Study System - Stage 1 of build

A 70 year old knee has put a temporary halt on the rack build, but the basic system is in place.

The study is not a large room and is also L-shaped - it would have been ~4.5m x 3.5m but has a chunk roughly 1.7 x 1.5m missing. This small room (and living in a complex) doesn't lend itself to any really extended bass response nor to really elevated replay levels. In addition, space constraints required that the audio replay aspect address both CD and TV/media as sources.

The rack is situated along the one 4.5m wall and, for a number of reasons, has been designed as a "collection of components" rather than a single structure. (getting it up the stairs, flexibility of configuration, etc.).

The objective was to provide a reasonably neat and attractive rack that also offered ease of access to the rear of the equipment stand. As a result, the equipment stand needed to be on castors. The new equipment module is still basically a "flat-pack" although the primer coat was been applied before the knee gave in. The equipment module in the image above is one built back in 1983 as a TV/VCR stand with the lower shelf for storage of VHS tapes.

This will suffice until the knee sorts itself out....

Phase 2 will see the completion of the new mobile equipment stand which is 33% wider than the old one shown and will have an extra shelf for a BluRay player.

The equipment is now all in place for this phase:

Source Links:

1) TV to amp: 3.5mm stereo jack to 2 x RCA
2) CDP to amp: XLR-terminated balanced i/c
3) Media player to TV: HDMI

Sources:

1) Samsung UA32C5000
2) Asus O!Play Gallery - 2.5TB
3) Bryston BCD-1 CDP

Amp: Electrocompaniet PI-2 (100wpc)

Speakers: Chario Syntar 516

Speaker Cable: 2 x 1.5m Cardas Speaker 101 (spade-terminated)

On CD replay, the sound "works well" within the confines of the room - crisp bass, great mids and a top-end that is very slightly rolled-off (ideal).

The video replay sound is not in the same league as the TV's in-built DAC is not the best, but for watching off-air terrestrial TV or videos from the media player, the sound is much better than the TV's inbuilt speakers.

The black box to the right is a SOTA record cleaner which has dictated a Phase 3 element - to replace the bookcase between the end of the rack and CD storage unit on extreme right. This basically involve another pedestal plus an 800mm additional section of the oak-finish counter top for consistency and then the RCM will move to that surface (as will the records and cleaning brushes, etc. - currently in the drawer).

I'm happy with this - and, more importantly, SWMBO is too...

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Study System - Stage 1 of build