Panagiotis Karavitis

Born and raised in Athens, Greece, Panagiotis Karavitis had his first experiences with music through his uncle’s reel to reel rock tapes, grandfather’s 45’s of folk music, and a futile passage at the conservatorium where he was supposed to learn the guitar. The guitar never happened but the love of music grew strong; during the 80’s, he could not get himself off the boombox, listening to just about everything he could lay his hands on.

By the time he was 15, he had his own weekly radio show at a local station, rock music mostly. It was the early 90’s, so a mix of vinyl and CD would do the job.

Time flew and he found himself in Italy, studying medicine and listening to classic music. And as the musical tastes evolved, so did his hi-fi system. From Marantz, NAD, B&W, Rega, all the way to ASR, ATC, Garrard — and with just a touch of DIY, he loved each and every single piece of hardware.

Oddly, Dr K honestly believes that there are many ways to happiness: he enjoys using both solid state and tube gear, MM and MC cartridges. If given half a chance, he will loudly declaim his fondness for the “analog sound” of vinyl, which isn’t surprising as his music collection is heavily biased towards the black, and not the silver, discs. You want to see something scary? Watch him talk with Stereophile‘s Michael Fremer. The two of them appear to have their own language.

Dr K is also an occasional contributor to Enjoy The Music while he has recently founded the Audiohub.gr forum. And yes, he really is a practicing medical doctor. And yes, he does still live and work in Athens.

The system was designed with big scale classic orchestras in mind. It can handle Mahler, Schubert and Beethoven with ease, meaning it will sail through pretty much everything.

Speakers

Turntable Setup

  • Garrard 401 with external motor controller, Sien bearing
    • Kuzma 4point tonearm
    • SME 3009 S2 improved tonearm
    • SME V-12 tonearm
    • Rega RB300 tonearm
  • Cartridges include ZYX 4D Ultimate, Fidelity Research PMC-1, Fidelity Research FR-1 mk3, Denon 103R, Denon 102 mono, AudioTechnica 20SLa, Shure V15 III, Shure M97xE, Sumiko Alchemist Talisman S
  • ASR Basis exclusive phono stage (dual boards)

Digital set up

  • Rockna Wavedream DAC (MSB modules)
  • Chord Mojo
  • Odroid C2 streamer running Archphile OS. Linear power supply and DC to DC regulator from TI (removed due to ripple)
  • Volumio Mini86 streaming computer Sold due to lack of support
  • Synology j216 NAS with Seagate HDDs
  • TP Link Archer gigabit router with linear power supply
  • BAASKE medical grade ethernet filter

Amplification

  • ASR emitter I exclusive with battery Akku and phono module
  • GM70 DIY SET power amplifiers
  • 300B DIY SET integrated amplifier

Headphones

Cables

Power Conditioning

  • Signal Projects Poseidon power strip
  • Dedicated power line. One phase is isolated and the line goes straight to the system. Only a ceramic slow blow fuse used for safety. 4N copper, 3x6mm2 conductor.
  • Virtual ground box for the tonearm

Record Cleaning

Room Acoustics and measurements

  • Floating ground room
  • Measurements with REW v5 and MiniDSP Umik-1 microphone calibrated by Cross Spectrum labs
  • Analogmagik software
  • Dr Feickert platter speed plus

Music library

  • Some 2500 LPs, mostly classic music and opera early pressings. A few gems of jazz and some rock make up for the rest
  • 6 TB of digital files, most of which are high-res PCM and DSDs. Again, classic music and jazz occupy the largest part of the collection. Only few CDs still kept and no CD player on the main rig since ages.