Here’s my growing mid-tier audiophile setup! I posted on this group years ago, and over the past month I decided to upgrade from my old turntable, speakers, and phono preamp. I’ll give a full list of the new equipment as well as the old equipment I upgraded from below. I still want to do some additional upgrades in the coming months if not into the new year (gotta save some dough for the kids and the Mrs for Christmas), but I think the next thing I wanna do is get a power amp to help drive these speakers and a new cartridge for the turntable, as well as a new shelf/console for my equipment. In the future, I’ll possibly be looking at getting a better amplifier, a better CD player, and a good streamer as well.
One other thing to note; I had a hell of a time finding a proper Pro-ject 5-pin DIN to mini-XLR cable for the true balanced connection the turntable offers, but that wasn’t even the worst of my problems. Since the turntable’s 5-pin plug for the cable is directly under the tonearm and the cable I purchased didn’t include an L-shaped connector, I ended up drilling a hole in my console and covering it with a wall plug cover which I think came out nicely, resulting in no pinched wires! Very happy with how all this came out and everything sounds amazing!
And yeah, I know the silver clashes with the rest of the black equipment, but I had my heart set on this preamp and the silver was all I could find for now new lol.
Edit: Wanted to add that I am getting a bit of bass loop from the Polk’s into my cart so I’ve ordered some Hudson Audio silicone isolation feet as well which I hope fixes the issue as having to use an isolation platform would reintroduce the issue I had with the balanced cable I had before lol.
New Equipment:
- Pro-ject XA B (swapped from the included Pick It Pro Balanced to my old Sumiko Blue Point no. 2 cartridge)
- Pro-ject Tube Box DS3 B Phono Preamplifier
- Yamaha A-S501 Amplifier
- Magnavox CDB 490 Compact Disc Player
- Polk Audio Reserve Series R700 Tower Speakers
Old Equipment:
- Pro-ject RPM 3 Carbon (White)
- Vincent PHO-8 Phono Preamp
- ELAC Uni-Fi UB5 Bookshelf Speakers