[BullBuchanan]

Hey Everyone,

I've been aboard this train for about 8 years or so. I don't consider myself a traditional audiophile in the sense that I'm really a chaser of price to performance and riding that point of diminishing returns. For years, I listened to music via cheap Home Theater in a Box setups, boomboxes, and old stock car speakers. One day youtube threw me down a rabbit hole and that day I pulled the trigger on a gently used pair of Grado Sr80s. I was blown away, but the pleasure didn't last for 2 days until I bought a used pair of Audio Technica AD900s at a scream of a price point and that's where the journey really began. Shortly thereafter my collection of 128kb MP3s went in the recycling bin and I started chasing quality sound, discovering new music, and rediscovering music I already knew in a completely new way.

Being that I've never owned my own house, owning a "proper" two channel system was a luxury that really never made sense, so my livingroom setups have largely been home theater solutions first and music second. A year or so listening to headphones and researching speakers put my on an impossibly priced Jamo s 606 hcs3 home theater setup that absolutely sang compared to the far higher priced offerings I heard at the big box stores. All the while speakers were coming in and out of the house as I repaired and flipped them to keep myself funded in the hobby and I happened on some JBL Studio 190s that sent me on a journey to collect the rest of the home theater. Fast forward 7 years or so, and they're still serving me today, though I think the time for their departure to a more loving home has come.

I've since been through a torrent of headphones and gear, with my main rig now being a set of Focal Clears into an EL DAC and THX AAA 789 amp. After hearing how flawlessly this setup reproduces acoustic music, I have a hard time believing that a material upgrade can be made without a truly massive increase in money. That takes me full circle to trying to achieve that same level of performance at the precipice of diminishing returns for my livingroom setup. From what I've been reading, open baffle seems the likely route here, but time will tell.

Anyway, thanks for having me, and I hope to learn a lot form the content here!

Setup
Livingroom: Pioneer Elite - JBL Studio 190 series F/C/R - Polk HTS 12
Headphones: Focal Clear Pro / HIFIMAN 4XX - EL DAC - THX AAA 789
Office Monitors: Edifier S2000 Pro

Music
Irish/Scottish/English/Canadian/American Folk & folk pop/rock, Americana & Country, 90's alternative, 90's punk, Mark Knopfler, Lindsey Sterling

[ArthurDent]

Greetings & Welcome to AC  Bull    

[marvda1]

Welcome, Texas is a big state, where are you located in Texas?

[BullBuchanan]

Welcome, Texas is a big state, where are you located in Texas?

Austin

[JLM]

Welcome!

You'd be wrong to assume most audiophiles aren't chasing value, whatever that means to them (price, sound quality, etc.).

You're right, most audiophiles, whether they have freestanding houses or not, don't provide a good environment for in-room listening for a variety of reasons.  Recommend reading Floyd Toole's "Sound Reproduction" (either/both editions) to learn how loudspeakers and subwoofers behave in-room.  Toole is perhaps the world's most respected acoustician.  He teaches first to go after good loudspeakers, ones that measure well using leading edge technology and trained double blind comparative testing (something almost no one does).  Secondly to have a good room (not tiny or squarish, and well insulated) that is equipped with carefully placed multiple subwoofers to tame inherent bass peaks/dips, as the ideal locations to generate mids/treble is opposite that of where to produce bass from.

Leading thinkers don't do open baffle, instead they do monitors, and acknowledge the advantages of active designs as used almost exclusively where your pre-recorded music is produced. 

[FullRangeMan]

Welcome

[Reynolds853]

I appreciated how you list a bunch of genres... and then Mark Knopfler. 

[BullBuchanan]

I appreciated how you list a bunch of genres... and then Mark Knopfler.

Because the man is deserving of his own genre A legend in every sense.

[Phil A]

Welcome to AC!