- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
I have to imagine that, as an elder Millennial, I’m on the young end of the audiophile spectrum. So my system is more a “work in progress” than an “endgame.” It wasn’t until late 2021, when I moved with my pregnant wife and our dog to the Philadelphia suburbs, that I even had a dedicated listening room to call my own. Such is life. And anyway, hi-fi should complement our lives, not the other way around. While my system gives up a fair bit on the aesthetic front compared to what I could own, it works exactly the way I want it to and scores highly in the transparency and neutrality columns. These aspects are what matter most to me, and frankly, I’m pretty pleased with my setup—even if it’s not as “Ultra” as those of some of my SoundStage! colleagues. Click the links below to read about each component in my system to find out why I selected it.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $13,999.98 per pair (discontinued)
Website: www.kef.com
Design: The Reference 3 (Ref 3) is the middle child of English manufacturer KEF’s outgoing Reference range, replaced in early 2022 by the new Reference 3 Meta in the company’s Reference lineup. It’s a mid-sized floorstanding loudspeaker that measures 47.3″H × 13.7″W × 18.5″D and weighs a substantial 113.1 pounds. My pair is finished in Satin American Walnut; several other finishes were available during its 8-year production run, including Piano Black, Luxury Gloss Rosewood, Blue Ice White, Copper Black Aluminum, and Silver Satin Walnut.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $12,000
Website: www.hegel.com
Design: Hegel Music Systems’ reference integrated amplifier-DAC is a bit of an odd product. Over the last decade, the Norwegian firm has made its name producing relatively affordable, high-value one-box solutions that marry high-quality sound with lots of power and features. On paper the $6500 H390 integrated amplifier with its identical DAC and 250Wpc into 8 ohms appears to occupy the price-performance sweet spot in Hegel’s lineup when compared to the H590; at almost twice the price, the H590 achieves a “mere” 301Wpc into 8 ohms, approximately 580Wpc into 4 ohms, while remaining stable into a 2-ohm load. The dual-mono amp’s casework is a mild improvement on its more affordable, folded-steel brethren, and its larger chassis does lend the H590 a bit more gravitas than its siblings. But with Hegel you’re not paying for aesthetics, you’re paying for functionality and performance. So you’re getting a bespoke amplifier architecture with hand-selected transistors—12 per channel—and a toroidal power supply that’s significantly larger than that of the H390, offering sufficient current to drive just about any loudspeaker on the market.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $376 (discontinued)
Website: www.intel.com
Design: Intel’s NUC is a seemingly perfect solution as an inexpensive music server. The small chassis of the NUC5i5RYK has a 5th-gen dual-core Intel i5-5250U processor, and mine came installed with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB M.2 SSD for quick internal storage that can run Windows 10 and Roon with nary a hiccup. It has plenty of I/O for an external SSD like my 512GB Samsung T5 (which runs at USB 3.0 speeds with the NUC5i5RYK), the server that houses all of my local music. For Roon Ready devices that I have in for review, the NUC can technically be run anywhere on my network, though I have it hooked up to my Sony A80J OLED television and connected to my Hegel H590 via USB.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $4899 per 2.5M pair
Website: www.siltech.com
Design: Siltech has a sparkling reputation as a cable and cord manufacturer that’s backed by real engineering, and the company puts out exceptionally high-quality products. Its Classic Legend series entered its fourth generation in 2021, and I was fortunate enough to receive a pair of Classic Legend 680L speaker cables for review. The speaker cables use Siltech’s ninth generation—and newest—proprietary silver-gold alloy conductors, which are covered in polyether ether ketone (PEEK) insulation sandwiched between two layers of Teflon. The cables are manufactured by hand in Siltech’s factory in Elst, The Netherlands; they’re tested against a reference pair to ensure quality and consistency, and they’re visually inspected by two different employees before being packaged for the customer. Their build quality is outstanding, and the rhodium-plated banana plugs on my review pair—which I obviously now own—look and feel perfect every time I plug them into a new amp or loudspeaker I have in for review. They also come with NFT tags to confirm authenticity, and they’re beautifully packaged. You get the sense that every single detail has been thoroughly scrutinized by the Siltech team.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $1690 per 2.5M
Website: www.siltech.com
Design: Siltech’s Classic Legend 380D USB cable shares all the same technology as the 680L speaker cables and the 680P power cord, including a ninth-generation silver-gold alloy conductor, complemented by PEEK and Teflon insulation. The cable’s materials and build quality, as with all the other Classic Legend cables I use in my system, are beyond reproach.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $2710 per 2.5M
Website: www.siltech.com
Design: Siltech’s Classic Legend 680P power cord shares all the same technology as the 680L speaker cables and the 380D USB link, including a ninth-generation silver-gold alloy conductor, complemented by PEEK and Teflon insulation. The cable’s materials and build quality are superb.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $2945
Website: www.wwmake.com
Design: 80″W × 20″D × 24″H, solid oak finished with clearcoat.
Why I chose it: In line with my desire to make my system more “livable” than your average high-end rig, I knew that I had no interest in a traditional, vertically oriented audio rack. Regardless of the materials or the technology, it’s just not something I had any interest in. Atacama’s Evoque Eco 44-16 Design Edition Rack, fashioned from hardwood and much wider than the average rack, did appeal to me, but I didn’t like that I’d be able to see my system’s wires. I like clean, minimal arrangements and quickly realized that I really should be looking for a media console. Given the 77″ Sony A90J OLED television I would be placing at the top of the unit, I wanted something roughly 80″ wide that was fashioned from wood and metal. I searched for months looking for just the right unit and eventually stumbled on an Illinois-based company called What We Make that designs and builds furniture from old reclaimed barn wood sourced from the Midwestern United States.
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Hans Wetzel
Price: $929 per set
Website: www.vicoustic.com
Design: Square panels, rounded panels, wood panels, three-dimensional panels . . . I was drowning in options, and frankly, didn’t like any of them. I wasn’t building a recording studio, and I didn’t want something that looked boring. Vicoustic’s Vixagon VMT acoustic panels were perfect for several reasons. They come in a couple of different sizes, and the Mini version comes in both hexagonal and diamond shapes, allowing for all sorts of neat geometric possibilities. Additionally, you can choose from a wide range of colors and designs, which turned out not to matter in the end as I wimped out and went with black.
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