Prairie Audio Man Cave owner and founder, Juan C. Ayllon, is seen above as a writer, educator, and artist living in an international household in the suburbs of Chicago. Born in La Paz, Bolivia, he is fluent in English but Spanish—not so much, while his wife Belle, born in Belfast, Ireland, speaks both English and Korean with a touch of cheekiness.
Alexy and Irina Kornienkov (photo courtesy of Ken Micallef/Stereophile)
Alexey Korf is a designer and owner of Korf Audio, a company based out of Klosterneuburg, Austria that’s big into research and development, specializing in ceramic headshells, tonearms, and accessories. A former engineer for the Soviet space program, Alexey worked as an engineer in the oil industry before establishing Korf Audio in 2011. It began as a consulting company on analog servicing manufacturers and dealers, but eventually switched to building analog products, culminating in their first product, a popular “fully ceramic headshell made as one uninterrupted casting with no joints”, as he put it, in December 2019. It became a huge success (I use the Korf HS-A02 Ceramic Headshell in my reference system). Alexey recently agreed to contribute some of his writing to Prairie Audio.
Mark Massura is a Chicago-based writer for Prairie Audio US who documents high-fidelity audio gear setups, local demonstrations, and personal listening experiences. An affable salesman by day and an audiophile by night and on weekends. Based out of Chicago, over the years, he has accumulated excellent electronics, hundreds of records, as well as CDs, SACDs, and a lot of loudspeakers.
Michael Olajide, Jr. (image from his website, https://systemofsilk.com)
Michael Olajide, Jr. is a former world middleweight boxing contender who went on to become a fitness instructor for the stars. Olajide was a primary mover in bringing boxing training for fitness into vogue. He began teaching boxing for fitness in 1991. His approach and his gym, Aerospace High-Performance Center, were the driving concepts for boxing fitness gyms worldwide today. Featured in Vogue, GQ, Sports Illustrated, and Time magazine, Michael might be considered as The Godfather of Boxing for Fitness. As such, he’s been gracious in allowing Prairie Audio to publish some of his insights in our Lifestyle & Sports section.
Our contributing writer, Pedro Fernandez, is a multi-award winning writer whose career in journalism has taken him to 34 countries. He is also a former San Francisco Policeman and was a Nationally Ranked 4-time Golden Gloves boxing champion. Pedro is the creator and host of “Ring Talk Worldwide” a syndicated radio talk show with 41 years of airtime on Sports Byline USA. You can watch it Sat & Sun @ 11:06 AM PT on YouTube or Twitch.TV on the Sports Byline USA channel
Pedro-Pete Fernandez RING TALK
Juan C. Ayllon’s Reference System
LOUDSPEAKERS
- ATC SCM40 Loudspeakers atop Isoacoustics Gaia III Vibration Isolators
- REL Acoustics S/812 Subwoofers
THE ROOM
Ayllon’s listening and A/V room is located in front half of the 32′ x 22′ main space in a finished basement with a painted exposed ceiling that’s roughly 9′ high. It employs a ceiling cloud, acoustic absorption panels and bass traps, as well as two 20 amp and two 15 amp dedicated A/V circuits. You can read about the design and finishing process at the linkHERE.
ELECTRONICS
- Schiit Audio Yggdrasil OG DAC
- Pass Labs XP-12 preamplifier
- Pass Labs XP-17 Phonostage
- Quadratic Audio MC-1 Moving Coil Transformer
- Pass Labs X150.8 amplifier
- Pass Labs HPA-1 Headphone Amplifier
- Vizio Quantum M Series 75″ flat screen TV
- Sony BDP-S5500 Blu Ray player.
SOURCES
- Analog: Dr. Feickert Analogue Woodpecker turntable with the GrooveMaster 3 Tonearm
- Digital: Intel NUC10FNH server with ROCK (Roon Optimized Core Kit) music player software, Featuring 4 TB of DSD128, DSD64, WAV, Flac and other music files, and Qobuz streaming service, housed in an HDPLEX H1 V3 fanless case.
- Alternative Server: MacBook Pro
CABLES
- Straight Wire: Virtuoso R2 balanced interconnects, Crescendo 3 XLR interconnects (preamp to amp), Vituoso, Expressivo, and Serenade II RCA interconnects; USBF 15 filtered USB cables. Crescendo 3 SC speaker cables (bi-wired); Pro Thunder and Black Thunder power cords.
- Audio Art Cables prototype phono tonearm cable.
MEDIA FURNITURE
- BDI Corridor 8179 media console
ACCESSORIES
- Dan Clark Audio Ether 2 planar headphones
- Dan Clark Audio Stealth planar headphones
- Fostex TP-50 Mk3 headphones
- iFi Go Bar dongle DAC and Headphone amplifier
- Questyle M12 Mobile Phone Headphone and DAC
- Apple Mini iPad II (music server controller), Apple iPhone XR (music server controller)
- Netgear N300 WiFi EX2700 Extender
- Toshiba external hard drive
- Richard Gray’s Power Company RGPC 1200 surge protection
- Panamax M5300 EX power conditioner
- A/V RoomService Equipment Vibration Protectors
- Herbie’s Audio Labs Extra Thick Titanium Cone/Spike Puckies and Cone/Spike Gliders
- Tizio desk lamp (on separate circuit from electronics)
ABOUT THE HIGH TV PLACEMENT
Coincidentally, when Juan was courting Belle, a favorite restaurant of ours, the now-defunc Kona Grill in Lincolnshire, IL had its TVs mounted high, as did a lot of sports bar/restaurants we frequented. You could watch something on their screens unobstructed even as people walked by. I liked the idea, as we sometimes host get-togethers and want people to be able to view the screen from anywhere in the room unobstructed. So, there’s sentimental, as well as practical reasons for the high placement of our big screen TV.
