Hi everyone,
Been lurking here for quite some time. Found you guys from my AC VMPS hangout a while ago - mostly lurked there too. The short story is all my gear was lost in a fire and having to start over. Can't get my Hafler DH500 nor VMPS Tower IIs back and certainly not at the cost those were back 18 or so years ago. We really liked the sound of our old Hafler and we found it worked very well with those Tower IIs in our 5000+ cuft rooms. For all those years we never got that sense of needing more or what others might have perceived as "better". After all my searches for a DH500 replacement found nothing but beat up abused equipment I had no choice but to set out to find a reasonably priced replacement that followed many of the paths of such an amp - power, ruggedness, simplicity, great value, affordable, etc...
It started with reading and finding Frank was very familiar with Hafler amps and even had some level of appreciation for it, at least for that era of Hafler equipment back then. I even went through all those old Audio Basic Newsletters. When I spoke with Frank a few months ago it was no surprise his greater appreciation of his own developments, he's been making successful advancements for decades and has every justification to be proud. I found confidence that if he saw that old Hafler gear was good enough to improve, he's most likely following the kind of sound I like. And just like that DH500 I get to allocate our money on muscle, bone, and guts, not makeup

So that pristine condition gear (we take great care of our stuff!) lost is being replaced with a new Synergy 450 and Insight+ EC to power a pair of Legacy Audio Signature SEs. Not sure if insurance ever contacted Frank like I know they did Legacy Audio, but if they did he obviously did for my wife and me every bit of solid effort to get their acceptance to allow the Synergy 450 as replacement.
I contacted Legacy Audio for help in deciding my amp and chose the Synergy amp based on their belief that their Signature tends to perform better with solid state gear - score luck for us in cost over the 600R - money's tight right now with all that's going on after the fire. I really want to try the Transcendence preamp but just can't get there financially. I kept watching for a used one with remote that might drop into our affordability but can't hang out for hope of one forever. So we decided on the Insight+ EC. Even that was a bit of a stretch for us but my wife is practical from the stand point that we take great care of our equipment and expect it to last the rest of our lives just as we did our past Hafler/VMPS configuration. While we won't be thinking about the extra couple hundred dollars spent over insurance reimbursement years from now, a few hundred further above that is beyond fingertip range. hmmmm.... I sound like I'm expecting less than satisfaction for the Insight - nope - not at all! That Insight+ is expected to be light years ahead in quality, performance, and our satisfaction over the old Adcom preamp we had

I'm just itching to experience a tube preamp. If I were a cat I'd be dead
I was trying to stretch it out there for a pair of 95db efficient Focus HD or SEs because our new room is expected to be in that 6000+ cuft range but my better half put the stop to that. She figured the Signatures will be about as big as she can accept in the room. That's alright though, I believe they'll perform admirably powered by 225 AVA watts/channel for all our 2 channel music and movie duties, even at the devilish levels I push on occasion when I get a hankerin to rock out to the extreme.
Is an interesting discussion on cables in a recent thread. We were using basic AudioQuest Evergreen and Golden Gate interconnects before and got some of those back already in my "get us by " system. Haven't finalized speaker cable decision though. We had super basic old 12ga multistrand cables but I could see they were oxidizing pretty bad the full length under the clear insulation. Wasn't doing myself any service slackin on replacement but guess I they would have gone up in smoke anyway. Sure are a lot of interesting views on speaker cables and biwire or not. I guess I tend to fall in the simple camp of staying one gauge larger than I think I need and I'm content to concern myself with more important matters like making my next sandwich

I may experiment with biwiring though. Nothing like
seeing hearing for one's self. If I don't appreciate a difference, no harm, no foul, I can just double the wires at the speaker end too for a single large gauge cable start to finish.
Anticipation is running high. Guessing I have another couple weeks or so for the AVA and about another 4 weeks for the speakers.
Andy