Thanks for sharing your enthusiastic comments about my new, soon to be, system caesar! This will be my last big effort to build a world class room and system. I spent about a year going to shows, doing research, talking to manufacturers, and running around the Eastern half of the USA demoing systems, and ended up with CAT and Vivid.
I've always been a tube guy and CAT was a pretty easy choice. In my current system, I have a pair of their relatively new JL7's, that are sort of like mini-Statements, and they are spectacular. Right now I'm running these with PK Custom Quads and the sound is absolutely fantastic and very emotionally involving. The JL7's also worked great with my Maggie 3.7i's, but with those Quads, its hard to imagine anything much better. I bought the JL7's last year at Axpona after hearing them with the Martens and then hearing a pair of Statements with Magico S5's. I was gonna use the JL7's with the Vivids but could not force myself to separate them from the Quads so I'm keeping my "Planar System" as is and ordered the Statements to go with the Vivids.
Once I settled on CATs for the new system, it was a really tough choice with speakers. I started out in the $60K range and there are a lot of really good speaker options in that price range. I looked into the Avantegardes, the S7's, the Vandersteens, Avalons, Rockports, etc., but what grabbed me about the Vivids was their almost Planar-like sound that I think comes from their amazing speed and retrieval of all the delicate nuances embedded in the music. And that was with the G1's. I haven't even heard the Spirits, but when the Spirits were introduced, my G1's were on order and my dealer, George at Kyomi Audio, let me upgrade for the difference in price. So, I'll have these incredibly powerful but very pure sounding tube amps feeding the Spirits, and hopefully finally find Audio Nirvana, peace, love, and happiness........ I'll let you know in about 2 more months when it all comes together.
PS; Front end for the new system is a TechDas 3 with Graham Elite and Koetsu Blue Lace or the new TechDas cartridge (have both), Artesania rack, CAT Legend preamp, Stealth cables.
