Thanks for the encouragement, Al, Ray and Pierre. The deep geekery on gear has become a passion, and listening has taken me to some transcendent places.

Ray, I don't have any Fela. I've delved into the genre by way of Pandora. It was seeing Thomas Mapfumo at a local coffehouse that hooked me.

Lapierre, I've got a cheap 20a outlet on the dedicated line. Room for improvement? Tell me about your experience. I've heard some Yellowjackets, but they've seemed a little too smooth and polished for my tastes. Great musicians to be sure! Will revisit them upon your recommendation.

Next direction is already in the house: Zu Omen fullrangers. They're just reaching break-in now at around 300 hours, and it's been 2 steps forward, 1 step back so far in terms of placement. I've got great tone and dynamics now, but the imaging isn't there yet; the speakers have yet to disappear and allow for precise placement of instruments within the soundstage. Pictures to come!

cymbop January 14, 2012 23:26

I'm very happy with the integration. Because the subs are crossed at 45 Hz, they mostly supply room ambience and kick-drum impact. I've thoroughly experimented with placement and in the end I like the subs just a few inches behind the face of the MBS-1s.

cymbop October 31, 2011 12:57

I bought the speakers a year ago as I was just falling in love with audio. I suppose they're now the weak link in my system, but at the end of the day I can't complain about them as ~1K monitors. Aside from the fact that the Jungson cabinet is a shameless rip-off of Sonus Faber, the MBS-1s are fine speakers. I like that the silk-dome tweeter isn't hard or glaring, I like that the mids are fleshy but articulate, and I like that the bass goes reasonably deep but rolls itself off gracefully. The cabinet port is well-tuned to go as deep as cabinet and driver size permit, without resorting to port-chuff or one-note bass. I run full-range signal to the speakers and the subs, and the subs sound best when low-passed at 45 Hz. The next notch up on the low-pass is 60 Hz, and at that setting the sub overlaps with the MBS-1 and muddies the low-end considerably.

cymbop October 14, 2011 14:15

System edited: It's been a while since the last update. I Tried and returned the Benchmark DAC1-HRD. Too bright, too brittle. Very happy now with a Wyred4Sound DAC2. I also built a music server. Vortexbox Appliance is a 2TB auto-ripping NAS that is hardwired to a Squeezebox touch with Soundcheck mods to disable analog outputs and wireless receiver, reduce buffer size, and perform flac decoding at Vortexbox Appliance. Most nights, I reach the point of forgetting about equipment and just listening to music.

cymbop October 12, 2011 19:40

Edit to add that most of my listening is in the Jazz and Rock genres with occasional forays into Afropop, Brazilian, indie-hipster, Americana, old reggae and soul, and classical. Another endeavor for the future is to set up a music server, probably based around a Squeezebox Touch interface.

cymbop January 20, 2011 17:47