Hi folks. Rus here, from Houston, Tx.
My intro to quality sound equipment started off in the mid-80's as I was leaving high school in Cape Town, South Africa. I worked at a hifi consulting/fab shop... it was a lot of fun, toiling over sweltering irons , the smell of flux in the air...
I was introduced to all sorts of gear... studio desks, Tascam, Fostex & Revox decks, Yamaha & B&W Studio Monitors, Quad G.A.S, and some bespoke installations that I now recognize as line-array/infinite baffle installations with custom-made amps & control systems. Reading about speaker design (Thiel, et al), drooling over Carver and Pass designs, etc. Lots of fun.
On one of our group excursions, some colleagues and I wiggled our way in to a high-end hifi show in Cape Town. That where I first encountered Conrad Johnson, Krell, Martin Logan... I literally found myself stroking the satin-smooth oak trim of what was probably a ML Quest or Request speaker, promising myself "Some day, I too shall own some of these...". In the meantime, I was ecstatically happy with a pair of Kef Cadenzas powered by a Quad 33/303 combo, fed by a Thorens TD120 (I think) with an SME MkIII arm, Aiwa ADF770 ad a no-name CD Player, in an off-campus 3-bedroom apartment, shared with a couple of other future drop-outs! We had devised a new religion... TMB (Tea, Music & Bed)... such simpler times!
Roll the clock forward almost 2 decades, and after operating as a freelance IT consultant for a while, and landing up in Houston, I DID, in fact, start on my quest with a pair of ML Aerius speakers. Rapidly spiraled down the upgrade rabbit hole into solid amplification (Lexicon NT512/Bryston 9B-ST), upgraded speakers (ML SL3), Bryston 4B NRB, Bryston 4B-ST, couple of Bryston Powerpacs, Anthem AVM 2 Pre/Pro (which became an AVM 50v), etc.
But the fun couldn't last... got married, the 10-year-startup I was working on was gasping for breath, my Barco projector had died, so I mothballed everything that I didn't sell, went with a one-box solution from Anthem (MRX 500) and some way-old Kef speakers (RDM 2's), and just coasted for several years. Had a kid, got divorced, yadda, yadda, yadda. Now I'm in another startup, have my 9-yr old with me 50% of the time and want to start re-animating and sharing my love for music with my kid.
Blew the dust off a couple of aging Bryston amps (4B NRB & 4B-ST in Lexicon colors), the Anthem AVM 50, Kef RDMs, Earthquake Supernova 12 sub, started assembling it all. Have some issues with the amps I need to sort out. 3 of the 7 RDM 2's I have are OK... the others all need Ferro-fluid replacement, and a couple need re-coning (if anyone knows of a place I can ship Kef drivers to for that work, please let me know).
Looking forward to getting elbows-deep into AV again.. it's great starting to feel that enthusiasm for all things audio welling up inside again!
Thanks for the (conditional?) add!
Russ
