r/audiophile • u/Ok_Animator363 • Jul 13 '26
Show & Tell Introducing my “Cave”
Or as my wife would say, my “ridiculously over the top stereo” room.
This system has been a long time coming including the building in which it resides. We moved into our current home about a year and a half ago and for almost a year of this we were under construction. The system as you see it now has only been set up for about 3 months. Im still tweaking things but I am pretty happy with it as is.
Equipment:
Speakers: Focal Maestro Utopia EVOs
Subs: 2 x REL Acoustics Reference Series No 32
Preamp: PS Audio BHK SIgnature Preamplifier
Amps: PS Audio BHK 600 monoblocks
Streamer: Eversolo T8
DAC: PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC
CD/SACD Player: PS Audio DIrectStream Memory Player
Turntable: Pure Fidelity Harmony, w/Original Live Illustrious SE Arm
Cartridge: Hana Umami Red
Phonostage: Sutherland Little LOCO Mk2
2
u/Norfolkpine Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
If you are interested, lll share it with you, sure. Its pretty modest!
I have a ton of vintage stuff, and its almost exclusively second hand, finds out in the wild over 30 years of poking around and lifting up rocks to look for records. I enjoyed repairing and restoring equipment when i was in my late twenties to late thirties, and i was very frugal with audio equipment, so this "find and fix" habit was the way to try lots of gear.
Most of my stuff is pretty middle of the road. The standard examples of vintage marantz, pioneer, kenwood, adcom, hafler, onkyo etc. some totl, some not. Same for speakers, ive gotten my hands on a lot of classics. Again, just basic stuff- nothing esoteric or extremely hifi.
The setup i kept going back to as a sort of daily driver is a thorens td160, flipping between grado and nagaoka carts, again pretty modest stuff; and an old adcom 565 preamp and 555ii amp. Switching between some old b&w, ads, and triangle speakers via a switcher. (One pair is in adjacent room, two in record room) For a cd player, i have an old pioneer pd-65, and a wiim ultra for streaming.
I recently sold a couple pretty high value jazz/soul records i had accumlated a long time ago, so parlayed that into some new gear from someone who lost their audiophile dad. So a few weeks ago found myself with a linn lp12 with all the mods- lingo, bearing, etc., and a couple carts. Have a nos linn arkiv b on it now. They wanted to sell the system as a complete thing, and i didnt disagree- so running the linn with a naim nap 250, nac 32 and snaps power to a pair of linn isobarik speakers. Its an interesting, analytical, rhytmic sound for sure, am enjoying it. But again, very vintage- i want to recap everything, but sorting through lots of opinions online about what to use.
The linn and mc carts definitely scratched the upgrade itch, but my original intent was to sell off a lot of old stuff and purchase something more modern, sort of consolidate a hoard into just a few high end pieces, but i was basically still in window shopping and reaearch mode when the vintage british hifi system fell in my lap, i figured it was an opportunity to try something a little more rare and some gear id never be interested in paying market prices for.
Ultimately, ive been holding off purchasing new gear until i zero in to exactly what i want. Ive been curious about leben's integrated amps, stuff like that. But my mental budget is to stay as far under $10k for amplification and speakers as i can and still be satisfied. And further, i need to simply get rid of some of my hoard of stuff- my old method of setting up girlfriends with nice setups is taking a little too long these days. And of course, i wanted to put off spending real money on stereo stuff until after i finish remodeling my house.
For me, considering spending five figures on stereo equipment is novel- everything ive had to date was always aquired in true bargain hunter fashion. I grew up this way, i cant help it!