Which upgrade with £500 to part with?

[The Duke]

I am, as is so of't the case, looking to spend "something" to get a little more.
Thought about spending a max of £500.
I had toyed with cleaning up the mains to my separates.
Borrowed a Transparent power cable (£340?) for the power amp as I have a one on the cd. Good upgrade and noticable.
Then I got to thinking about this item I come across from time to time in the magazines, is it call the Iso...Cube?
Anyhow, you possibly know what I'm on about (<£500), so what do we think?
The other route is to flog the cd player and upgrade there.

Thanks

Tim

cd - Meridian 506 18bit with Trichord 3 upgrade
pre- Audio Research LS7
power - Proceed Amp 2
Interconnects - Transparent (?) about £250 per meter - don't recall their name
Speakers - Martin Logan Aerius i
Speaker cable - Nordst flat line gold and Audio Note something
Hifi rack that cost £650 3 years ago
power lead from Transparent (£240?) and an Audio Note (£100?). The pre is hard wired so no options there.
REL Storm Sub

 

[SKA.face]

What about a Turntable? More discs/records,or even a holiday?

 

[The Duke]

The holiday - Dec 05 I'm afraid.
The LS7 has no phono stage so the budget won't go too far.
I have an old Dunlop System dec2 (?) with Linn Basik arm, but no staorage space and few records, and no sace for said turntable.

Tim

 

[dynamic turtle]

You seem to have almost everything covered there, Duke. Lots of lovely kit. I am jealous!

They only thing (apart from mains conditioning) that seems to be missing from your set-up, is a pair of supertweeters.

You might want to check out the Townsend Maximum Supertweeters (£800), or the Tannoy ST 50's (£600).

It will be difficult placing them on top of the ML's though

If you are interested in mains conditioners, the most highly-recommended unit seems to be the Isotek MiniSub (£500). Haven't ever used one myself, so can't vouch for the difference I'm afraid.

I use home-made filters on most of my kit, which I find is more flexible and a lot cheaper then the pro solutions.

DT

 

[The Duke]

Having a test with the IsoTek £500 jobbie in the next 2 weeks so I'll post up my findings.
One advantage is that it allows up to 6 mains plugs - and since the ML's need power this I believe will cover all bases (cd, pre, power, 2x ML's) better than say singling out just one component. Do all 1/2 way may well bring the music out more into the room.

Will keep you updated!

Thanks

Tim

 

[digisocialist]

Just broswsing your photographs on your website Tim..very good ..why don't you turn that lens to your equipment so we can have a look...

btw..to continue my ramblings on these forums about Analogue being Philosophically the only way.... we see this too at play in the world of Photography. For whilst the Digital age may have given us auto zoom and megapixels... nothing quite beats real film..afterall one does get INFINITE TONE...you know it to be tru!

 

[ukaudiophile]

Hello,

Having a test with the IsoTek £500 jobbie in the next 2 weeks so I'll post up my findings.
One advantage is that it allows up to 6 mains plugs - and since the ML's need power this I believe will cover all bases (cd, pre, power, 2x ML's) better than say singling out just one component. Do all 1/2 way may well bring the music out more into the room.

I can strongly vouch for the effectiveness of mains filtration on Martin Logan speakers. I have the SL-3's and I've also owned a pair of Aerius i's.

There are 3 things these speakers need which aren't mentioned in the excellent Martin Logan manual, the first is an extremely load tollerant amplifier to give their best, you don't want the tail wagging the dog!You seem to have that well covered with the Proceed.

The next is the mains cable, it really needs to be RFI/EMI shielded. i use the Isotek Premium cables, they're £65 for 1.5M but you can get longer lengths quite cheaply, and they lower the noise floor noticeably.

Finally there is the mains itself, you really need some kind of power filtration, as the energisers power supplies have only modest filters, so mains noise can really harm the sound of these speakers. I've been using a SubStation pretty mujch since it came out with an isolation transformer in my SubStation power my ML's. The difference is not small, and whilst the SubStation was expensive, the GII miniSub is even better for half the price.

I'll be interested to hear your experiences with this.

Best wishes,

Dave

 

[The Duke]

This is the set up.
Not ideal as the ML's need space at the rear to breath - but it sounds fine!

Tim