Tempe Hall — System

The system you hear before anyone offers to demonstrate anything, and it was specified rather than assembled from leftovers.

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

A Pro-Ject Automat A2 and a Linn network player supply the sources, an MQ112 environmental equaliser compensates for a space that was never designed as a listening room, and Transparent cabling with PowerBank conditioning runs throughout.