^ I use a NAD 3020A amp for everyday use - it's left powered up 24/7 and has been for the past 26 years - still going strong. The NAD CD player I had didn't last quite so well, just out of warranty when it failed as I recall.
I bought one of these cheap but kitsch 10W Chinese valve amps off Ebay for use in my sun-lounge, it has surprisingly good sound for the money, not stunningly powerful, but adequate when pumped into a pair of Mission 700 bookshelf speakers. Unfortunately no phono-stage, but a battery powered QED phono-amp sorted out that limitation.
...yeah the Blue LEDs under the pentodes is a bit tacky, but that's easily fixed.
I've an Audio Inovations Alto amp and a Cambridge Audio amp too - bought for various reasons and now no longer in use.
Three turntables - a Thorens TD 140 with a TP13 tone arm, a QED RS232E with standard tone arm (kinda cute because it has a ground-glass platter, but it sounds a little flat compared to the Thorens) and a Connoisseur BD1 with another Thorens TP13 tone-arm (great mid-range but not much else - it only has a 10" platter so that's to be expected).
My CD player is actually a £20 DVD player from the local Supermarket - I wear out CD players in a year, whether they are £20 cheapies or £500 mid-range (Micromega Stage 2 - great sound, dreadful reliability), so I don't buy quality any more. (in terms of electronics there's not much difference between a £20 CD player and a £200 one - they all use similar codecs and line amp ICs - any difference in sound is marginal and only of interest to bats and dogs).
And I buy interconnects that are expensive enough to be mechanically reliable - I don't buy them for the "sound" improvement, because there isn't any.
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Catcher10 wrote:
