Thread: Small Room System - Electronics Selection

I was directed to this forum by a comment made to me regarding the gear I am looking to buy.

So here goes my question. I have been saving my pennies for a few years and ready to buy once the covaid-19 calms down.

The speaker will be the following: Yamaha NS5000 (I have demoed it)

I am not worried about the speaker fitting into my room. I have options to make it work well.

I am trying to decide between the following 3 sets of electronics for the Yamaha NS5000 speaker:

1) Luxman m900u + c900u
2) T+A PA 3100 HV Integrated
3) Hegel 590 Integrated

I have heard the Luxman pair with TAD ME1 speakers and T+A with large Wilson speakers. I have heard the top end Hegel mono-blocks and also the Hegel 360 with KEF Blades (not the new 590). All 3 systems sounded great but they were different speakers in different rooms.

I could figure out which combo I would like the best if I did a home demo of this gear, however, that will be difficult to do. I am not much of a tube guy but I loved the sound of the Luxman combo. The T+A gear was demoed in a larger room with more people in the room so I did not hear it as well as the Luxman combo. The older Hegel gear surprised me in how much I enjoyed it. It could have been the KEF Blade which is a favorite of mine.

Any feedback would be welcome on the 3 brands I have focused on.


BTW - I have also heard the NS5000 speakers with the new Yamaha top end separates. It was very good but I am more interested in the above 3 brands.

Thanks, for the feedback on the Hegel 590. Your comments are very positive given my appreciation of the older model. Last night I wrote down the various combos of gear that I could use. I did not mention this in my initial post but I have some desire to keep my KEF LS5O's in the same room as the new Yamaha NS5000. So I have some other components in mind that I have heard or owned in the past that I am considering to support this. They are

- Benchamrk AHB2 amp (owned before)
- Benchamrk LA4 preamp
- Lumin X1 DAC (using fibre optical input)
- W4S preamp (with dual output to 2 amps)
- W4S DAC
- Mola Mola Makua w/DAC (dual output to 2 amps)
- Molao Mola Tambaqui DAC (maybe direct to amp)
- Sonore Signature Rendu SE Optical

So I put all of these ingredients into my mental blender and came up with a list of 15 combinations. The MSRP prices for each was calculated and I got a range between $11K to $38K. Seeing those numbers was real eye opener for me. Unless I bought the T+A PA310HV integrated with dual zone speaker output, I came to the decision to move the KEF LS50's to another room or put into storage (until my toddler is a little bigger). So that clears up a lot of gear and makes my original post accurate in my decision process.


One thing I was wondering about on the Hegel 590 was whether the RJ45 Ethernet input is at the same level of quality as the USB input. If so I could stream to the Ethernet input via my computer and ROON. That has the danger of being noisy if the Hegel streaming board does not take steps to lower this noise. My solution for that is a Sonore Rendu using Sonore's new SystemOptique. I am a big fan of the Rendu products and like to use my computer to stream. So that adds about 5K to the price of the Hegel 590.

The Hegel would be the smart choice $ wise and I did like the older Hegel sound with KEF Blades. However, the day I heard the Hegel with KEF Blades (at a LA audio show for 1 hour almost by myself) I immediately went to another room and heard the Vivid Giya II Spirit with the Luxman c900u preamp and the older Luxman mono blocks at $60K. I liked the Blades better but the electronics on the Vivid seemed a little better than the older Hegel. Very hard to compare different systems in different rooms.

I was the guy to tell that poster to go have a second listen to the NS5000 before he bought his new speakers. He ended up buying the NS500's. We spoke at length by email after his purchase. I am also getting the NS5000 even after a demo in a terrible room. This speaker will work real nicely in my office where I spend a lot of my time. If I had the space I would buy a KEF Blade, but no space for now.

Originally Posted by Mike

Hello and welcome to the forum. The c900/m900 is a wonderful combo. The T+A is an integrated and one of the top two or three IMO. The Hegel is also an integrated. I think if you have the ability to go separates, you will really enjoy it. The Luxman separates are incredible.

Thanks for your response. I do get the gist of your statement. My takeaway from this post is that one gets better sound spending more money with the 3 options I gave. I had a feeling the Luxman pair was the best. The T+A gear was also excellent with the Wilson Alexa speaker I heard. This Audioshark thread describes the room where I heard the T+A and Wilson.

audioshark.org/other-shows-139/la-audio-show-pics-thoughts-12132 (I did not post the full URL since I do not have 10 posts yet)

I no longer have a T+A dealer out here in LA so I appreciate your feedback on this question, especially from someone who carries all the main gear I was considering. I am recently coming around to the idea of an integrated when I look around my smallish office space. In the more distance future, I do have plans for a bigger system, in the living room downstairs, once my toddler is bigger.

If I go with an integrated I will give you a call. I already have a dealer for Luxman separates where I demoed the gear.

Originally Posted by Mikado463

If I missed it , my apologies, but since you've got the Yammie NS5000's, what was driving them at the time you auditioned them ? I would think that would be on the short list ?

I cannot post proper web links yet on this forum but the items are listed here

//usa.yamaha.com/products/contents/audio_visual/ns-5000/index

The Yamaha C-900 preamp and M-9000 amp, which are 10K MSRP each.

The room I was in for the store demo was awful. I wrote about it on a NS5000 thread on A'gon. After demoing the Luxman c900u and m900u a few months earlier I had decided on getting those if I went separates. The Yamaha preamp and amp sounded very good but that room where I demoed it made it impossible to listen properly to that gear. However, I heard enough from the speakers to figure out they would sound great in my room with the Luxman separates. I am taking a little bit of a chance on this but I think it will sound great in my office space. I am also saying that I do not know if the Yamaha separates are as good as the Luxman separates. I never heard the best out of the Yamaha. I have heard the best out of the Luxman at another dealer and it was maybe the best amplification I ever heard. I was going to have a second listen to the NS5000 at a dealer event in mid-March. I was expecting that to occur in stores much better main demo room, however, that event got cancelled with Covaid-19. I was hoping to have that final listen and make an offer on it then. There are some online stores that sell the NS5000 that allow home demo but you need to pay MSRP. I am not so concerned anymore that these speakers being too big for my room because of the options I have to fix that. Another reason to buy a speaker a little too big for the room is that I may take the NS5000 to my bigger downstairs living space once my toddler is older.

Looking around my office space today I am realizing the number of components and space required for separates are not ideal for my small room. As I am conversing on this thread I am starting to go with the ideal of a really good integrated, thus the questions on the Hegel and T+A. I realized last night that the T+A has an optional module for both Loudness, Tone, and analog based DSP. That would be useful for my small room and my late night low volume listening habits.

BTW - I mentioned earlier that i had some options to make this system work in a small space. These things are the following:

1) My room is acoustically treated with GIK panels and sound rather good with my KEF LS50's. It was sounding awful before the treatment.

2) For digital sources going into a DAC I am looking at using Accurate Sound out of Canada, //accuratesound.ca, to calibrated my room sound and provide me a Convolution file to run DSP via ROON. I have a lifetime license to ROON and using the Convolution engine in it seems like something to try. The Computer Audiophile site has many mentions of this approach. I was also reading the DSP book by the owner of Accurate Sound and it gave me confidence to try it out once I get the speakers and buy a mike.

3) For my 2 analog sources, my FM tuner and Sony SCD-1 SACD player that is modified and now only has analog out, the analog based DSP module on the T+A seems like something to look into.

Originally Posted by yyzSB

I was also reading the DSP book by the owner of Accurate Sound and it gave me confidence to try it out once I get the speakers and buy a mike.

If Mike cannot make it for the audition I will buy a microphone (mic)