Welcome to the sixteenth installment of our Meet the Audiophile Style Community series. All previous installments can be found here, in the series index.
Please send me a message, email, or telegram if you'd like to participate. The response so far has been wonderful. It ranges from hardcore audiophiles to those who are more interested in numbers and graphs, and even people in the industry are eager to participate. This series is all about getting to know everyone and sharing a bit about yourself that others will find interesting.
Thanks for participating. I look forward to publishing more of these in the coming weeks and months.
Thanks to Audiophile Style community member @marioed for participating in volume sixteen of this series. As always, I love reading this stuff even more than publishing it. I say to myself after reading each one of these, you guys are so much more interesting than me.
1. General area of the world in which you live?
Northern Virginia in the USA
2. General description of what you do or did for a living?
Currently retired; For the previous 25 years I taught mathematics, geology & physics at a High School level. Prior to teaching I worked as a geologist for a museum & a mining company.
3. What are your hobbies?
Playing music on string instruments, primarily guitar, building acoustic guitars and general woodworking.
4. When did you start this wonderful journey into music listening?
Sometime in the 1950’s I don’t remember a time without music; my mom liked to listen to swing & classical music on the radio & dad liked swing and bluegrass. One of my sisters was into the folk revival and another was into the British Invasion so there was always some type of music playing when I grew up.
5. What was your first “album?"
It was either “The Doors” or Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow”.
6. What does your music collection look like, number of physical records, CDs, etc... and number of “favorited” albums streamed?
At the moment all of my music is on hard drive, 5221 albums. Probably about 3700 of those are ripped from cd, 400 or so are transferred from lp or tape. The rest are digital downloads. The cd’s are in storage, I sold my lp’s & turntable sometime around 2003. I still have maybe another 250 tapes to transfer to digital.
7. What was your first audio component / stereo?
My first component was an all in one turntable, amp & mono speaker probably from Sears or Montgomery Wards. My first stereo was a Garrard turntable with a Radio Shack stereo receiver & Radio Shack bookshelf speakers.
8. Is there one component that you no longer have that you wish you wouldn’t have sold or that you wish you still had?
A pair of Klipsch Forte speakers. Damn those were nice speakers.
9. Is there one current component that you wish you had in your system?
A Decware CSP 3 preamp/headphone amp.
10. How much time do you spend listening to music each week and on which systems does this listening take place (main system, car system, mobile system, office system, etc...)?
Hmm, probably 25-35 hours a week. Most of that is through my Decware SE84ufo Zen triode amp into Omega Junior 8xrs speakers.
11. What’s the first concert you ever attended, best concert you’ve ever attended, most interesting concert venue you’ve ever attended?
First rock concert was Jimi Hendrix in DC. My dad used to take me to bluegrass shows in the DC area when I was growing up & I don’t remember the first time. DC was kind of the bluegrass capitol in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. Best concert is hard to say, I’ve seen a lot of great ones. Some of them would be the Grateful Dead at Red Rocks in Colorado, Bruce Springsteen in a bar near Ocean City Md, Charlie Byrd at his club in DC, Jimmy Buffett solo at a bar in Richmond Va in the early 70’s, Stanley Clarke at The Birchmere in Alexandria Va. Tony Rice at The Birchmere. Pat Metheny at The Birchmere. Heck pretty much everybody at the Birchmere, it’s a great venue. Joe Pass at a club in DC in the 70’s. Stephane Grappelli at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, The Allman Brothers in the late 70’s at a little club in Fort Collins Co. New Grass Revival at a bar in Crested Butte Co. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet band at Jiffy Lube Live in Manassas Va. The two most interesting venues for me are Red Rocks outside Denver CO and The Birchmere in Alexandria VA. The Birchmere is the best listening venue I’ve been to and Red Rocks is the most dramatic. My wife and I usually go to at least two concerts a month.
12. What components are in your current audio systems?
Ok, my systems. To start I’ve been using Roon for 3 years & subscribe to Qobuz. Prior to that I was using J River. I’m using an Intel nuc i5 with Roon Rock as the source for all my systems.
The Decware setup that I listen to most is a Sonore Ultrarendu > Chord Qutest dac > Jolida Foz SS-X > Decware SE84 ufo super zen triode amp > Omega Junior 8xrs Speakers. For cables the ethernet is a Supra, the usb is a Curious Cable, the ic’s are Decware silver reference and the speaker cables are Audience ohno iii.
I have a second system that uses a modified intel nuc I5 running Windows 10 with Roon & HQplayer as a server into a Wyred 4 Sound Reclocker into a W4S Dac1 le via Shunyata venom usb cable The rca outputs from the dac go to a modified Jolida JD102B integrated amp via Morrow ma3 ic’s which goes to a pair of Focal Chorus 716v speakers via Morrow sp4 sc’s. The balanced outputs from the W4S dac go to a Crown xls 1002 amp with the low pass filter set at 100Hz via Wireworld oasis xlr’s. The Crown is connected to a pair of Caintuck Audio Alpha 15” open baffle sub’s via Kimber Kable 8pr sc’s.
My office system is using a pc into a W4S Reclocker into a Teac ud-301 dac into Adam A5X monitors. The usb cable is a Shunyata venom and the ic’s are Wireworld oasis xlr’s.
13. Anything else you’d like to say?
I play music for fun and I‘ve enjoyed listenIng to music for over 60 years. I’ve heard great guitarists make cheap instruments sound wonderful and bad guitarists make a $10,000 guitar sound like crap. Enjoy the music with whatever equipment you’ve got.
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now