Sidebar 2: Aunt Silly Airy Gear
Just about the only change I've made to my system has been replacing VTL's Compact 160 monoblocks with their larger KT90-version Deluxe 225s; I need more juice than the 160s were able to swing, and the triode-wired Deluxe 225s are just the ticket. The new 225s extend the virtues of the Compact 160s (triode mode only for these amps) further in nearly every direction, with even clearer midrange textures and Amazing Space. And as the new VTLs are too big to fit on the books I had the 160s sitting on, I've got the 225s up on sky-blue plastic milk crates courtesy of the local Safeway one night when I went to steal them (footnote 1).
Other gear used to evaluate the CD players under review included my own buffered passive preamp, Spica Angelus speakers in cahoots with the Muse Model 18 subwoofer, and the Theta DS Pro Basic and Audio Alchemy DDE v1.0 digital processors for comparison.
Interconnects included Straight Wire Maestro, AudioQuest Lapis, and XLO type 1, while speaker cable remained the Straight Wire Maestro. All gear was plugged into the Audio Express NoiseTrapper Plus and NoiseTrapper 2000 AC line conditioners. The book most often read while listening in order to avert my attention and thus achieve the highest right-brain sensitivity was Greil Marcus's Dead Elvis (Doubleday).—Corey Greenberg
Footnote 1: I'm pretty confident none of our readers are audiophile grocers; if you had to listen to Muzak underlaid with subliminal "Don't Eat Those Ding Dongs And Then Shove The Empty Wrapper Behind Those Cans Of Cling Peaches" messages all day long, the last thing you'd want to hear at quitting time would be music.
Footnote 1: I'm pretty confident none of our readers are audiophile grocers; if you had to listen to Muzak underlaid with subliminal "Don't Eat Those Ding Dongs And Then Shove The Empty Wrapper Behind Those Cans Of Cling Peaches" messages all day long, the last thing you'd want to hear at quitting time would be music.
