The Horne Shoppe System

Some time ago, a magazine or a an audio retailer (can’t remember which one) gave me some advice, “You need a balanced system, spend 10% on a preamp, 30% on an amp, 20% on a turntable and the rest, 40%, save that for a speakers – or something like that. Like a bad guilt trip, it has stuck with me. But, now me thinks, these people might have been a highly misinformed.

Take the dilemma that I am smack dab in the middle right now. A speaker that I have wrote about before, the Horn Shoppe Horns has baffled (no pun intended) me. So much do I love this speaker for my den that I can’t help but write about and listen to it.
As I read about this speaker, I could not help but notice that it kept weak company. Even from Mr, Schilling himself suggested to us that a common amp to use with horns is the “GLO” amp, a modified Timester amp. While this is a good amp for the money, me thinks that most folks probably have wrong components with the horns. This type of pairing cannot do them justice.
Ok, here is what I have: I used the Classic 16.2 300B amp (Shuguang Mesh plagte 300Bs, RCA Clear top and Raytheon 6SN7s), with a Doge 6 CD player (Telefunken 12AX7s, RCA 12AT7s), Xindak FS-1 speaker cables and the Bada HL-3 interconnects. Total system, without horns, about $4K. I know you might think that I am nuts, but nuts is as nuts does and I am clearly not following the 60/40 rule described above.

This nut has imaging and tonal quality in the highs and mids like you cannot believe. The horns have the incredible ability to take music apart bit by bit and re-assemble it on a grand stage never heard before by yours truly. Its not all pizza and ice cream as the Horns have cone break up at very loud levels and there is considerable coloration in the mid bass. The way I have them placed in my small den, washes out bass response as I do not have the lower registers. You can tell though, that the Horns are doing something so incredibly right. Example: a piano note does not drag from one note to the next and thereby smear the piano concerto. The timbre is ever so right.

On the flip side, the Ming Da MC 34A06 , for $699, is a tube amp that shows incredible Marantz like liquid midrange and a non-bass bloom that amps costing 3X its price. I run this amp into Quad ESL57s, and paired with the right tubes, they are capable of some extreme sound quality. I listen to the Doge 6 , the Shenda Music Van or a Vanguard / Brigatta combination. This little amp is capable of so much, it is so easy to set up and use and images like a son of a gun, you would swear the amp costs 3 times as much.

So how do you size up what to spend on what and how much? One use to be able to follow the 60/40 rule, but not anymore. What rules now, what will rule in the future an what will always rule is price performance