Grounds for Divorce

I've had quite a variety of top shelf gear at home courtesy of listening room loan, and most recently, I've had zöet at home so I can do some real-world testing and debugging. Dear Wife has enjoyed zöet very much due in large part to it's first-in-class ease of use.

But zöet went to THIEL last week so we could wrap up the multi-zone testing. So it's been quiet at home. And who wants a quiet home? How lame.

Dear Wife expressed some interest in having a stereo set back up in the living room, but I'm off to yet another trade show (EHX in FL if you wanna meet me for a beer), so I didn't have time to set the CS3.7s et. al. back up.

So, she got the scour-the-house-for-parts version of a stereo, and man, it sounds like shit. Well, it's not really that bad, it's just dreadfully boring. It's the Franzia of audio systems - won't make you wretch, but you won't want to pour another glass.

To add insult to injury, when I tried to hook up the Krell CD player, the amp went nuts. Must be some kind of funny grounding problem. The 12 watt op-amp based 1 input integrated amp gets its power from a switch-mode DC power supply that looks suspiciously like the one that came with my external hard drive. So, the only input possible is something with no earth ground reference (I have no idea why).

Imagine going from a zöet system fed by a multitude of high-end sources one day to the following: MP3 player as source into said integrated amp into $200 per pair name-withheld-to-protect-the-innocent bookshelf speakers.

Geez, she's gonna be pissed. I hope I'm on the plane before she actually gets to hear what it sounds like. Woof!

-Gary