NBPK402
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Posts posted by NBPK402
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Cerwin Vegas are great speakers...I used to have Cerwin Vegas...with the most recent pair being a pair of S1s. Great sounding speakers!
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I will be using the Ultimax 15, and a plate amp. Where do you install a plate amp...on the access door?
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Update: I have come up with a new design for a rack inside of a cabinet. The new design will keep all the equipment concealed, free of dust (I know it will not be 100% free of dust, but it will be considerably better than my current setup), and will provide cooling . The rack shelves are made of 1 1/4" wide steel plate that has been cut, welded, and painted with charcoal grey metallic automotive paint by a body shop. The rack shelves are completed and each of the metal rack shelves will be supported by 7 1 1/4" Parota wood rods. each of the rods has a 1/4' 3" long piece of allthread, attached via threaded inserts on each end of the rods. 1st step for assembly will be to attach each of the 7 rods the topside of the bottom of the cabinet via 7 1/4" allthread and then 7 hockey pucks swill be attached to the bottom of the cabinet. once this is done, I will lay 1 metal shelf on top of the 7 Parota rods, and then lay a 1" thick Parota wood shelf on top of the metal shelf. Next, I will screw the next 7 rods through the metal shelf to the 1st layer of 7 Parota wood rods... then I will keep doing this until all 4 shelves and the top and bottom Parota is completed. Then we will measure the distance from the top of the bottom piece of the cabinet to the bottom of the top piece of the cabinet (for the construction ofslatted panels).. The front and sides will be made of 1 Parota wood frame that has black grill cloth attached to it, and then 1x1 strips of Perota wood will be run vertically with each piece separated by approximately 1". I have not decided if i want the rear to also have slats or just a frame with grill cloth, yet. The cabinet will be a bit over 6' wide x 4' high, by 28" deep. I will also be installing LED lighting facing downward from the top of the cabinet.
The end of the month we will be building a pair of Joseph Crowe subwoofers. The cabinets will be made of plywood and then wrapped with 1" Parota wood. Sometime next moth they subs should be ready for testing, and then the cabinets will be sent to my carpenter to mod with Parota wood.
Then the long awaited MEH wood horns will be started. The first 1 or 2 will be made of MDF stacked layers, and if they come out as expected, I will try 2 or 3 of them out of stacked Parota wood. The MDF versions will be painted to match the charcoal grey shelves. The last part of the the horns will be to try them cabinet less, and if i like them that way they will be complete...if not I will make cabinets out of MDF for the 2 MDF horns and paint them to match the MDF MEH. Then I will look at how the Parota horns look with a mdf cabinet. If the contrast looks nice I will most likely stop there.
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I have been busy with some updates, and learned some things too.
First I decided to give a different DAC a try... I decided to try the Denafrips Pontus ii. I picked this model due to all the reviews I had read and I really like well built equipment with thick aluminum and well laid out internals (I know this is strange, but it is honest...looks make a difference too to me). Well it was an eye, and ear opening experience that took over a month to finally settle down (I leave it on 24/7). The sound was/is dramatically different than the ESS chip in the Marantz. It is like listening to music live in my room and there is an actual presence around each item. The clarity is also better, and I hear items that were hidden by the ESS DAC. It is like the system had a coat of paint on it and it has now been stripped tonally, and very easy to distinguish different sounds in their proper place. The minute items were hidden in the soundstage before and now it is like a spotlight is on them, and they are crystal clear without the volume level being changed.
Next I decided to give a Lumin U1 Mini out...I like the way the Lumin changes the sound of the Roon Rock, but I am not that pleased with the Lumin interface, and I use the Lumin as a Roon endpoint.
Next I purchased a Denafrips Athena preamp and it basically makes everything about the Pontus ii and Lumin a little bit better.
Lastly I did something that I never expected to make any difference, but since my Cisco switch is EOL, I decided now was a good time to upgrade. I purchased a pair of Fiber convertor boxes and some fiber cable and inserted it between my switch and my Lumin. Well one thing I noticed and measured was a shorted pause between all tracks (I am talking going from 8-10 seconds to less than 2). Now from what Lumin told me fiber is not affected by EMI/EMF, and others have reported good results from using it with reduced noise and also shortening the gap between tracks. It def did this. Now I am thinking the reduced noise could very well have been hiding low level intro music and exit music, and now with a lower noise floor my gaps have reduced. I am now awaiting a new Switch with SFP ports (so I can reduce convertor modules since I would only need a convertor module on one end for those 4 ports). The expense of trying this was less than $100 on Amazon.
I had thought with technology the way it is today that the differences in Preamps and DACs would be very close sounding, but I have found they are not always so close sounding at all (in my setup).
Has anyone else tried a different DAC than their AVR, or AVP has?
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I decided to purchase the Lifetime Roon subscription, and I am kicking myself for not buying it sooner.
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1 hour ago, haydukej said:
PM sent @NBPK402. With your current MEH cabinet construction, could these be placed horizontally?
The center one is horizontal... If you duplicated the cabinet for the left and right you could use horizontally.
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On 8/31/2022 at 5:39 PM, babadono said:
Wow Ron...move to Mexico..now to Portugal...living the dream
Well that is retirement for you.
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Yeah, I just figured I would post here and see if it sounded like a fair price and whether anyone would even think of going the distance to pick up. I will post later this year (in the garage section) once the small speakers are completed. @billybob
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Update... The Athena arrived and even though it is a active no gain preamp it pushes my K402 MEHs to 95db on peaks @ 15' to the mlp with the volume set to 20 or lower!
It also has increased the legibility of minute details.
My wife and i are planning on moving to Portugal in the next year or two (more likely 2-3 years), and shipping the MEHs will be a big cost, so...
Question: I am hoping to get 3 more MEHs completed hopefully by Xmas this year, and I am wondering if there would be any interest in the full size MEHs I have. Any buyer would need to pick them up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico which is a about a 10 hour drive from Texas. I am thinking $1k each including EV dh1a drivers, Emminence Kappa 15 woofers and the cabinets. Now the cabinets I am including free and they are each a bit different in shape and cabinet enclosure cf (also the center cabinet is in the best condition but has a big scratch on one of the short sides. The other 2 are in varying condition on the veneer). I will give complete pics of the exterior so you can see how they are, whenwe are ready to sell. This might give you a way to decide which way to go on dampening and size if you choose to make new cabinets. I would like to sell all 3 MEHs complete (minus the crossover) together and if someone was to purchase all 3, I will sell the 4th MEH horn only for $250 additional. All the horns are in good condition with a couple having some flaking of the laminating in the horn. I will also include 3 grills that I made for the MEHs. If anyone is interested and can make the trip down here and back, let me know. The drive down is pretty safe, but I highly recommend only driving during the day, and driving on toll roads or freeways. there is a place that is local that does home moves to and from Mexico and that might be a better option. You could always fly down here and then make arrangements to ship via cargo back to the USA.
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Just my bad luck with it, so I will wait and buy some new power amps later next year, this year has been very expensive in new equipment purchases.
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Been a while so here is my update for the year so far...
Purchased a Denafrips Pontus ii DAC, Lumin U1 Mini, and awaiting delivery on a Denafrips Athena preamp.
I took a chance when I bought the Denafrips Pontus ii since my experience with a external DAC was not good (I had a IFI Signature DAC that sounded horrible). The Pontus started out sounding good and over the 1st month went to outstanding! The Pontus is a fully balanced Ladder DAC, and it sound the closest to vinyl I have ever heard tonally. Now the biggest thing is the noise floor is very low and it throws a holographic soundstage that must be heard to appreciate!
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Update... one of the amps developed a hiss after a couple of weeks so I returned both amps. This is apparently not a rare problem as many reviews have reported this happening after a few weeks.
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On 7/22/2022 at 8:36 AM, Khornukopia said:
I think I read about a square mouth version that you were building. Is that in progress?
Yes, I am still working on it...we had a delay when my friend has some projects he had to get done, and one of the projects is getting his new building ready for his shop. I am hoping by this Christmas to have some done. I am planning on a single wood full size and 2 square ones out of wood also.
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On 6/7/2022 at 1:58 PM, JMON said:
The Classé Audio Model Seventy was my very first Classé Audio power amplifier I had owned and is what sold me on the brand (again, not my photo nor is this of the amp I owned, but looks identical). This one has 70 watts / channel and also has both balanced and single-ended inputs. However, I don't believe it could be bridged to mono.
I used to have the Classe DR10 amps in bridged mono and Classe DR6 preamp... I miss them so much!
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On 11/24/2020 at 6:20 PM, rplace said:
Rock is free. You probably only need an i5 NUC, but I like overkill. Should be less than $500 complete
When I got my Pontus ii I hooked it up via USB to my i7 windows 10 Roon core, and it sounded good. I then took my old i5 NUC and installed Roon Rock (as an end point), and hooked the Pontus ii up to it and it sounded better! I was surprised and found out others have had a similar experience and they said it was due to less threads running on Linux vs Windows 10.
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I have had the Pontus ii now for 2 or 3 weeks, and in the beginning i really noticed a few things I liked that were different than my Marantz ESS and my old Yamaha ESS chips in the AVPs. I have noticed that the sound (up to today) has changed noticeably daily...sometimes part will be an improvement and another part is worse. I did not believe that the sound would be changing after Denafrips did their 100hr burn ins, but it sure does. I listen every night to the same tracks to see if their is a change and I leave the Pontus plugged in and on 24/7. Last night everything sounded better than I had expected!
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On 12/7/2021 at 6:13 AM, Shakeydeal said:
I am following this thread with interest. I have had a Pontus II for about two weeks now and I'm extremely happy with it. Alvin seems to think that since I'm using the balanced output of a Lumin streamer into the Pontus that I might not benefit very much from a DDC. I was considering that my next upgrade would be a Hermes or a Venus II. Still not sure which way I'll go, but I'm content to just live with the Pontus right now.
What mode do you Denafrips users prefer? NOS or OS?
Shakey
What Lumin streamer do you have? I am thinking maybe just get a good streamer instead of the DD too.
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I have the Pontus ii and I am debating on getting the Hermes, as I have heard it brings the Pontus ii to the level of the Venus.
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Def a good DAC... I have the Pontus ii and love it.
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On 2/14/2022 at 10:02 AM, jjptkd said:
So I did a little playing around with the gain settings on each amp over the weekend, nothing too fancy just playing random music and using my Ratshack SPL meter. With the volume controls on both amps turned all the way up my woofers play on average about 3db louder then the upper horn section-- which is exactly how the Carver 275 measured. This is at lower volume with the LFE boost on in the TG-IV settings.
To me, the added 3db on the bottom end sounds perfectly balanced, with the crossover point from woofer to mid horn at 800hz if I dial the horns back at all I can start to hear the woofer over the horns especially in voices. The second amp really closed the gap between the Carver 275 although my ears still prefer the sound of the tubes. With two PA5's I'm still at less than 1/3rd the cost of the Carver amp so all in all I think they're doing pretty good considering that fact.
I'm not sure exactly why the single PA5 had such a deficit in bass response I know the Carver was a bit bloated on the bottom end but my Sunfire Receiver still seems to have quite a bit more bass than the PA5. Honestly I don't think I would have been happy with a single PA5 because of this long term I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this?
Are you running 1 stereo PA5 per speaker and running 1 channel to the compression driver and the other to the woofers?
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In my last HT I did all my measurements from about 6" behind my head and it sounded great...now I will say the room was fully soundproofed and treated to where it was just about to dead (straddle the line between dead and reflective to a very fine line, which some might say was too dead, but the ones who heard it thought it was perfect). This setup was with JBL 2360A, EV DH1a drivers, Qpies, and DTS10 subs.
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I just ordered 2 of them to try on my MEHs.
Sent from my SM-T830 using Tapatalk -
I used to have the Yamaha cxa5100, and now I have the Marantz av8805A. I really liked the Yamaha and the remote interface. The Marantz has an entirely different sound, IMO, and the remote app sucks. The 8805A has a newer ESS DAC and I really like bottom end on it better than the Yamaha cxa5100. The mids and top end are very similar, and the detail the Yamaha had was not lost when I got the 8805A. The build quality on both are very good, too. The price difference is substantially more with the Marantz, but I wanted Auro3d, and the Marantz also had more channels... so it was the best for me until I can afford a Trinnov or Storm.
If you can wait... I believe Yamaha will have the new AVP out this fall, and it will most likely have Auro3d too, since the AVRs all have it now.
Sent from my SM-G985F using Tapatalk
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ARC is the older version and EARC is the newer version. From my experience both have to be the same version.
Sent from my SM-G985F using Tapatalk
DIY Subwoofer - lilmike's Cinema F-20 vs lilwrecker
in Subwoofers
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I am thinking of using MDF for the internals and then 1/2" plywood for the exterior, and then finish it off with 1" thick Parota wood. I figure this way I will have a nice looking sub + no leaks.