And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
Talking Heads – Once In A Lifetime
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
My love of music brought me back slowly, starting out with a disparate collection of some ripped, some Napster 128k mp3 hold outs, with the occasional “high resolution” 320 kbps ACC files I’d bought along the way. Once bitten and deciding to move away from built-in motherboard sound; I landed on an external Topping D10s DAC, KEF Q100 bookshelf speakers powered by an Emotiva BasX A-100 amp. How glorious everything sounded. Made better still by my endeavor over the time spent in Covid-19 lockdown improving the quality of my digital files I was playing via iTunes to lossless. I found myself fully committed to this new digital domain and I wanted more.
Fast forward to the full-fledged hobby of today, iTunes has been long left behind for a Roon and Qobuz subscription. So much gear has been bought and sold and passed through my “shipping department” AKA, the kitchen, in the dogged pursuit of educating myself to what types of sound signatures and qualities I liked in my gear. A lot of forums reading and posting. Making countless mistakes chasing reviewers’ recommendations of “giant killers” du jour while not having the slightest idea of many of the things that matter greatly in the hobby. Good power, clean signal source, SYNNERGY!
Thankfully I’m in a good place today. The waning of Covid meant we could sort of reestablish some norms, visit friend and listen to their gear, go to shows and even meet people in their homes to evaluate potential equipment purchases. I’ve been able to build a ground up 2-Ch system based on the knowledge I’ve gained in the hobby over the past few years and currently growing and tweaking and tailoring it to me, what I like and the music I listen to.
Besides music, I follow F1, dabble in photography, birdwatch, cook good food and eat good food. Currently my desktop daily use HP is a ZMF Verite Closed. The amp is a Bryston BHA-1, fed from a Mojo Mystique V2 SE with a DDC and an external SOtM USB.
My 2 Channel system (where I do most of my listening) Consists of an a Weiss 502 DAC/Streamer feeding an LTA Ultralinear Integrated Amp. The speakers are custom finished Omega Junior Alnico XRS tower and an Omega Deep Hemp 8 Sub both with some modifications to their base/feet.