The main reference system is housed in a room 13' x 19' x 10' and situated on the short wall facing the Kiva fire place and office area. The ceiling is herringbone slats over crosswise wooden latilla beams every two feet. The floor is a 9' x 12' throw rug over Italian tile.

Between the speakers and the equipment rack, I suspended two brocade banners from the ceiling. They are 32" removed from the front wall. By themselves, they nearly eliminated the natural reverberance of the room.


Five curtains (two on each long wall, one across the Kiva fireplace to minimize sound leakage thru the chimney) damped the remainder.


The edges of the midrange horns are 22 inches from the side walls and 70 inches from the front wall. Both speakers are moderately toed-in and 90 inches apart center-to-center.


The listening seat puts my ears about 14' from the speakers while my head is 16 inches from the rear wall.

The rack is a Monaco 4-tier equipment support by Grand Prix Audio.


From top to bottom, it houses a pair of AUDIOPAX model 88 SEP monoblocks in the same Audi Kaktus Grun lacquer as the Avantgarde DUOs.


The preamp below is a PRe1 by Bel Canto Design.


The next shelf houses a Cairn Fog V2.0 24/192 CD player and the one below a Unison Research Unico integrated.


Cables are HMS Gran Finale or NBS Black Label, both on review loan and complete system rewires including power cords. My own cables are Analysis Plus Oval 8 and Solo Crystal interconnects, with Audio Magic Clairvoyant cords and Harmonic Technology AC10 Magic cords and Audio Magic Stealth purifiers.

Headphones are AKG K-1000s, and the Unico powers them via a Stefan AudioArt K-1000 specialty cable with Cardas Rhodium spades.


When using the NBS or HMS cable sets, all components are plugged straight into the wall. The HMS power cords include power line filtering, the NBS cords are said to not only not require any additional conditioning but actually sound better without.


Walker Audio Valid Point Resonance Suppression Discs, Ultimate High Definition Links (on the midrange horns) and their Vivid optical enhancer CD treatment plus a Furutech RD-2 disc demagnetizer and WorldPower double cryo'd wall duplex round out the tweak/accessory magic.

< left wall with bathroom door

right wall >
as seen from speakers

< window with baby roses

view over >
Mount Taos and typcial high desert scenery

listening seat and Kiva fire < place

the office >
with convenient CD dubbing facilities to keep select friends in the tunes

< From writer's deadlines to international correspondance, from day-long verbal wrestling session and burning the midnight oil - 6moons.com "headquarters", or otherwise simply one guy's home office, with Pentium 4 PC and 1MHz wireless Internet access. The system consists of YBA Integre DT, Audio Refinement Complete, Marantz CDR 630 and AAD E40 speakers.

< One glance at the ceiling above the fire place shows the herring bone patterned slats above the crosswise vigas. This is my second traditional adobe-style room in Taos. In both instances, this type of ceiling proved to be really beneficial to good sound.


< The fire place mantel doubles up as convenient close-at-hand storage for items under review that need short-term parking until their turn.


All in all, the best-sounding room I've enjoyed yet, allowing the full-range DUOs to strut their stuff without room boom even in the lowest bass.