Starting over with vinyl

DAC, wireless connection, music server (as I begin to understand the pieces it takes) $500 - 700, which seems slim for the DAC alone

kythyn,

I suggest you not be in too much of a hurry. You have many decisions to make, and lots of suggestions in various directions, plus the urge to try to save money by getting used equipment. For example:

There is a Debut Carbon on sale here for $299 and it is in Florida north of where I am. Seems like a no-brainer? There are two Pro-ject RM 1.3s with Sumiko Pearls available at $425 from the same store. Are these worth the additional cost in your opinion?

Notice you say Debut Carbon? If it’s not a Debut Carbon DC, then it’s the older model. The newer DC model has a voltage regulator that provides more accurate speed control, which I think is well worth the money. The regular Debut Carbon was discontinued around 2-1/2 years ago.

Ditto for the RM 1.3. The successor is the RPM 1 Carbon that goes for $499. The Carbon indicates that it has their newer carbon fiber tonearm; I consider that tonearm easily worth the extra $25. Both the older model and the Carbon version come with the Sumiko Pearl, which is the other highly regarded $99 cartridge. I haven’t heard it, but I heard the Ortofon 2M Red on a Debut Carbon and was very impressed.

Another consideration: a pair of Mye Stands is close to $600, which gets you within sniffing distance of the Magnepan DWM bass panel ($800). IMO you would get more benefit from DWM’s bass extension, and you can get a noticeable improvement in clarity and detail by putting weights on the MMG’s feet instead of the expense of Mye Stands.

Disclaimer: I haven’t heard a Magnepan with Mye Stands, but I *have* heard the DWM panel with the mini-Maggie panels. I also put some encyclopedia volumes on the feet of my Magneplanar 1.7s and noticed a significant improvement in imaging, clarity, more organic presentation, etc. For cosmetic purposes I swapped out the encyclopedia volumes for a set of these tripod sandbags. These made the Maggies sound even better. So for about $33 in decorator sandbags and $5-10 in sand, you can obtai much of the benefit of the Mye Stands and have a $550 head start on the DWM bass panel.

There are many possibilities in electronics, but the NAD BEE series of integrated amps work well, particularly with Magnepans. The high end store where I bought my Maggie 1.7s used the NAD C 375BEE to demonstrate the 1.7s and they sounded wonderful with great dynamics, clarity, musicality, and detail. The little brother C 356BEE should be a good match as well if 80 wpc will be enough for your listening area.

I also strongly recommend Tidal lossless streaming. Save a lot of time looking for CD. At home, I use Oppo 105 32bit DAC for decoding Tidal 16bit stream. Super quiet background and good dynamic. On the road, I am using mobile device with USB 24bit DAC.