whtboy

Does anyone have any input on the sonic differences between heresys and cornwalls? I'm guessing the heresys dont go as deep but (hopefully) might not have as much resonant chesty sound in the low mids that come through the 15s (200-600Hz). Thanks! -jacob

The seller removed the ad from craigslist and put it on ebay =) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5865094922&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEBI%3AIT&rd=1

I haven't found any specs online yet. Does it actually have four discrete inputs for running in 4x50W mode? This might be a great amp to run the mids & tweeters in a tri-amp setup. Thanks! -jacob

I'm not so concerned about the cosmetics. Was the hum constant or something that cropped up over time or only when other gear was part of the picture. Did it sound good when it was playing properly? Thanks! -jacob

Are Carver amps considered good? I haven't heard much about them in the last 10 years. I found a used TFM-15 locally for $180. 4x50 or 2x100 watts into 8 ohms. Thanks! -jacob

I've got EAC on my laptop. When I used it on my scratched CDs it just got stuck indefinitely. I'll check out Mareo, thanks!

Here's the curses interface. I actually like text interfaces, but I imagine my girlfriend wouldn't be so keen on it.

i've got about 1000 mp3s that are all 160kbps or higher (4GB) and about 500 songs encoded with flac (lossless, a little over 9GB). i just learned about lossless encoding recently. all the new stuff i rip is done with flac, which is why i bought the big drive =) jacob@bonham:~/FLAC 0 $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 9.2G 1.8G 7.0G 21% / tmpfs 126M 0 126M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 126M 13M 114M 10% /lib/modules/2.6.12-9-386/volatile /dev/hda6 283G 2.8G 266G 2% /home jacob@bonham:~/FLAC 0 $ -j

it's an old compaq P3 running ubuntu linux with a 320GB disk and an m-audio audiophile 2496 card: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html i'm still working on the xorg config to get the s-video output working so i can use my tv for a full x11 environment. right now i'm just using a text mode player to control it with my laptop over ssh. i've got about 10GB of music transferring over right now with rsync. this is going to be bada$$ when it's done =) -jacob

I hooked up my new Super T Amp last night and had a listen. I was very surprised. The sound was at least as good as my Yamaha receiver at normal listening levels, and I couldn't hear any audible distortion or clipping at SPL levels I could stand. SPL at the half marker was more than I could comfortably listen to for more than 15 seconds at a time. I did notice that on some tracks the stereo image wasn't as well-defined at high levels, but I'm not sure if the same thing happens with my Yamaha. Having a speaker/amp switchbox would be really convenient for situations like this.

Yes, the t-amp may be a bad choice for running the top end. My goal in biamping is two-fold: - to get a steeper slope between the mid & woofer to minimize the boomy sound of voices that bleed over into the woofer's signal - to improve the bass control by eliminating any inductors between the amp and the woofers voicecoil I've also read people have reported better clarity with each amplifier channel only reproducing a subset of the frequency response. I'm not sure how much of a difference this will make, but I'm willing to go this route to find out. -jacob

what is im distortion and how is it different from total harmonic distortion?

can you elaborate on why it has 0dB headroom and what "desing of the power supply" means? also, what is a 2A3 amp? thanks

oh well, if it doesn't work out i can always use it for a low power system at work =)

god i love being an impulse buyer! one of these babies should be hooked up in my living room later this week. jeff, i think it's getting close to that time when we should do an a/b/c test between my crap yamaha receiver, your crown + preamp and my new t-amp =)

hmm.... maybe this will drive the top end =) http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/sonicimpact2/t2.html

or if teac a-l700p's can be had for $100 a piece, would it make more sense to build a 3-way active crossover and use all 6 of the teac's channels to tri-amp it, completely avoiding the pitfalls of passive networks altogether?

or could i even use a simple 1st order network to avoid the high end phase issues that come up with 2nd order networks? if i use a 2nd order network would it be worthwhile to put in a phase selector switch in so i can flip the tweeter leads back and forth without opening the cabinet? i'm hesitant to use a 3rd order network because i've read 3rd & higher orders become exponentially more sensitive to variations in the values of the components, and i currently don't have a CL meter to measure caps & coils. -jacob

hi, i'm considering biamping my cornwalls. i've got an adcom gfa-545 ii lined up for the low end and am still looking for an amp to drive the upper half. i'll be using a P09 active crossover from red elliot to split the preamp signal into separate 20-600Hz and 600-20kHz signals (filtered at 24db/octave). the bass signals will go into the adcom, which will drive the woofers directly. the high end will go into a separate amp, which will then drive the tweeters/squawkers with a passive 2-way network. do i need to do anything special for the passive network here, or will a traditional 2nd order filter work well? something like this - http://www.colomar.com/Shavano/spk12db2.gif thanks! -jacob

i'm just looking locally right now but i will definitely keep you in mind. thanks!

Woohoo!!! I found a used Adcom GFA-545 mk2 for $175 ! ! ! That takes care of the bottom end. Now I just need to find something for the top =) I wonder if there are any good (and inexpensive) tube (or other hifi) amps in the 10-20 watt range that would work well for the top parts of a bi- or tri-amp setup. -j

What is the general hierarchy of the Heritage series in terms of sound quality? Do the higher end systems have different mids/tweeters?

Hahahaha... no wonder, he's a frckn lawyer!!! " What is your background? I have a B.A. in mathematics and a certificate in software engineering from San Diego State University. I was also a physics major for a time, and I studied optics in order to produce Finyl. All this, plus a natural scientific curiosity and a love of music, contributed to my interest in improving the sound of CDs. I also happen to be an attorney. "

"Only one hitch: Each must be re-recorded. No CD player or transport currently available is able to overcome the inherent design flaws of mass-produced CDs" I dunno man, sounds a little flaky to me. I'm very eager to find out what a blind AB test reveals. I would also be interested to see an analysis on the binary cda/wav files themselves to make sure they haven't just been doctored up a little bit ;-) If the "new" digital source is different at the bit level then this would simply fall into the category of digital expanders, stereo width processors, etc., no? -jacob

When I say "bits are bits" I mean that once a 16-bit 44kHz digital signal is pressed to CD, the digitial signal coming out of any non-defective transport is going to be the same whether it comes from a 5 year old $99 Sony cd player with digital outs playing a cheapo CD-R copy or a $5000 audiophile transport playing some super special, extra clean audiophile CD-R copy. Unaltered digital is digital. No loss, no differences. Obviously, there will be differences in DA conversion, but I'm talking about the digital side of things. Comparing the audio quality of lossy codecs like MP3 (with the iPod) and Altrac (with the minidisc) is like comparing cassette recorded copies to the digital source itself. I don't think anyone is going to argue those codecs alter the sound, whatever the bitrate. That's why people use lossless formats like FLAC. Combine that with the cheap DA convertors and amplifier circuits often found in portable electronics, I'm not at all surprised you could hear a difference. What I'm saying is that I don't believe there's any way to take an existing CD and make it sound better unless you are going to do some sort of remastering, but I don't think that's what's happening with this copier.