Any Vandersteen 7 Owners in SFO Bay Area ?

 Excellent thread. Thanks for keeping it going. I can't wait to get my new Quatro's also. I asked Richard to shoot Audi Havana black as my paint. I was going to get the zebrawood, but in the end decided to have them painted. As for cabling, I love the Castlerock audioquest cables bi wired. For more money you can get better cables however the return on investment for me is not so great as to warrant the extra expense. I'd rather put that money into other parts of my system or for new music.  I've never spent much time auditioning power cables, however I do have one in my system made by the late AJ Conte that I use on my server. It seems to  made a bit of difference there. I'm waiting for Garth Powell the designer  now with audioquest, to release his new series of Niagara cables. I heard the proto types and the price points are going to be ridiculously low for what they do. I feel that they are going to set a new benchmark for power cables. I too like the upperline Nordost cables however I feel audioquest is more neutral.

Congrats on getting the Vandys. Richard does Such a great job with his speakers. He really puts his passion into every speaker and we get to enjoy the fruits of his labor/passion 

I Finally got my Atlas amps back from Aesthetix. They have the Eclipse upgrade . So far I have 45 hours on them and I can say without any hesitation that this is a major, major upgrade from the Atlas Signature. I am truly amazed at the difference. I live about 90 minutes from the Aesthetix factory so I have talked to everyone  there. When they first heard the  upgrade they were totally shocked. Jim told me that they expected better sound, but what they actually heard was far beyond what they expected. They 7s love these mono blocks. The upgrade is expensive, but like the Basis Superarm 9, worth every cent. No question that Richard's amps are fantastic with the 7s. Those amps were out of my price range. Anyone with the Atlas Signature Stereo or mono blocks should  consider this upgrade.

I just thought I would also mention that the Atlas amps have a built in high pass filter. I was able to upgrade the caps to a very high grade and the improvement was significant. Some have mentioned cables. I use Audioquest Everest bi wired speaker cable and Audioquest Wild Blue Yonder interconnects. I cannot use any line conditioner with the Aesthetix amps or pre amp. Jim says the massive power supply
combined with a power device makes the sound worse. I tried one out and he was so right about that. So, I put in a dedicated line from the main box to a sub panel outside the living room (listening room). Each component has its own circuit except the Basis table. Power cables are Kubala S. and Audiuoquest on the 7s because the termination fits. I also added a Lyra Etna cartridge when I bought the Super Arm 9 from Randy.
He did the set up and yes, he is very good at it. He gave me great trade in value for my Vector 4 arm. My system is now complete, I think.

Charger, thanks for sharing and having my back on power conditioners. I know so many of you use them.  Heck, I have the SR Powercell 10 mk2 Tesla cable, but I use it for the digital only right now as well as the TV, Apple TV and cable box. Jim is correct and I've spoken to engineers at Ayre, D'agastino, Vandersteen, Krell and others about conditioners and to a person they poo poo it.  

I just reached out to Richard to ask about dedicated lines. I remember someone told me that you want all your components on the same circuit for ground look reasons.  I'm looking into doing dedicated lines if I keep the system on the same wall it's on. If I move it to the original wall, I have a six pack dedicated circuit I was using and loved it.  

I think it was on this thread somewhere that someone spoke about hearing quality differences due to power during the day and night.  Everyone assumes that it's cleaner power during the night when there is less usage etc.., but the kind of variation during the day and
night he is talking about may be more about how quite it is
in his sound room (or not). An extra 10 db of quiet (easy to
do) can expose the magic the Sevens (as well as his other speakers) are capable of doing, because the magic is not masked by as much noise in the room. This is a big deal and very few know about it, because they attribute it to the power being better at night
or weekends. This may be a small contributing factor, but
mostly it is pure old fashioned signal to noise magic. The
time and phase pistonic ability of the Seven especially the
Mk II version revel this, where most other high-end speakers
don't have the goods so it won't matter.