Sound + Art

It happens to every man at some point in his life. And while it can be worrisome, it's also perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of. All you did was outgrow your stereo. But now that your ears have matured and it's painful to listen to Mahler's Third Symphony or Shellac's At Action Park through that tinny, pumped-up, artificial-sounding insult on your shelf, you're worried. Worried that you'll have to drop six figures on your next system to be satisfied. Well, there's something you should know: High-end audio equipment doesn't need to be insanely expensive. Regular old expensive will do just fine. In other words, yes, you have to drop some dough, but as Richard Hardesty, editor of Audio Perfectionist Journal (audio Perfectionist.com), puts it, "you don't need to take out a second mortgage to afford a high-quality stereo. The highest price tags are seldom an indicator of the highest quality." Just don't try explaining that to the staff at most audiophile snob shops, whose sole mission is to make sure you walk out the door significantly lighter than when you walked in. What they won't tell you is that you can get 90 percent of the sound quality for a tenth of what they'd like to fleece you for. Put it this way: The system we've assembled here costs around $20,000, and it's a steal. We'd put it up against a typical $200,000 setup without thinking twice.

Turntable Vinyl is the original high-resolution audio format, but decks from a top manufacturer such as Clear-audio can approach $20,000. Leave them to the people who believe price equals quality, and pick up Avid's Diva for $2,500. A spring-suspension system, a heavy platter, an outboard motor and a plinthless design help this table sound as clean and dynamic as any digital source but with analog's rhythmic thrust and superior imaging. Your King Tubby dub plates will never sound the same again.

CD Player Any stereo has to play today's most popular format, the CD, and decent playback makes a huge difference. There are stupefying values in today's market—$300 units that'll play CDs, DVDs and MP3s and then run to the store to buy smokes for you. But be strong. It's a digital format, but what comes out of the back of the player is all analog. The conversion between the two is what separates the harsh reproduction of mass-market players from the natural sound of the premium set. The smart money's on Arcam's Full Metal Jacket CD 33 upsampling CD player ($2,500), with a damped chassis (to absorb vibrations), dual nonswitching power supplies and excellent filtering in the digital-analog conversion. Trust us, you'll hear the difference by the end of the first note.

Amplification The amp is the easiest place to skimp and the most crucial area not to. Typical home theater receivers feature everything from surround sound to synthetically altered speaker output that can make them sound like the Royal Albert Hall. Fun, but none of it is musically accurate. These boxes are exercises in extreme compromise. Your first step toward enlightenment is upgrading to a separate preamp and power amp. Start with a preamp that has analog gain (digital gain controls toss away bits of the digital stream at lower volumes). You can pay up to $15,000 for one of these, but you'll be just as happy with Rogue Audio's $2,500 Magnum 99 tube preamp. The tubes will lend magic to your music while remaining true to the original signal, and the 99 provides amazing separation of instruments in the stereo image. For your power amp, you're looking for large, clean and stable power reserves. Monoblock amps devote a separately housed amplifier to each channel, and Rogue Audio's M-150 mono-block tube amps glow with a calm power, unafraid of all but the most extreme speaker loads (they can push up to 150 watts each). Price: $4,000 for the pair.

Speakers They're the most important part of a stereo, yet the vast majority of speakers on the market today—from a $200 bookshelf pair to $40,000 floor standers—fail to accomplish the fundamental duty of all audio equipment: making the output signal match the input signal. That means reproducing the frequency, timing and amplitude of the original sound. And while most speakers get frequency and amplitude right, only three manufacturers manage to nail time coherence: Vandersteen Audio, Thiel and Meadowlark Audio. We went with Meadowlark's Kestrel 2 for its musicality, beauty and value. Two grand a pair buys you sloped baffles, first-order crossovers, high-quality drivers and an excellent transmission-line bass-loading design. They'll all but let you hear the sound of fingerprints drying on a fret board.

Subwoofer Your subwoofer should be neither seen nor heard. Its only job is to pick up where your loudspeakers roll off. Meadowlark's new Blackbird subwoofer ($2,500) fills in the Kestrel 2's bottom octave with bass that gives your music a solid, self-effacing floor to stand on. Its 1,000-watt amp is isolated in a subenclosure apart from the rest of the box's electronics, and its 10-inch-long throw woofer has real extension down to 20 hertz. If you're sick of slurred, boomy bass that drags, then the Blackbird is your drug of choice.

Interconnects and Mounting Listening to this setup through a bunch of old thin wires is like making a frozen margarita with Patrón Platinum. You're paying an awful lot of money for something you won't even taste. We used AudioQuest's Cheetah interconnects ($2,100 for 2.5 meters) between the CD player, preamp and amps. The Kestrel 2 speakers receive their signal through AudioQuest Mont Blanc speaker cable ($1,400 for a pair of eight-footers). To stabilize everything, we placed the turntable, CD player and preamp on a SolidSteel 6.3 three-shelf equipment stand ($1,000). The monoblocks went on SolidSteel's Model B amplifier stands ($300 in silver). Finally, for clean power, we used PS Audio's xStream Prelude AC line ($129) plugged into a PS Audio Juice Bar outlet strip ($200).

Moment of Truth After 45 minutes of switching on the components in sequence and waiting for them to warm up, the stereo was alive (Aliiive! Sorry). We played the Pixies' Surfer Rosa on LP, followed by Harnoncourt's version of Mozart's Requiem on CD. Somewhere in there we lost track of time. By three A.M. we had come to a shocking conclusion: This system sounds really good. And it will last decades. All you'll have to worry about now is your electricity bill and your friends' sudden unwillingness to vacate your couch.

Analog Rules

Vinyl's glorious second act

Reports of the LP's death have been greatly exaggerated. Fact is, the format never went away (it just got a little sleepy). At this point it's probably easier to find your favorite albums on new 180-gram pressings than to wait for the major labels to release them in either of the leading high-definition digital audio formats (DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD). And in terms of emotional punch, nothing can compare.

The Damage

Avid Diva turntable.......... $2,500

Arcam CD 33 player........... $2,500

Rogue Audio Magnum 99 preamp.......... $2,500

Rogue Audio M-150 monoblock amps (2)........ $4,000

Meadowlark Audio Kestrel 2 speakers......... $2,000

Meadowlark Audio Blackbird subwoofer........ $2,500

SolidSteel 6.3 audio rack..... $1,000

SolidSteel amp stands (2)..... $600

AudioQuest Cheetah interconnects............. $2,100

AudioQuest Mont Blanc speaker cable.......... $1,400

PS Audio xStream Prelude AC line (six)....... $774

PS Audio Juice Bar power strip.......... $200

Total $22,074

Timing and Phase

Most speakers contain three separate drivers for handling music's highs, middles and lows. But since the three propagate sound differently, they need to travel varied distances for their sound waves to reach your ears as one. Waves arriving slightly out of sync with one another lack what's called timing coherence. Bad timing kills your sense of where each instrument is located, and because your brain must compensate you experience "listening fatigue." Buying phase-correct speakers (such as the Kestrel 2s we recommend) will let you enjoy your music longer and hear each part more clearly and distinctly.

Where and how to buy on page 147.