James W. Johnson

Out with the new , in with the old ....
https://home.comcast.net/~bentvalve/P1110030.JPG

check out the little gift DHL gave me in the lower right hand corner of the Soundstage...I spend a good part of 2 hours trying to realign the front faceplate so the buttons would work...something got tweaked although I cannot determine the exact area. All I know is that there was no just bolting on the cover, it required some tweaking to make it work.....DHL is gonna pay.


Anyhow , its up and running and sounding great...at this point I am pretty sure nothing else was damaged. I have lost a good deal of features compared to the Yamaha but many of which I never used anyways.

Look at the beautiful layout inside this bad boy....here is a link to some pics I took awhile ago....
https://home.comcast.net/~bentvalve/


This thing will be free by the time I am done with DHL. I have some powerful evidence that DHL did the damage.

James W. Johnson

Out with the new , in with the old ....
https://home.comcast.net/~bentvalve/P1110030.JPG

check out the little gift DHL gave me in the lower right hand corner of the Soundstage...I spend a good part of 2 hours trying to realign the front faceplate so the buttons would work...something got tweaked although I cannot determine the exact area. All I know is that there was no just bolting on the cover, it required some tweaking to make it work.....DHL is gonna pay.


Anyhow , its up and running and sounding great...at this point I am pretty sure nothing else was damaged. I have lost a good deal of features compared to the Yamaha but many of which I never used anyways.

Look at the beautiful layout inside this bad boy....here is a link to some pics I took awhile ago....
https://home.comcast.net/~bentvalve/


This thing will be free by the time I am done with DHL. I have some powerful evidence that DHL did the damage.

Drew_W

*VERY* nice.

cept for the dent, of course. But free is good.

I gave up on tracking my collection and actually started watching what I have.

Drew_W

*VERY* nice.

cept for the dent, of course. But free is good.

I gave up on tracking my collection and actually started watching what I have.

James W. Johnson

I found a wierd glitch or something...if am on CD and run the volume to mute then switch to TV , its at -30 something MUTE, you have to press volume down to get back to mute then you can go back up again. What the heck?

James W. Johnson

I found a wierd glitch or something...if am on CD and run the volume to mute then switch to TV , its at -30 something MUTE, you have to press volume down to get back to mute then you can go back up again. What the heck?

James W. Johnson

Duh..I guess mute affects all sources but the specific volume levels of each source are saved.

I love this thing so far..its simple yet has just enough tweakability to do what I need.

My Yamaha has a rediculous amount of sound fields that sound flat out horrible yet pretty good compared to the ones my old Sony ES piece had.

The Aragon has the follwing modes and nothing else:

Dolby Digital
DTS
Stereo Direct
Six Channel analog input
Party mode (sends the L/R signal to the surround L and R)
Hall (sends L/R to all channels and runs the signal thru a reberb algorithm to simulate a large hall) ..I guess tthere is some tweakabily to this mode as well but I'll never know.

Thats it!


The speakers can be set from 30-80Hz in 5Hz increments, I look forward to having this flexibily as I have never had a Pre-Pro that had this option.


I watched part of Open Range last night in DTS and was very impressed, it was clean and crisp yet lacked the fizziness that my Yamaha can sometimes give out. At first it seemed like some of the sparkle was missing but after awhile it became clear that the sound was as it was meant to be and I was just used to the Yamaha.

In two channel I have my Sony ES CD player connected via analog and digital , I have experimented with analog, analog direct and digital (aka the onboard crystal DACs)
There is no question that in any mode I have gotten improvments though.

So far I am quite happy with my purchase.

James W. Johnson

Duh..I guess mute affects all sources but the specific volume levels of each source are saved.

I love this thing so far..its simple yet has just enough tweakability to do what I need.

My Yamaha has a rediculous amount of sound fields that sound flat out horrible yet pretty good compared to the ones my old Sony ES piece had.

The Aragon has the follwing modes and nothing else:

Dolby Digital
DTS
Stereo Direct
Six Channel analog input
Party mode (sends the L/R signal to the surround L and R)
Hall (sends L/R to all channels and runs the signal thru a reberb algorithm to simulate a large hall) ..I guess tthere is some tweakabily to this mode as well but I'll never know.

Thats it!


The speakers can be set from 30-80Hz in 5Hz increments, I look forward to having this flexibily as I have never had a Pre-Pro that had this option.


I watched part of Open Range last night in DTS and was very impressed, it was clean and crisp yet lacked the fizziness that my Yamaha can sometimes give out. At first it seemed like some of the sparkle was missing but after awhile it became clear that the sound was as it was meant to be and I was just used to the Yamaha.

In two channel I have my Sony ES CD player connected via analog and digital , I have experimented with analog, analog direct and digital (aka the onboard crystal DACs)
There is no question that in any mode I have gotten improvments though.

So far I am quite happy with my purchase.

Kevin T

congrats, james. all this talk is almost making miss my old soundstage. i just got my denon 3805 and have it all hooked up with my audio research sp-16l. the combo is not nearly as simple and intuitive as the soundstage was, but what do i expect from a dual pre / receiver setup?

kevin t

religion is the opiate of the masses

Kevin T

congrats, james. all this talk is almost making miss my old soundstage. i just got my denon 3805 and have it all hooked up with my audio research sp-16l. the combo is not nearly as simple and intuitive as the soundstage was, but what do i expect from a dual pre / receiver setup?

kevin t

religion is the opiate of the masses

Ricky T

James,

Good to see you are enjoying the Aragon's nice clean sound. A couple of us Soundstage Owners feel a little sick when we see this prepro drop below a grand used, such a steal. If someone is still 5.1 (with a need for 5.1 inputs), there really is no competition under 1300, used or new (for now). You'd have to go to a separate tube preamp like Kevin did...and then his other channels might suffer :wink: btw, I used a Rogue Magnum 66 tube preamp, Lexicon MC1 combo for 1.5 years before getting my Aragon. 1.5 years in Ricky time is like 15 years for most HTF members! I've had the Aragon for 1.5 years and running....gosh, time flies!

What is the rest of your system?