Roboturner91
Super Member
Feeling pretty good about this setup. Is it particularly high-end, no. But it sounds really nice to me and honestly may be on the verge of overkill for this room, which is a 12x12 home office.
Receiver is Yamaha RX-V850, Pro Logic AVR from around 1992.
Equalizer is Yamaha EQ-550, not a great EQ but has some cool features - spectrum analyzer, subsonic filter
Disc player is Yamaha CDX-560, got this last year, was new old stock
In case you couldn't tell. I'm a big fan of the early 90s Yamaha stuff. It's well built, looks nice, sounds good, and also has a nostalgia factor for me. It's also super affordable - in fact, the receiver, equalizer and CD player combined cost me $59.
The RX-V850 especially is a real sleeper in my book, this was around $1000 when new and it's not at all what you would expect from a surround receiver. This thing is a beast and has a very good phono section, and in two-channel mode sounds as powerful and musical as any silver-faced gear I have heard. Yamaha was making some great gear with few compromises at this time.
Turntable is Technics SL-B20, soon to be replaced with the black version of the same table. I'm not a huge turntable guy, decent p-mounts like this are plenty satisfying for my needs.
Speakers are Canton Karat 300. I haven't had these long. Still getting accustomed to the sound. For a couple hours this afternoon I was feeling some buyer's remorse. I think my mood must have been getting in the way, because they sound pretty great right now. It may also be that they are simply very revealing of poor source material.
Stand is Pangea Audio Vulcan. Not the last word in rigidity but it's OK. There aren't a lot of cheap options when it comes to stands. If I had it to do over again I probably would've spent the extra $50 and got the Sanus AFA instead. Speaker stands are Paradigm Premier and originally matched with the Paradigm 7SE Mk2, but they sit just the right height here since my "listening chair" is a beanbag chair. LOL.
Also I just got an iPhone 7 and it's incredible how good the camera is compared to my previous cheap Android. Holy moly.
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