Well not quite the Dismal Swamp, Norfolk Virginia where I'm a retired moocher and recovering modeling and simulation engineer noodling around with HiFi since 1967 when I built a couple of Dynacos to go with an AR turntable and AR-4's. Today's rig includes a Parasound P5 preamp, GAS Ampzilla, Dhalquist DQ-10's, Schiit Gumby Multibit, and Cambridge Audio tuner and disk player. The system includes a HiFiberry Digi+ and Roon Labs Roon running on a Ubuntu LTS Mac Mini with media on a FreeNAS Frankenstein server.
Gumby is new to the rig (2 weeks or so) and we've fallen in love. Jason Stoddard and Mike Mason have been to The Crossroads, no Schiit. Somewhere along the way, I stumbled across Spatial and M4's. I love the Dhalquists which have been with me 50 years, Ampzilla about 54. I'm toying with retiring the Dhalquists but they're sounding positively amazing with Gumby rendering digital music. A local pro audio shop replaced the woofer surrounds back in 1996 and they're still going strong. Not known for bass, they have been impressive with Gumby. Koto's Mondo Head was stunning with Gumby and the P5.
I have about 650 titles from media in Roon and a similar number of Tidal albums in Roon. Music starts out as Tidal, from there to the Wish List, and media for XLD transfer to FLAC. Also part of the system is the house Ethernet LAN with Ubiquity UniFi switches and router and Netgear Orbi in access point mode.
Two retired greyhounds are the resident music critics. They think Snarky Puppy is the house band, Live From Here is the house radio program, and they like post-bop jazz with Justin Kauflin, Joey Alexander, Jacob Collier, Punch Brothers, Jan Gabarek, Stanley Clark, Victor Wooten, and the Puppies in heavy rotation at the moment. Gumby manages to find space in most anything, even ancient electric blues like Best of the Blues Project. Gumby has a special talent for making jazz piano sparkle and magic happens on Thile-Mehldau's Scarlet Town.
Dogs have their own Twitter handles @NickGreyhound1 and @MissyGreyhound and hang out with #HoundsOfTwitter with the greyhounds, deerhounds, and lurchers, and #ZSHQ with the terriers. Dog Twitter is great fun.
