Ok. I will start with mine (I have doubts if it qualifies as “mega buck”, but I am really very proud of it).
I have always been a MUSIC afficionado. Not very much into the equipment hype. For years and years, my main thinking was: thats good enough. DAC? I have one in my motherboard. Commodity. Amp? Ancient tech. Speakers? Get nice mids and a powerful sub, and youre good to go. Cables? They are simply wires that connect small voltages. Anything shielded would do.
This all changed when I built a dedicated room, and bought a Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800 and a pair of Dynaudios C30. All went downhill from there…
Before I realized, my system was: BHK300s, Pass Labs XP30, DirectStream DAC, P10, and the marvelous KEF Blade 2. All with Kubala-Sosna Elation cables.
But there would be no stopping. I went though almost every source tweaking you can imagine (rendus, matrix, SoTM switch, SoTM usb card, uptone LPS, HDPlex LPS, niminserver, kazoo server, roon server, ethernet optical cabling - you name it).
A few made a difference (matrix being one of them). Others, well, not so much.
But then, the bug bit. Hard. And:
- P10 to p20
- BHK300s become AudioResearch ref160m.
- Pass Labs becomes Audio Research Ref6, and, taking advantage of an opportunity, Nagra HD Preamp.
- DirectStream is now dCS Vivaldi full stack.
- Finally, the KEFs are no more. In my room now play a couple of Boenicke W11.
Only the Kubala cabling remained.
Also, I added some heavy accoustic treatment in my room. RT60 is now about 0,7s from 60hz onward (still having trouble with the lower bass region).
There is absolutely no comparision of the SQ before and after. Everything improved.
I think I may have reached high enough. That is, until the next bug bite.