trvale

After reading a Wired News article about a company that gives away free iPods, I did some research. Seems that freeipods.com is an advertising company and makes money by pointing potential customers to different businesess. They then send out ipods as rewards. I decided to sign up for Infone on my cell phone through the web site. It doesn't cost anything to sign up, the first 5 calls are free, and there is never a monthly fee. I figure it can't hurt to sign up if there is a free ipod possible. Well now all I need is 5 people to sign up through my link, and I will get a free ipod. Anybody who signs up through me is that much closer to their own ipod! I urge anybody who is skeptical to read the Wired News article that I have linked to above. I kind of feel shady for using this great message board for something like this, but we're talking a free ipod here!! Please click here to sign up under my name. Thanks.

Check to see if the radio station has an online streaming version of the station. If it does then the best way would be to digitally record it using something like Rotal Recorder. That will record anything that is played through the sound card. I use Total Recorder all the time to record the Essential Mix off of the BBC. It maked perfect recordings that are as close to CD quality as you can get.

I am interested in building a tube headphone amp, and havn't found to much on the net. I am in college and broke, so I need something VERY inexpensive. I found this amp but don't know what to look for. Is it any good? I will be running Sennheiser HD570's, unless somebody knows of a better pair of headphones for under $100. Will this amp work for the HD570's with 64 ohm impedance? If anybody has any other ideas of good, inexpensive headphone amps let me know. Thanks.

Don't forget about an Eico HF-81! I love the EL-84 sound. The only other tubes I have heard are the 6v6 and EL-34. The eico just doesn't have as much power as an EL-34 or 7591, but with RF-7's who needs an extra 10 watts. I listen to a lot of classic rock with 92db/w speakers and it gets plenty loud. I'm sure you would be happy with a 299c though!

The RSW subs are not passive subs, because they have built in amplifiers. They do however use passive radiators that eliminate port noise. To my knowledge passive radiators will not make the sound any tighter than ported subs, because they are doing essentially the same thing. Non-ported subs that don't use a passive radiator are going to produce tighter more controlled bass, but not as deep. Correct me if I'm wrong!

I don't understand why a $1500 system is being compared to a $500-$800 system. Either will sound good, with the the Klipsch probably sounding slightly better. For the price difference, there seems no reason to even mention the bose. There are plenty of small speaker systems available that will be cheaper and perform better than those bose. Just a few names are JBL/Infinity, Polk, Velodyne, Energy... Also if this is going to be mainly for 2 channel music I wouldn't go with small satelite speakers. If you could take the $1000-$1500 on a 2 channel system you are going to be much happier with the quality. And later on down the road you can add speakers for home theater. Those HTIB type speakers are going to do very well with DVD's but 2 channel music will have a much lacking midrange.

Thanks for all the replys. I am on a budget because I am going back to school in a few weeks and need to save money, so I can't afford too much right now. The zerostat isn't too expensive but it doesn't clean as well. I went to Elusive Disc and found the orbitrac 2 cleaning kit. Does this kit also reduce static? The price seems great. I do eventually want to get a vacuum cleaning system, its just not possible right now. Is the inexpensive nitty gritty 1.0 worth the money? It is only about $250 and I don't mind spinning the lp by hand. Thanks.

I have noticed that some of my records are building up static. I assume this static electricity is affecting the sound, so can I just spray RatShack anti-static spray on them? Is there some other solution that is designed for LP's? I just don't want to spray it on and find out that it hurts the sound more than help it. Thanks.

I just got a turntable for christmas. It is a Stanton STR8-20b(belt driven). I know it is a cheap table, and not audiophile quality but I like it. It came with a Stanton 500b cartridge, which sounds good. My biggest problem however is playing poorer quality records. When I play some records the S's sounds like hissing snakes. There is also a lot of pops in some of my records. I know that this is something I will just have to deal with vinyl, but I want to minimize these problems as much a possible. Would a higher end cartridge make a difference with these worn out records, or is just sound quality that I will gain? I have noticed that the Sure M97XE gets a lot of recommendations. Would that cartridge play these records better? As you can see I am new to vinyl and don't have any clue as to what can do to make my records more playable. Any recommendations are appreciated. I have this TT hooked up to my Eico HF-81 and it sounds incredible! I thought that my Eico sounded good playing CD's, but vinyl seems to be a better match.

---------------- On 12/15/2003 8:06:24 PM michael hurd wrote: Anyone have an answer as to what discs are the most scratchproof of all the available blank cd-r's? Just wondering. I have only copied a few discs for the car, and I tried burning at 12x, but had a problem. After slowing down the rate to 4x, no problems. Just takes a little longer, that's all. How much does the speed of the computer affect this process? I mean the computer we have is older, and not necessarily up to date ( pentium II 450 with 256 megs ram ). ---------------- I treat my discs horribly, throwing them around in my car. I guess because I know I can always just burn another copy . With just the regular green or blue dye cd-r's, scratches can make the cd skip sometimes in just a few days. I tried TDK's black cd-r's, which are a little more expensive but seem to withstand my abuse completely. I don't think I have had a black CD go bad yet.

What the Fu©k is your problem NOSValves! Kelly didn't said anything that would warrant your remark. You are the biggest @sshole on this forum. All you do is rip on people who don't worship you, and especially Kelly. I am amazed that you get any customers the way you act around here. Also, you are also a pompous bastard when it comes to restoring amps. You are always bragging about how you can make any vintage amp silent, well anybody can. It isn't too difficult to test and replace caps and resistors. Hell I just did it on my newly acquired HF-81, and it is silent. I know that after this post I won't be able ever post again without NOS ripping whatever I say apart. Fu©k it, I don't care.

Seems like everyone is trying to make blanket statements. Making statements like all American cars are crap, or that everything made in Asia sucks, seems illogical to me. There are going to be companies that produce good quality products and companies that produce poor quality products regardless of what country they are produced in. Nobody could possibly defend a statement like "Bose are just as good as Klipsch" because they are both american companies. Now both companies have different customers in mind. Bose knows that nobody is going to hook there speakers up to a Sunfire Signature amp, and they are designed accordingly. Same thing goes for cars. I personally have had much better experience with German and Japanese cars. But that is not to say that Ford can't produce quality automobiles. A car like the Crown Vic was designed to be used in fleets, as in police cars and taxis. Crown Vic's are very reliable, require little maintance. However you don't see too many people driving around in Crown Vic's. Ford doesn't market them to the general public. There are specific reasons that Crown Vics are designed the way they are. Most of the Fords american's are driving are SUV's based on trucks. They are reliable because the trucks have to be. I guess I am just trying to say that you should shop for quality, not country of origin. I also agree with the statements Kelly made about Americas need to drive HUGE SUV's that get 10mpg.

---------------- On 11/13/2003 9:55:01 AM maxg wrote: There was an option under the properties section of the display to set large fonts. I have done this but everything is still bloody small. ---------------- LCD displays all have a native resolution that will look best. There is nothing you can do about that. Did you set the large fonts setting in the appearance tab, or the advanced button under settings? If you just changed it in the appearance tab, change it back to normal, and go into the advanced menu of the settings tab. You can then change the DPI of all of the screen fonts to large(120dpi) or any custom size up to 192 dpi. This still won't change the font size in a word processor though. The only way around that one is to write in larger font size and then change it back 12pt after you are finished and ready to print. If you still have trouble in Internet Explorer, you can also change the text size in View->Text Size. Play around with all of those options until you find something that isn't too large, but readable.

---------------- On 11/11/2003 8:00:04 PM paulparrot wrote: Nobody is going to be listening that loud at average levels. It's the abliity or lack thereof to handle instantaneous peaks that is important. I don't know how fast the Radio Shack SPL meter is. If it's not fast enough, then a lot of what everyone is discussing is not valid. All the manual says is that the FAST setting works "quickly." ---------------- I don't understand instantaneous peaks. 106 dB is 106 dB whether it is for 1 sec or 30. I wouldn't want my system to ever have peaks that went that high. For me 95-100 dB starts to get really uncomfortable. Q-man, if you are looking to replace the KHorn woofer with something that will produce higher spl's, look no further than Pioneer. They have a woofer that can handle 5000 watts! 170 dB!!! I would love to see a human being standing in a room filled 170 dB of sound. Edit: By the way, I am running a 14 wpc Eico HF-81 and could never go back to 125wpc SS!

I just re-read my post and it sounded a little like I am dissapointed with the Audigy 2. I am not at all, I think that for ~$100 it is one of the best buys I have made for my computer. I was just trying to say that if you want audiophile performance, you may have to look at spending a little bit more. Something like TerraTec, or Delta by MAudio. Those sound cards are in the $300 range. Which isn't all that bad considering the prices of other audiophile gear.

I have an Audigy 2 Platinum, which I believe is the same as the ZS with just 6.1 sound instead of 7.1. I have had it hooked up to a Onkyo TX-DS595 SS reciever, an S5 Electronics kit tube amp, and now it is running to an Eico HF-81. I love the sound card, it is a HUGE upgrade from integrated sound. But as far as audiophile sound... I don't think it is quite there. I think this is one of the best sound cards available for non-pro use. M-Audio also makes some good cards. But there is a noticeable difference in sound quality between the sound card and a cheap Panasonic DVD-Audio player I have running to the Eico as well. Even when comparing a non compressed aiff file vs the cd. I don't quite understand the difference in quality, as the Audigy 2 looks better on paper than the Panasonic. I guess you just can't trust specs alone for sound quality. You may have better luck with the ZS though!

Ryan - I love the sound of the HF-81. I especially love the mid range. However, I just disconnected the Eico to work on cleaning up the chassis, so I hooked up my old kit amp the k-12m by s5 electronics. It is a PP 8w/ch tube amp based on 11ms8 tubes. I was blown away by how well the little k-12m performs in the high frequency range, it is unbelieveably detailed and crisp. I think I actually prefer the high frequencies compared to the Eico. It is a very "slow" amp though, meaning any fast complex passage trips it up. That is where the Eico just blows it out of the water. It can play anything I throw at it without breaking a sweat. Is that due to better iron in the Eico, or the fact that the k-12m doesn't use any preamp tubes?

I feel like an idiot. I just double checked all of my soldering connections, and found that one of the connections on the 30uF electrolytics in the power supply was broken. I resoldered that connection, and made sure my other connections were solid. I havn't any hum so far. I hope that was the problem. Thanks guys.

I am sorry it they are not waxy. It has been about a week since I looked under there, and I must have gotten the waxy caps mixed up with the resistors. They still look in bad shape. One or 2 of them is bubbly, and a few others are brownish with the color faded. I loaned my digital camera to my sister in law, so I can't take any pictures. I will try and get it back tomorow so I can show you guys what I am talking about. Or this something not worth worryning about?

It shouldn't be a cap because I have replaced all of the caps, except the multi-section. The "waxy" resistors are just that, waxy. Looks like they got too hot at some point.

I finally got my NOS russian EL84's. I was hoping that they would get rid of a sporadic hum that I am getting when I first power on the amp. They did not. They did get rid of the constant low level hum though. The sporadic hum comes on occasionally when I power on the amp, and then sometimes while listening for ~1-2 hours. It takes about 30sec to a minute for the hum to go away. There are some resistors I know I will have to replace because they are bubbly with wax. Could these resistors be causing the problem with the hum? Also the resistors look like they are much bigger than 1/2 watt, are they 3 watts? Thanks.

Wow! I didn't expect to get 36 replies! Thanks to everyone for this entertaining, informative thread. The multi-section cap seems to be just fine, I was just under the impression that it is a good idea to replace all of the electrolytics. However, sounds like I should just leave it alone until I start to have problems.

I am restoring my Eico HF-81, and have replaced most of the capacitors so far. The multi-section cap on top of the chassis is something I would like to try and replace it with some sprague atoms, if I can fit them. Is there any reason why I can't do this? I just don't understand why multi-section caps are used. BTW, the Eico sounds incredible!

Thanks everyone for the replys. I have not received it yet, so I do not know much about it. I should receive it on friday. I got an email from Mobile Homeless saying that it is a good idea to wait until I get it before I hastily start buying tubes, which sounds like a good idea. I have been hanging around here long enough to here of all the great stories about NOSValves' abilities to make amps sound the best they possibly can. But one of the main reasons I bought this was because it needed work. I like projects like this. I by no means am very experienced at restoring an amp, but I am going to give it a shot. If I am not successful, I know I can always send it NOSValves. Mobile Homeless has already offered to help me via email, and I hope I can pick NOSValves brain as well. Thanks again.

Hi - I just won an Eico HF-81 on eBay that looks like it need a good amount of work. The seller mentions that the EL-84's that are included are three original Eico's and 1 Sylvania. I would like to replace those with a matched Quad. I wish I could get some Mullards or Telefunkens, but I have a limited budget at least for now. So while browsing through eBay, I found 2 sets of matched pair Golden Dragon EL-84's. The seller says that these were made by Mullard in a chinese factory. Does that mean that they will sound like Mullards? Or is that just wishful thinking? If not are there any decent current production El-84's? I am also thinking about Electro-Harmonix, or Ei Elite. Thanks for any ideas.