giving it to them, as good as they otherwise sounded. They're rated at about 90W triode, and that doesn't vary much with impedence, so they are more or less a 50W amp into 4 ohms (and the A2.5s are a 4 ohm load, basically). I decided before long that it would be nice to have more power and lucked out when I found a pair of MB-185s for sale from a guy in Connecticut (so no shipping, which is nice, since they weigh about 90 lbs each, most of that being transformers).
Third observation: If you live in a city, or a really noisy environment (electromagnetically speaking), then 40ft runs of single-ended (RCA) cables are a bad idea. We had horrible humming through the speakers in the evening. Switching to balanced cables solved the problem. Why were we using RCAs? Because the MB-125s only take RCAs. The rest of the system is balanced, though, so that was another plus to getting the MB-185s, which take XLRs and are balanced.
Fourth observation: If you buy a tube amp, it's best to make sure you are getting reasonably new tubes or else a corresponding price break. The MB-125s came with 1950s or 1960s GE-made EL34s. As 'new old stock', those go for about $100 each, so that was supposed to be a plus. Which it would have been except that one of them red plated (i.e., died) a few weeks after I got the amps---and, just to be helpful, took one of the woofers with it!
(The guy who sold me the MB-185s didn't remove the tubes before boxing them up and driving them to the middle of nowhere to meet me, either, so one of those tubes cracked and died the first day I set them up. Fortunately, there was no collateral damage, and those were just new Svetlanas, so it was easy enough to get a replacement.)
It was easy enough to order up some TungSol EL-34Bs from Viva Tubes, right up there in Massachusetts. And we had the little sisters of the ACT A2.5s in the basement, the A2s, so we could haul those upstairs while waiting to repair the 2.5s. I've done some DIY stereo stuff before, so I could certainly handle replacing a woofer. Utterly unconcerned, then, I ordered up a replacement from BC Acoustique...only to find out that they had since gone out of business. I traced the woofer to SEAS of Norway, who built it, but it was a custom design, and they didn't even have a data sheet for it, let alone extras in stock. I did get a replacement woofer---another SEAS Prestige design---two actually, one for each speaker. But I was just guessing at what might be a good match. It worked out all right. The speakers sound better, if you ask me---with much deeper bass---but still, it left me with that itch, bad, for new speakers.
And, despite the advice that I've long given other people, I'd never really spent as much on speakers as on other components. (Short version: Nothing will sound better than your speakers, so spend money on those.) As I said to Nancy, we have had very good speakers for a long time, and many different very good speakers. But we've never really had great speakers, and it felt to me like it was time to do that. (I had also recently heard some great speakers, Magico M3s, at the house of the guy who sold me the new pre-amp we also got around that time.) I spent weeks afterwards looking over the offerings on Audiogon and trying to decide whether to get somewhat better speakers or much better speakers. Well, in the end, of course, we went for much and bought a used pair of Dynaudio Contour 60s, with the gorgeous Rosewood finish.
I was really nervous as I waited for them to arrive. For one thing, speakers are very personal. It was entirely possible that I'd find these not to my taste, even if I could see how 'great' they were otherwise, and even though the reviews had made them sound like speakers I'd like. I was also worried that the Aleph 2s, which we'd since gotten back, wouldn't have enough power to drive them, as the Contour 60s are big speakers with a maximum power handling rating of 390W (whereas the 2s do about 150W into 4 ohms).
There was no need to worry. The Aleph 2s were perfectly capable of driving the Contour 60s to ear-splitting volumes. And, more importantly, they are extraordinary speakers. I am stunned, still, at how natural music sounds through them. The other day, I had something on and was doing some chores while listening, and something happened in the music, and I turned around wondering what was in the house. But it wasn't anything in the house. That has since happened several times. It's the timbral purity that is most impressive. But there's also everything that goes with that: All kinds of 'air' around the instruments (on a good recording); a sort of delicacy that is consistent with great detail but is lost with components that are more 'analytical'; terrific imaging; and a ridiculously wide and deep soundstage (when that's there in the recording). With apologies to Robert May, I've never heard Kind of Blue sound so good.
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