My Hifi Journey

The 4 phases of the hifi syndrome in my life can be catagorised as follows:

The poor student

I have been interested in hifi for as long as I can remember. As a poor university student, I spent much of my time listening to a cheap system in my dorm room.

I was so poor in those days that I lived on a pair of Koss headphones plugged into a Sony cassette player. During my second year at the University, (twas 1982), I had access to the one of the two pioneer CD players: the Sony CDP101. It was a vast improvement over the cassette, but was far behind most turntables of the day. Remember this was the early 80s, and the Linn Sondek LP12 
Ivor's LP12, shown here with the Itokk arm. was King (reigning supreme with the less affordable Goldmund Reference).

The CDP101 was played via a cheap IC Sony integrated amplifier into a pair of $50 Sony speakers. It was nasty, but it made music...at least much better than the $200 mini-systems which began to sprout then, the most popular amongst my peers was the $500 Hitachi TRK5150. 

Now bring out the hifi!

After graduation, I bought the first sensible hifi with my first pay cheque. It was a very modest Technics SLP1100 CD player, a used Thorens 125 turntable with a SME 3009mk2 arm and a Goldring 1040 cartidge. It was plugged into a Rotel pre/power combination (putting out a claimed 75wpc) into a Magneplanar MG1B speaker. Cables were generic.

I later changed the CD player to a Kinergetics player, with a variable volume control. This was used in conjunction with an Adcom GFA555 (200wpc poweramp) and the said Magnepan MG1B. 

The high end!

With more money came more desire. I haunted many of the hifi jaunts in Singapore. And came to know many systems, some of them almost intimately, via friend's and retailers. My favourite retailer, Reference Audio was a constant source of many afternoons spent listening. One of the owners, Simon Lau was the prefect host. Showing me many systems, some of which both he and I knew were out of reach financially.

But this was a great time of growth. I had become a sort of a guru amongst my peers.

After a couple of years, the bug bit me. And this time it bit me hard!

I changed the poweramp for the then new Jadis DA30. This was a little jewel of an integrated amp, Jadis' first. Running on twin 6550 tubes per channel in push-pull Class A mode, it was sweet as can be. But putting out only a meager 30wpc, it ran out of breath pushing the large Maggies.

So out went the large planars, and in came a pair of Ensemble PA1. This was another jewel of a speaker. A mini-monitor, it was very sweet sounding, threw a monstrous soundstage (the Jadis helped), and had a satisfying bass to boot.
 

I then upgraded the Kinergetics for an Esoteric P500 transport, and I used a Wadia X32 DAC.

I already had a great sounding system, but I was not satisfied. I upgraded the speakers to a Wilson WATT-2/Puppy combination, and the amp to the Jadis DP60/Defy7. 

When I first got the Jadis, this was in the the early 90s. And months after I got my Jadis, the Defy 7 was blessed with 4 stars by Harry Pearson of The Abso!ute Sound. 

  

The sound was excellent. The Wilsons had great precision in soundstaging, had wonderful 3D quality in the images. But the sound lacked detail.

So off to the dealer I went, and swapped the Wadia X32 for a X64.4. The details improved, but I longed for more.

And thousands of dollars poorer, I found satisfaction in the Wadia 2000. This was the top of the range processor, running at 64x sampling, and operating with 20bit resolution. It was a 4 piece beauty, one box for the processor and its own hefty power supply, and another piece for a 3in/1 out input device with its own power supply.

Between the 3in/1out input device and the processor itself, Wadia ran glass fiber optics. This broke the ground between the digital source and the processor/analog electronics.

At this stage, the sound was exquisite. Perhaps the only drawbacks (nitpicks are probably more accurate words) were two:
 
  The Wilson Watt/Puppy
  1. The bass of the Puppies (the WATTs had no bass) only extended to about 40Hz. This was partly a factor of the Jadis, whose tubes could not manage to control the rather difficult load the Wilsons were presenting. 

    This was not usually a problem with music, but with video, the lack of punch at the bottom was obvious. 

    To solve this problem was expensive. Adding a WHOW would add the much desired low bass. And changing to a solid state poweramp would probably enhance control of the 1.2 ohm mpedence the Wilsons were presenting.


  2. The highs, above 12kHz, were a little scratchy. At that time, my hearing was still a strong 20kHz, and I could
sometimes be fatigued by the irregular response of the Wilson tweeters.

This often translated to lack of air surrounding the instruments, or lack of shimmer because of missing or exaggerated harmonics. I understand Dave managed to tame this by System V.

Imaging, especially was precise, pin-point and spacious. Images were 3 dimensional, and had good space in between. 

Retirement

After about 2 years on this system, my first child was born. And fearing that his curious fingers may be burnt by the VERY hot Jadis, I began looking around for a more baby friendly system.

I made a complete change from my very mainstream audiophile system of:

Transport  Esoteric P500 
DAC  Wadia 2000 
Preamp  Jadis DP60 with MC phono 
Poweramp  Jadis Defy 7 (100wpc) 
Speakers  Wilson WATT-2 and Puppy 
Cables  XLO Type 4 Ref for digital, Seicor 62.5 fiber optic cable for the Wadia. Purist Audio Collosus for interconnects and speaker cables, including the Puppy Tail. 

Via the very persistent "evangelism" of a Mr. Ken Askew of Alchemedia Systems, I began an exploratory journey into digital. The Meridian system was designed for such an audiophile as I, tired but still insisting on good sound.

It turned the table on the then current trend of what was called ultra-fi, a sort of a cult where followers used small single ended amplifiers of ancient design, with efficient speakers.

The resultant sound, because of the simple signal path, as well as the single ended nature of the amplification, was very seductive. Midrange, especially female vocals were particularly wonderful.

Many manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon. People like Jadis, who had since then been committed to multi-valve parallel amps made single ended 300B amps and 845 amps. Cary Audio, Audio Note, Wellbourne Labs were some luminaries who shone.

But a system designed as a complete whole, pushing the digital concept to its logical conclusion was attractive. Meridian offered such a system.

The signal, coming from a CD was left in digital form until the very last possible moment, being converted to analog only just before the poweramplifiers. The signal leaving the transport would be digitally manipulated for volume, digital crossover (3 way), and DSP applied to compensate for shortcomings of the analog poweramps. DA conversion is separate for each bandwidth, ie the treble had its own DA converter as did the midrange and the woofers. And once the analog signal emerges, it fed the amplifiers who were hard wired to the individual drivers.

In the hands of a good designer, like Bob Stuart, this was a recipe for greatness.

The system now residing in my living room is Meridian Digital Theater System: click on the hypertext to see a picture of some of the components.

Transport  Meridian 500 
Audio Processor  Meridian 565 
DAC  nil. The speakers have built in DAC. 
Preamp  Meridian 562V with MC module 
Poweramp  Built into the speakers 
Main Speakers (LR)  Digital Meridian DSP6000 (self powered with 4 x 75 wpc) 
Center Speaker  Digital Meridian DSP5000C (self powered with 3 x 75w) 
Cables  Meridian mono-crystal silver cables 
Turntable  Rega Planar 2 with AT-OC7 cartridge 
LD Player  Pioneer Elite CLD98 
Video display device (or TV)  Sony VPH1000Q projector, on a Dapper 100" fixed screen 

After installing the system I never once missed my Esoteric/Jadis/Wadia/Wilson system. Read one Corey Greenberg's comments on the system.

Take me home.
This page is created by Peter Chong. Last updated June 20, 1997.