In line with the question of “When?” as the topic of your latest chapter, I want to personally thank you, Jason and Mike, for “When”-ing me for the second time this year.
I started my HeadFi journey in 2014 with a Mjolnir/Gungnir stack driving balanced LCD-X phones as my reference “near field” system in my home office, not having the space, dollars, and wife-acceptance-factor to do a big expensive rig in my family room. I love the headphone experience, but I missed the natural open feeling of speakers as well as the social sharing of music with other family members.
So I upgraded Mjolnir to the Rag driving KEF LS50s and a JLAudio e110 sub. A truly spectacular system which I was totally happy with…until Yggy was released, and upgraditis hit and moved it into the system replacing the Gungnir. And that was when the first “When” hit. I can’t see how anything can beat this setup in my room. I’m TOTALLY satisfied with it and daily discover details in my collection that I truly never heard before even though having listened to the same stuff for years. Bang for the buck, the store is now closed.
The only problem was that I had a mint condition M/G stack sitting around with nowhere to go. I thought about selling it but figured just maybe a place would open up for it to be used in the future. Well, that spot just arrived last week when I moved my office at work from a big, beautiful, windowed corner space to one half as big and a lot darker so that 2 critical employees newly jammed into the little office had room to breathe. Sometimes the boss has to take one for the team.
However, if I was to sardine it for the future, I just HAD to have a great sound system to make it palatable. I upgraded my dinky Dell sound bar to my M/G stack being fed from a Sonos/WD NAS and an XLR Yamaha HS8S sub to round out the bottom. Now I only had to find some powered XLR desktop monitors for the Mjolnir to drive via the pre-out.
I researched Adams, Eves, Genelecs, and some other pro audio brands but wasn’t seeing anything in my price range- for an office system that might get used 15-30 minutes a day, I just wasn’t going to spend as much or more than on my home system.
Then I remember this thread and Jason highly praising the Emotivas, so I had a look. A set of Airmotiv 5s now sit on my desk and are burning in with pink noise. Even at the 1 hour point as I was cycling through some very familiar tracks, I knew that I had my second “When”.
And the icing on the cake came today as I popped open the email from Debbie Baugher, Customer Care Specialist, at Emotiva. The price of the 5s dropped from $399 a pair to $279 while my set was in transit from them to me. I asked if they would refund the difference, and she was happy to make me happy.
Two GREAT companies. Two “When”s in one year. And I am a total fanboy of both for life.
At this stage of the game, I’m not at all impressed with the “cost no object” mentality of the major players. If I was getting into the action as a newbie manufacturer, I would be following Schiit’s and Emotiva’s lead in giving customers the biggest bang for the lowest buck possible. I’ve always tried to give my clients the greatest value for their money and really appreciate those companies that do the same to me. I'd rather sell a million $1 widgets than one at $1,000,000.
And an area I’d REALLY like to see Schiit skewer is the upward dueling spiral that has started with the headphone/IEM manufacturers. At the rate they are going now, it will soon be cheaper to strap on a pair of Magico Q5s and call it a day!!!
DSNORD