teknoid
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Posts posted by teknoid
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So I'll depart a little bit from the tube techno-babble and tell you about what my ears heard. Don't get me wrong here the techno stuff is important to understand but not always pertinent to what makes an amp sound the best it can.
Back when I was WAY in to tubed kit I came across a Chinese tube manufacturer named Psvane. They were trying to make a name for themselves by replicating the very best of the NOS tube designs. After reading a few positive reviews I pulled the trigger on a full set of their tubes for my preamp (Dared MC-7P) and power amp (Bob Latino St-120). The difference in sound to my ears was so stunning that I rolled the original tubes back in just to verify I wasn't losing my mind.
If you have the coin check them out at: http://psvanetube.com/wordpress/purchase/psvane-vacuum-tubes/ Not exactly cheap but many of their products are a lot cheaper than the much sought after NOS versions.
Of course with all things tubed your mileage may vary
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Hopefully it will track a bit further south than currently projected. If it does the mountainous terrain of Hispaniola will tear it apart the way it did Danny. If not a LOT of Florida could get really REALLY wet.
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I've always considered myself not an audiophile but rather an audiofool.
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I'm not sure I used a TT with the Adcom. If memory serves I picked up a McIntosh C32 preamp shortly after getting the Adcom and chose the C32 for obvious reasons. I don't think I got back in to vinyl until after getting the McIntosh. That was the beginning of a several year "tube" odyssey. I know the C32 is not a tube preamp. I used it to drive a Bob Latino ST120 pushing a pair of rebuilt La Scalas.
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I used an Adcom GTP-500 preamp for a while a few years ago. As I recall it was a nice neutral sounding preamp.
As for cleaning "pots" if you have to ask the question you probably don't have the technical skills required to do so. It's not hard at all but you really need to have a bit of "technical" background to do it. Your best bet if you buy it is to hook up with a local forum member who has the skills and have him (or her) demonstrate for you. Once you've seen the process you'll see how easy it is. If you were near by I'd be happy to show you the process
Price? Yea... I'd spring $100 for a working GTP-500 even if it did need a little cleanup. You'd be hard pressed to find a sonically or functionally equal preamp new for less than 5 times the asking price.
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I've always been partial to vintage Marantz receivers driving Klipsch Heritage speakers. That said up until recently I drove my Heresys with an Onkyo Integra integrated amp and was very pleased with the sound the set produced. Sadly the Onkyo amp went TU so I'm on the hunt for a replacement that I can live with and afford.
What I perceive as my first "real" stereo system was assembled 74-75 when I was 16 to 17. It consisted of a Marantz 2240 receiver, a pair of Belles, a Dual 1249 TT with a Shure V15 cartridge, a Pioneer CTX-9191 cassette deck and an Akai GX-Whatever R2R deck. That system stayed with me for many years with very little change. Were it not for a VERY ugly divorce I'd probably still have most of it.
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I don't have any answers for you but when I was working with a pair of Dynaco MKIVs I found a lot of good info here:
http://dynacotubeaudio.forumotion.com/f2-basket
Yet another set of "good folks" there much like here.
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A couple of weeks ago my old Samsung BD player bit the dust. In addition to the occasional BD movie it's primary function was to feed the living room TV with NetFlix.
No worries. I dusted off a retired Asus desktop PC that had a HDMI port and put it in to duty feeding NetFlix to the LR TV. The catch was it struggled to supply the TV with a steady signal over HDMI. The audio never wavered but there were frequent video stutters or the video would lag behind the audio. I figured an upgraded video card was probably the solution but hadn't gotten around to buying one. The plan was to save my pennies for a couple of months and get another NetFlix enabled BD player NOT upgrade the PC.
Saturday morning the PC presented me with the "Upgrade to Windows 10 now" message. I figured WTF what do I have to lose? Worst case I roll it back to Win7. The whole upgrade process took less than an hour with multiple restarts as expected.
The upshot of all of it is that now NetFlix runs completely smoothly under Windows 10 with no lags or stutters. Go figure?
Is Windows 10 THAT much more code efficient that things just run better? -
Of the 8 PCs I routinely work with (3 desktops, 3 laptops, and 2 tablets) 4 of them upgraded smoothly to Win10 and the other 4 not so much. I'm trying to figure out the "why" of that. The machines that I assumed would have problems upgrading did so without any issues. Those that I assumed were "prime" for the upgrade failed. Go figure.
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You don't want it. It's defective. They built it upside-down
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Super nice amp to be certain. Wish I had the extra coin. It would make an excellent replacement for my ailing Onkyo Integra integrated.
Good luck with your sale!
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Currently SS only on the main system but as a former tube user I'll be going back to tube amplifications as soon as I can.
After voting I realized that I voted incorrectly. I do have an amp in my bedroom with a tubed front end. I guess i should have voted "both".
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At the company I work for we spec, shop, buy, and install several hundred PCs every year. What I can tell you from that experience is that at any given price point they're all about the same. We consistently buy Dell PCs because of their superior support.
If you want I'll do the research for you. Give me a budget number and I'll hook you up with a PC that will meet your requirements.
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Keep an eye out for a black Academy. Two of them that I owned had VERY slightly less than perfect walnut veneer under the black paint. A couple of hours with a sander and I converted a black Academy to a walnut academy.
Good luck!
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I got bit by the high voltage cap on a CRT when I was 15. Lesson learned. Didn't happen a second time. At the TV repair shop I was working in at the time (73-74) the tech there would charge big caps, fold the leads against the body and wait until I came around the corner and yell "think fast" as he tossed it at me. Had the snot shocked out of me many many times.
I have a deep and abiding respect for the shock that capacitors can supply and treat them accordingly.
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I'll bet he's thinking $600 each.
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On average I do 3 to 4 MSC (Malware, Spyware, Crapware) cleanups on client PCs every week. I have a flash drive with all of my cleanup tools and there's a bunch of them. So far I haven't been presented with an infected PC that I couldn't make right. "So far" being the operative words there.
Of all the tools in the toolbox I think ADWCLEANER has fixed more issues than all of the others combined.
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ADWCleaner. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
If all else fails go nuclear with Combofix. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/
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I like big gauges...
Me too. Years ago I had an Onkyo Integra M-5-something power amp with big meters. What a gorgeous piece of kit. Sounded good driving a pair of maggie 1.6s too.
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With a bang. A BIG BANG.
Love to hear the system. Too bad it costs more than my first house. WAY more.
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Well the SlingTV experiment has come to an end. I simply don't watch the channels offered on SlingTV enough to justify the $20 a month fee. Especially since Comcast is going to be offering streaming TV for their internet only customers soon.Ya'll know what it is and what it does. It's in as new condition and includes all of the original parts, packaging and paperwork. I'll do a "factory reset" prior to boxing it up.Edit to add: I came across an extra 10' HDMI cable (Monoprice I think) that I can throw in the box at no additional charge.Asking price is $50 shipped to a CONUS address and paid by PayPal. No additional charge for using PayPal as it is my prefered form of payment.Thanks for looking!
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I'm not a Palladium owner but I hope to be someday. As such I'm following this thread with great interest. I have owned many very nice speakers including La Scalas and upper end Magnepans. With all of them I experimented with cables which provided some interesting results.All of that said here's my take (opinion) on speaker cables in general.As a general rule big buck speaker cables WILL NOT make low end speakers sound better. Cheap speaker wire (I/E zip cord) WILL make pretty much any speakers sound worse than they can.To me it's a matter of balance. I would never use $3000 speaker wires on $500 speakers. Nor would I use $5 speaker wires on $5000 speakers.If I owned a pair of top of the line Palladiums I'd begin by shopping decent (but not Lowes zip cord) cables the likes of bluejeanscables.com or perhaps the offerings from Emotiva. At that price point you can easilly flip them for most of what was spent when you buy the next level up. If the differences in cables are be to believed you'll notice an improvement when you buy the next level up.Keep stepping up price point by price point until you no longer hear an improvement. THAT is the point where you have found the proper cables for your speakers.Don't discount the "DIY" world. I've built and listened to a number of DIY speaker cable designs. Many if not most of them are stunningly good considering the cost involved.To my ears there are differences in speaker cables BUT only when you're dealing with fairly high end equipment. Even then the differences are very VERY subtle.These days my ears are listening to a pair of 84 Heresys driven by some vintage Onkyo Integra kit. Considering my age (57) and the obvious degredation of my hearing I can probably no longer discern the differences that cables make.Hopefully there will come a time when I can afford to assemble a system of the caliber that justifies spending large sums of $$ on cables. I also hope that there's enough of my hearing left that I can hear and justifiy the differences between cables.Until that day arrives my Heresys will continue to rock my world and make me smile. At the end of the day isn't that was music listening is all about?
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Take the recent Pluto flyby--which was a little disappointing that they couldn't orbit the planet for a while, interactively downloading images and re-tasking the spacecraft. It takes 4 1/2 hours transit time at the speed of light, and it will take several months to download all the images from that simply flyby. I'd rather see a lot more missions to outer planets and planetoids, since we still know very little. Multiple landings on Europa , Titan or Io would make a lot more sense from a science standpoint, and all together would cost a lot less than putting another man on the moon (...trust me on this...).
Have you learned nothing?
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA / ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE
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And now for something completely different
in Lounge
Posted · Edited by teknoid