Kevin
I joined the forum under false pretences wanting to find someone who might service my original (spitting) Inca Tech The Claymore. To my delight I found Colin who willingly took it on and replaced stuff and bits and returned it to me within a few days. I am listening to it now - Zoot Sims band and their interpretation of Porgy and Bess - not for the faint hearted if you turn it up a bit.
In my office, the Claymore sits between Acoustic Energy AE200 speakers and a Beresford SEG DAC fed from the optical output on my iMac from iTunes and Audirvana. The Beresford is new and replaces a Fiio D3 and short lived Cambridge Dacmagic 100. The Dacmagic was pretty good but a bit too romantic for the newly invigorated Claymore's presentation. I am very happy with this setup and cannot thank Colin enough for the great work and lightning service.
In my darkroom (yes I have one and remain fully analogue in there - see my Flickr pages) I feed a Naim Mu-so Qb from either a MacBook Air or an Ariston RD11s (from new) through a Baldwin Phono stage. This was all recently rationalised and replaced the morass of wires and boxes and the Claymore. The excellent Baldwin Phono Stage is battery powered further reducing wires and power supplies. The Muso took a l~~~o~~~n~~g time to run in and now sounds very fine indeed and not the shouty little thing that it was at first.
In my lounge I listen through SD Acoustics SD5 floor standers bought new from the man in New Malden, these are augmented by a KEF sub fed from the pre-out of the Arcam. Music is streamed to these by an Airport Express optical output through an Arcam AVR200. Until my Claymore found it's second wind this had a Roksan Kandy Llll in place, I took the decision to move the Roksan on as the Claymore makes a better presentation to my ears and then at the last moment while moving everything around I decided to put the Claymore in the office where I do most of my listening. The Arcam does a good job and presents music more like the Claymore than the Roksan, I suspect that the weak link in this system is Airplay.
I listen to almost all types of music except Pop and RAP or any of the millions of derivatives (who can tell?). Mostly you will find me into Jazz or Classical, some alternative Country and Blues, I like African music especially from the Malian Masters and being a romantic love Fado and Chanson - mostly not HiFi
I'm set for now and if we downsize I imagine the SD 5's will go and I'll find some active speakers with Airplay or whatever is the tech at the time.
best to all
Kevin
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