Having recently upgraded my system to 222/300/9000CDT and ATC SCM40A I am seeking advice on a few possible upgrades.
ATC A’s are on a solid tiled floor. without spikes or discs. I am wondering about AUVA 100’s, Townsend Isolation bars, Gaia II that I have seen on various posts-any recommendations?
Should I play CD’s through my 222 using an upgrade CDT or buy a CD player such as the Hegal Viking or the new Cyrus 40CD for example. Is there really a world of difference or should I just buy the isolators for the speakers and stick with the rest?
Have you tried asking ATC what is best on your type of floor? I believe they are quite a responsive organisation, and absolutely focused on sound quality from their speakers.
Your NSC 222 is a Streaming PreAmp, why buy a streamer and not use it and have all the bother of storage and everything else with CD’s.
Get yourself a NAS and with software such as dBpoweramp rip all your CD’s into a format such as FLAC. Ripped CD’s sound arguably better, at worse they sound the same.
You can search for and play them from a smart phone or tablet while sitting in your arm chair.
An extra plus is the amount of floor and wall room space you gain, all your CD’s are now stored in a box the size of a medium large handbag.
You really should use the spikes, to get a nice solid foundation with no rocking. Just get some spike shoes to protect the floor. These are made by Atacama and cost about £20 for a set of four.
As for playing your CDs, if you want something better than your Audiolab, then buy something better. But as Mike says, why bother, why not just rip them to a NAS.
SCM40As are heavy and awkward to move and I found getting the spikes on mine to sit centred on small spike shoes, very tricky, even with two of us positioning them. I ended up getting Quadraspire QX7s which are rather larger. They are supposed to have sonic advantages. Not sure about that, but I certainly found manoeuvring much easier with them. Unfortunately the price has shot up since I got mine.
I owned active 40’s and found them quite sensitive to placement… too close to boundary walls and not far enough part and they would get a little out of shape.
I used the Audio Stack Auva’s and they worked well, you can try and get your money back if you are not satisfied but they worked for me.
Thank you for all your replies, as suggested I contact ATC this morning and they didn’t think it necessary to add anything to the flat base as my floor is large tiles over a concrete floor which should give a firm foundation. They are stable and don’t rock so I think I will save my money and put it to a CD player or improved CDT. I had to look up a “NAS” as I hadn’t heard of it, but as space is not an issue I can’t really see any advantge. At the moment I spend about 80% of my time streaming, the rest CD. There is still a good deal of choice of CD and CDT out there.
