So I've always been very interested in going the tube route, especially perpetuated by the Primaluna thread on the old site and the few times I've had a chance to hear some in action. I think it might be time to start this journey, perhaps oddly because I want/need to get different speakers. My Polk LSiM 705's are great, but they're massive (for my small apartment) and at 4 feet tall and 80 pounds each, I get anxiety thinking about when I'll have to move them and keeping them pristine. Had to get rid of the original packing materials because they were trashed in shipment and really no room to store them anyway. The boxes were almost as big as I am! Good enough excuse to revamp things, yeah?
The engineering dork in me has been geeking out on high efficiency speakers, SET amps, minimalist signal paths and the like, so I've been formulating a plan to kill two birds with one stone by fixing my speaker "problem" and going down the tube rabbit hole. The first step is to go the Zu speaker route, maybe with the next Dirty Weekend run in July, or perhaps jump up to Souls a la
@HiFi Guy? Really love the simple design and the company's philosophies in general. Their cables alone impressed me enough to want to support the company more. Anyway, with these super high efficiency speakers in tow, then really keen on putting the ridiculously well-reviewed (for its price) APPJ Mini up against my Parasound for a bit while I figure out the next move. If results are promising, maybe step up to another SET amp, something like Decware, or perhaps save up a bit to Primaluna or similar. So that's the plan for now, I think. It should keep my sound-tinkering desire at bay by giving me a long period upgrade path to follow and all the rolling possibilities.