Hi Folks-
I'm Don in Austin. I like to listen to music, but I don't have much tolerance for it when it doesn't sound right. Maybe not quite a serious audiophile, but... Once upon a time my system centered around various front ends feeding a Plinius 8200 integrated amp driving a pair of Martin Logan Sequels (the first generation, not Sequel IIs) which I've had since 1988 and which I last replaced the panels in about a decade ago.
That was a nice sounding system, but in the meantime Home Theater has taken over my living room, so I've ended up using the speakers in a makeshift HT system driven by various Japanese mid-fi HT receivers. Not really good for music. I've still got the Plinius, it still sounds good, but I'm not using it with the HT stuff. Now I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too by finding some gear that does 2 channel well and multi channel HT well enough. I've been looking at Emotiva XPS-1 and an XPA Gen 3 amp, that looks like it might do well without bankrupting me based on commentary I've seen while lurking on various forums.
And then there are the speakers. I love the sound of electrostatic speakers, but mine have conventional woofers with a very early (and old) ML crossover at 125hz. The later Sequel IIs (my current panels are Sequel II panels) cross over at 250, and from what I'm hearing that was probably a better decision. I've ordered a UMIK-1 and have started learning REW so I can figure out what's going on in detail. This has started up an old itch to design and build my own speakers, and maybe upgrade the MLs, and there's a huge wealth of information here and elsewhere about that. And not only information, it's pretty clear that the community that share these interests (you) are really great people, so I'm looking forward to being a part of it.
