Tempe Hall

The hall system is the one people hear before anyone has offered to demonstrate anything, and it was specified accordingly.

McIntosh ML1 loudspeakers — the reissue of a design first built in the 1970s — driven by an MC275 vacuum tube amplifier through a C22 tube preamplifier. That pairing is as close as McIntosh comes to a signature: the amplifier and preamplifier that made the company's reputation, still in production, still doing the same job.

Sources are a Pro-Ject Automat A2 turntable and a Linn network player, with an MQ112 environmental equaliser correcting for the space, and Transparent cabling and PowerBank conditioning throughout. It is a demonstration of the obvious point that a system does not need to live in a dedicated room to be worth listening to.