Confession Time: I'm selling my gear and moving on...

Big changes can be completely liberating. I've recently set up a second system downstairs in the open living space based around a pair of Harbeth 30.1s and this is proving a great move. Super easy on the components required to make them sound musically engaging. More genre specific compared to the Maggie 20.7s up in the upstairs room and not as complete and intensive but a lot less demanding of associated gear. Perfect for sharing music with family and friends while living like a normal person rather than tucked away like a hifi hermit.

I love dedicated listening spaces but they can ever so stealthily abduct us into our inner worlds and away from all the people around us and our outer life. Dedicated listening can so easily end up just addictive isolated listening... a periodic retreat is brilliant but if it's just too perfect it's way too easy to build an ideal escape and find it's becomes more a virtual prison.

It's easy to forget that music's purpose has been about sharing an experience through emotion... so a great musically satisfying rig out in a living space that can be enjoyed by others can be magic. Then maybe as spirit suggests a headfi setup (always for me a compromised listening experience) can let you escape occasionally and give you short term respite from the world but never abduct you so completely that you want to do it too often. Ps not sure a €16k SGM server is going to make it to my inexpensive hifi list Marc tho I love the spirit of hi end madness behind the thought.

I've spent the last 18 months sorting and succeeding in a dream move
From London studio loft apartment where my 27x22x13 living space incl lounge/listening/AV was combined w kitchen/dining and bedroom, all open plan
This was a great batchelor pad/space, and guests couldn't help be swept up in listening and the occasional ("too frequent" says my gf LOL) audio swap a/b
I do miss the communal nature of listening and living and sharing

However in retrospect that previous space has been shown to be severely compromised
Shown by my move to the chapel, and my new dedicated space, at 18x55, about 20% bigger than London and acoustically (and power-wise too) so far superior it's a tragi-comedy
But a consequence of fitting out this room is that it's seperate from the main living/entertaining space, and as such I have to make the effort to go there, and my gf and guests are much less likely to venture in that often
So I truly have the space of my dreams, but at the disadvantage I'm more reclusive in the space
To offset this, and a great consequence of living in The Sticks 100 miles from Central London, I'm actively going to ration out my time spent listening alone in the dark
There's a great deal of top quality live classical and jazz, which will mean I get a good reference point for my audio, and be more in the moment enjoying music w my gf (she's not one to sit down in front of any Hifi), and undoubtedly the sounds of living deep in the country w a surplus of bird life around is a great by product of swapping London traffic for the middle of nowhere

Diapason said:

I've been mulling over this for a while, and the simple truth is that I never enter the mancave to sit down and listen to music any more. I still listen to music elsewhere, generally while other things are happening too, but it's been literally months since I fired up even a single track on the "good" system and I can no longer justify the waste of space. The room will shortly be repurposed as a play room for my 2 little girls, and the mancave will be no more.

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Sound's like it could be a wise decision, considering your situation.

But I don't think I could get away with loosing my main system.

I do not like to listen to music while doing some other activity, and besides, none of the music I like is even conducive to listening while doing something else.

spiritofmusic said:

You all need to know that D is coming from a room that has never served him well, and he's made strenuous efforts to get even a half decent sound
Maybe w his switched priorities he's lost the will to keep running up this particular down escalator
My suggestion?
A basic good but inexpensive Hifi for the whole family
SGM server/Dac8 and HiFiMan HE200 'phones for personal listening

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Basic good inexpensive is SGM ???

bonzo75 said:

Basic good inexpensive is SGM ???

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Hey Bonzo,

It's two separate sentences, for two separate systems.

Or it would be, if there was a full stop after "family".

853guy

Ah ok. Either way, get Smyth analyser for headphones, and then you can choose the headphone

Sure SGM is inexpensive
If he wins the lottery or his City bonus comes in

853, my full stops are MIA, hope to find them soon
Oh, there they are... .

Rodney Gold said:

What about getting a top notch headphone system?

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Speaking from experience, I think I could argue getting a top notch headphone system to provide a pleasing experience is often more difficult than setting up a large system in a challenging room. I have no doubt after years of experience with headphones (ten years now) that some sort of DSP is required in order to provide a pleasing result (such as the Smyth mentioned by bonzo75). Last year I auditioned the highest quality Stax ever made - their top of the line electrostatic and top end tube electrostatic driver and was extremely underwhelmed just listening to music "straight". I could have put together a base model Rega RP1 or Apollo-R, a basic Creek amplifier and a pair of Harbeth P3ESR on stands and gotten a far, far better result (for me at least), even in a very compromised room. For my own part, unless I am listening to speech or "turn off" my audiophile brain altogether, I need to apply DSP when listening to headphones. For me, I use my own combination of a specific EQ curve via hardware on an ASUS Xonar soundcard and with Dolby Headphone (again via hardware), since neither of those things alone bring satisfactory results. And I simply cannot tolerate - at all - the lack of a soundstage in front of me without them. After years of experimentation I now get listening results comparable to high end systems even when using Sennheiser's IE800 in-ear (their high end IEM comparable to the high end HD800 full sized series).

In any event, headphone listening requires adaption but then again if you get it right it an be at least as rewarding as a speaker-based system. But I certainly would never consider it to be the "easy way out". If anything, differences in components, cables, isolation, source material become even more stark than they do on higher end speaker systems, such is the potentially low distortion and colouration achievable with headphones and the associated amplification - even when subjecting it to any number of DSP algorithms / devices out there to make them simulate the speaker experience.

I'm fully supportive Diapason. If it isn't fun anymore then that's it. I will however make one prediction. When your little angels hit the terrible 2s and 3s all the way to about the age of 6, you will be wishing you had a room to yourself. Just saying'

NorthStar said:

Don't sell anything! :b

* Improve your soul first. ;-)

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Seems to me he is improving his soul by recognizing the true priorities in his life. I applaud his thoughtfulness ... and clear thinking.

Like him, I don't spend the same amount of time listening in front of my main system either. Streaming music around the house on different devices (computer speakers, Sonos speakers, etc ---- far, far from high end) is now a much larger part of my music listening experience. In fact, I now listen to much more music than previously. And lastly, when not in front of my main system, I no longer even think about the quality of the reproduction, but rather just the music itself. Quite liberating I must add.