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(Last) Speaker Suggestions?

Posted by Bambi B (A) on February 17, 2021 at 14:31:06

Inmates,

Setting up a system in a new house, realizing that I have a silly amount of gear: including 500 NOS tubes, that my beloved Vandersteen 2C's are almost forty years old, that the tweeter in one side is blown, I simply haven't been keeping up on the audiophile world for more than ten years, and that whatever speakers I use may well be the last selected, some recommendations are welcome. I unfortunately no longer live near anywhere that offers speakers of the level required and would strongly consider used, with a budget of up to $3,000 but would prefer the magic "bang for buck" choice at half that. I'm not against rebuilding the Vandersteen drivers (tweeters $68 each) although Richard Vandersteen was a bit "surprised" that I was considering it.

The other problem is that I can't yet decide on the components used, except the turntable will be the Oracle DIII / SME V / AQ 200, IC's will be AQ King Cobra, and the speaker cables AQ Rocket 88.

For electronics I have:

ARC SP-10 II preamp 1987: 6X Valvo red label E188CC + 6X Tungsram red label E88CC
ARC SP8 II, 1985 "Red Board" with all original tubes
ARC LS3 SS line stage
ARC D130 SS power amp
ARC D115 tube power amp with low hours NOS GE 6550A but needing about $600 of new elctrolytics
McIntosh MR67 tube tuner
McIntosh MR77 SS tuner (the faceplate was broken in shipping unfortunately)
Revox B160 SS tuner
Marantz 2235 receiver
Marantz 2275 receiver
Technic SL-D2 turntable / Shure V15 III
Dual 1019 TT with Shure 78 Cart
400-500 NOS tubes
Cambridge Audio 640 CDP - almost never used
Dynaco 70 unrestored
Eico HF-14 mono integrated, all original
Nakamichi cassette (but needs the fix.

Speakers:

Vandersteen 2C 1985, Sound Anchor stands
Two pair Infinity Primus 360 floor standing
B&W 802
Pair Smaller Advent
Pair Spectrum 208 speakers

I'm setting up a second system in the drawing /painting /light workshop room, probably using a Yamaha 60W component Marantz 2275 electronics with the SL-D2 and B&W 802's or the Smaller Advents. I probably wouldn't bother with a turntable, but would play CD's mostly and possibly FM. The problem is that the classical FM here is not highly listenable.

So, friends, fellows inmates, and audio nutzoids, what do you think?

Bambi B

PS: I've found what I find an excellent computer sound system with MIDI I/O, good enough I think for a reasonable level of music /video production.

The computer is:

HP z620 v2 (2017)(R7): Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 liquid cooling / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered RAM / Quadro P2000 5GB + GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB + HP/HGST Enterprise 6TB / / 825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof.'l 64-bit (HP OEM) > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)

Sound system is: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 R2 USB 2.0sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 studio monitors

Yes, that's quite a bit for computer sound, but I realized long ago that I listen to music while working 12 hours per day and over the years quite tapered off on evening main system LP listening. But as there are almost 3,000 LP's,.. This works so well as the Mackie MR824's can sit on the desk toed in and the tweeters at ear level.

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