Hi,
I'm an A/V enthousiast from the Netherlands. I have occasionaly been posting here, so I thought I would share some pics. I use my system as both a stereo and Home Theater setup, I guess I use is 75% stereo and the rest multichannel. My taste in music reproduction is accurate, tight, fast, airy, a bit on the dry and detailed side. I absolutely dislike too warm, soft, and prefer to sacrifice bass extension for accuracy and speed.
First a bit of history..
1993-2001
My first steps into 'real' hifi was around 1993 when I went to study in the town of Delft and had a good dealer across the street.
In the period up to 1995 I got an Audiolab 8000A amplifier, Rotel RCD-965BX CD player and Mission 753 speakers, a combination of popular items in that time.
After that I was quite happy with system and did not change it (also money went to other student uses...) There was no need for home theater as all the TV watching was done in the shared living room of the student house.
2001-2005
In this period I started my career and moved to a rental appartment. I now started to add Home Theater into the system.
I got an old but big CRT my parents didn't need anymore for the visuals. Dolby Pro-Logic decoding and amplification was done by an add-on Yamaha amplifier. For speakers I added a Mission 75C center and 731 suuronds. As a source I added a Sony DVP-S725D, this had onboard Dolby Digital decoders which I could feed into the 5.1 analogue input of the Yamaha (pro-logic decoding only!) amp.
2005-2009
In 2005 I started a large scale upgrade of my system, which took me about 1,5 year to complete. This started by a large improvement on the visual side through a Sanyo Z2 projector, a HD-ready 720p device.
My amplification was changed by using Parasound HCA-1500A for the fronts, and 2 times a HCA-1000A for center and surround, all amps were bought used. As processor I got a TAG McLaren AV32R 192 kHz 7.1, this in the big TAG sale when they went over to IAG. With the arrival of beter amplification the stereo source was also upgraded to a TAG McLaren CDT20R CD transport, which could be sync/clock locked with the T2L connection to the AV32R's clock.
I also got a Marantz/Philips Pronto programmable remote.
Thus it all looked like this:
Subsequently I changed the DVD player for an Oppo DV971H, which offered excellent DVD upscaling to 720P and a DVI output which I could use for the Z2 projector.
The speakers were upgraded by going for Mission 752 rears, and swapping the 75C center for a single 751 which I managed to pick up. This improved the surround experience quite a bit, as these had more the same sonic character.
Also a (used) Servo 15 subwoofer was added for LFE effects.
With my parents old TV nearing the end of it's life, I got a Chinese no-name brand (Videoseven) 32 inch HD-ready LCD.
Although upgrades plans never left my head, once again I had a set-up which I was quite happy with and actually just enjoyed it for almost 5 years!
Current situation coming up....
I'm an A/V enthousiast from the Netherlands. I have occasionaly been posting here, so I thought I would share some pics. I use my system as both a stereo and Home Theater setup, I guess I use is 75% stereo and the rest multichannel. My taste in music reproduction is accurate, tight, fast, airy, a bit on the dry and detailed side. I absolutely dislike too warm, soft, and prefer to sacrifice bass extension for accuracy and speed.
First a bit of history..
1993-2001
My first steps into 'real' hifi was around 1993 when I went to study in the town of Delft and had a good dealer across the street.
In the period up to 1995 I got an Audiolab 8000A amplifier, Rotel RCD-965BX CD player and Mission 753 speakers, a combination of popular items in that time.
After that I was quite happy with system and did not change it (also money went to other student uses...) There was no need for home theater as all the TV watching was done in the shared living room of the student house.
2001-2005
In this period I started my career and moved to a rental appartment. I now started to add Home Theater into the system.
I got an old but big CRT my parents didn't need anymore for the visuals. Dolby Pro-Logic decoding and amplification was done by an add-on Yamaha amplifier. For speakers I added a Mission 75C center and 731 suuronds. As a source I added a Sony DVP-S725D, this had onboard Dolby Digital decoders which I could feed into the 5.1 analogue input of the Yamaha (pro-logic decoding only!) amp.
2005-2009
In 2005 I started a large scale upgrade of my system, which took me about 1,5 year to complete. This started by a large improvement on the visual side through a Sanyo Z2 projector, a HD-ready 720p device.
My amplification was changed by using Parasound HCA-1500A for the fronts, and 2 times a HCA-1000A for center and surround, all amps were bought used. As processor I got a TAG McLaren AV32R 192 kHz 7.1, this in the big TAG sale when they went over to IAG. With the arrival of beter amplification the stereo source was also upgraded to a TAG McLaren CDT20R CD transport, which could be sync/clock locked with the T2L connection to the AV32R's clock.
I also got a Marantz/Philips Pronto programmable remote.
Thus it all looked like this:
Subsequently I changed the DVD player for an Oppo DV971H, which offered excellent DVD upscaling to 720P and a DVI output which I could use for the Z2 projector.
The speakers were upgraded by going for Mission 752 rears, and swapping the 75C center for a single 751 which I managed to pick up. This improved the surround experience quite a bit, as these had more the same sonic character.
Also a (used) Servo 15 subwoofer was added for LFE effects.
With my parents old TV nearing the end of it's life, I got a Chinese no-name brand (Videoseven) 32 inch HD-ready LCD.
Although upgrades plans never left my head, once again I had a set-up which I was quite happy with and actually just enjoyed it for almost 5 years!
Current situation coming up....
):
)
