I’ve searched and can find no thread like this. One reason for it is to bookmark where your system is at, document changes, &c. The other reason is selfish - I have no fucking idea what anyone owns nowadays and I’d actually really like to know.
In attempting and failing at being dealerscum I inevitably and predictably lost all interest in hifi. The absolute last straw was a chimney crashing through the roof of my office damaging lots of equipment, and then a looooooooong subsequent series of disputes with insurers and builders - with everything trapped in unusable limbo. I never got a single penny to replace any of the £1000s-worth of equipment damaged or destroyed, but at least the house is largely whole now.
It’s been years since I last gave so much as a picofuck about hifi, and two years since I last listened to music in earnest, but I have recently cleared-up 99% of the chaos, and am deep into a reorganisation of what remains upstairs and in the music room.
So here’s the system, excuse the godawful pics - there’s more light at the bottom of the fucking ocean than here in rain-soaked Lincs, plus I can’t take a decent photo for shit:
New arrival #1 - Gato Audio DIA-400 ‘class-D’ integrated - very impressed with this handsome little do-it-all box, never mid that there’s an even more versatile version available now.
Pictured with Pro-ject CD-Box RS, DAC-Box RS and 4-way PSU that also powers the turntable via a voltage adjuster I made:
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New arrival#2 - landed today, Arcam Diva DT91 DAB/FM tuner. Wanted to try one for years, and one sat unbid on ebay for a week at a bargain price due to no box and 'structions.
It displaces a TEAC TH380-DNT - which it absolutely destroys. I’ve owned a few hybrid tuners, including one with the same core Radioscape module, but this sounds significantly better than any of them. DAB obviously has its limitations, but this makes the very best of it.
Sure, a dedicated tuner is an oddity in the world of internet radio, streaming &c., but I prefer it greatly, I like the old-fashioned interfaces, and actually get a better result due to the appalling bandwidth availability out here, miles down the end of a length of wet string and in a house that appears to function as a faraday cage for all wireless internet…
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Another new arrival that’s been transformative beyond appearances is RGTech’s Monarch 50 antenna - despite having roof aerials on a 3-story building in a flat landscape, most of ‘our’ radio transmitters originate a county away in Leics or Cambs, so I thought I’d try some of the much-vaunted “modern technology” given it came with a sub-£20 price-tag and 30-day returns policy.
Rather to my surprise this apparently transparent piece of plastic (there’s a printed conductive grid on it) works substantially better than the roof-mounted aerials - I get close to 100% signal strength now 
Money well spent:
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Unchanged in a good while: Lehmann Audio Silver Cube phonostage and Pro-ject Xtension 10 turntable with Ortofon Cadenza on Pro-ject’s (then) massively revised carbon-fibre arm (which I find to be excellent). A combo lacking in snob appeal which it makes-up for in good engineering and musical insight - this combo digs deep but never over-exposes recordings, even bad ones:
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Another constant for a while, the Singing Washing-Machines, AKA, Heco Direkt ‘Dreiklang’ - one of Heco’s greatest fuckups was designing a really bloody good large 3-way speaker, then putting it in a stupidly-proportioned box with a divisive finish and making it twice as expensive as it should have been - and then just bailing-out and giving-up. Oh well… I love 'em, and cannot conceive of changing them until we downsize our home at some point…
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The Gato in particular has replaced ~£15Ks worth of assorted valve kit, sounds nearly as good, and I now no longer quake in fear when I turn the amp on, waiting for a dodgy valve to blow the cones out of my speakers… That alone is a big part of why I’m enjoying music again now. Of course it also helps I can buy what I damn well like instead of having to stick to the brands I used to sell!
So, what are you listening to?
