Should I be embarrassed to admit that there had been a GF during my hot house upgrading/spending period that wagged her finger at me, whom I showed the door. No one was going to get btwn me and my ever depleting bank balance LOL. I was in maximum spending/chasing my tail mode.
Fortunately I started making some more informed decisions around 2012, finally nailing the kind of sound that most suited me, and got more out of modding current components than just buying the next best/pricier thing, eeking out maxumum performance w tweaks/system optimisation, initially grounding, then balanced power, the right cables, and vibration isolation that worked rather than merely promised.
This period of 2012-2015 coincided with the system signature I still have in 2018, current muse Ra looking at me wondering about my sanity, but critically not getting in the way of how I throw my cash about (just shaking her head in disbelief repeatedly LOL).
However our move to the chapel feels like getting married, having six kids, looking after older relatives, needing to find medical bills, all at the same time, and I realised that I would have to rein in purely personal spending in this hobby.
In other circumstances this would have been a negative stress, but one, the chapel is so personal to us, I feel great about diverting funds to her, and two, critically I’d got the system signature sound to my liking, and now the once in a lifetime opportunity of getting something like a perfect listening space became possible.
Now I had a choice/dilemma/stab in the dark.
The main space, 35x30x20 (useable 27x22x20)? Hmm, maybe, highly tempting, but Ra does not want to listen to my objectionable genres, the cats would love my cables and burning hot tubes, and I would need so much acoustic treatments that all the architectural features would be obliterated by bland panels. NO GO.
The spare bedroom, 18x13x10, well out of the way, and maybe easier to make sound right, but was I really going to swap my batchelor pad audio lair in London for a space only 25% the size? NO GO.
Final option, the loft space. Now I have the potential for same floor area as in London, out of Ra’s way, the ability to get a symmetrical layout for the system. But it did mean spending a stack of cash to carve it out, the same money I’d have spent on components upgrades to gear back in London.
I looked at Mike Lavigne’s, JFrech’s etc rooms, all the other guys who said they were going to get THE space, and decided to take the punt. GO.
Well, I like my system signature, who knows, maybe it’ll sound better up there than back in London. Or I have bought myself a White Elephant.
Fast fwd 9 months of stress, moving in, setting up roughly, switching on, and listening with absolute bated breath/high anxiety...and Ra will tell you I ran down w the biggest smile on my face! Fast fwd another 15 months, and I set up this thread...
