Love music and have been into hi fi since I was a teenager. Moved to British Columbia in my late teens and ran into a bad crowd. (They owned the two hi end stereo shops in town)

After tying in with these ruffians I went through numerous phases of different equipment from old Harman Kardon pre/power amps to Threshold to Counterpoint/Audio Research and finally settling in on tube gear from Sonic Frontiers. I built and owned the 4th set of 75 watt monoblocks from them and then picked up their line stage, phono pre, transport and DAC.

After meeting another guy at the stereo shops who was into designing speaker systems I ended up going through several iterations of home built speakers including two tractrix horn systems, some beautiful two ways and finally a set of VERY large D’appolito designed dipoles based on a JM Lab concept. Dubbed the “Mother of all Dipoles” they were biamped with a set of Sonic Frontiers 40 watt stereo amps. All wiring was completed by hand with the best components we could find. Foil coils, Wondercaps, Vishays etc. For me it was nirvana.

Fast forward a few years and a divorce now I’m in the U.S. in a much smaller house and my new love of my life looks at my other love of my life dipoles and says, “can’t you put one in that corner over there and the other one beside the kitchen door?”
During a big remodel the system was relegated to storage and after some time I decided to sell off the tube gear and wait to see what the new “listening room/living room” would accomodate. As it turns out, it was a Sprout, Aries and a set of budget Focals. Decent sounding but not what I was used to.

Now slowly building up a system for a newly purchased house and trying to slowly slide the speakers out from the wall 1/4" at a time so SWMBO doesn’t notice. Updates to follow!!!

With all the talk of the must haves for great sound and the ultimate in listening pleasure, I think the one thing that is most lacking in my system is a good like minded friend to sit with, have a nice glass of wine or whisky with and talk about the music and systems. After leaving Canada and moving south I have yet to find the comraderie on the hi fi front that I had. My friend in Canada has since passed and that has left a huge hole where a lot of listening enjoyment was.

Hoping to get that back some day.