Charles T

Extremely interesting concept and I'm sure an equally impressive sound. I must say though, with my current setup, it's nothing short of impressive as well. I can't sleep, so I'm sitting here listening to the system, playing Stevie Wonder's "In Square Circle" album on Qobuz. At peaks of about 58 to 60 dB, it is totally involving listening to it at these quiet volume levels displaying these kind of dynamics while everyone else in the house is asleep. Hearing little, distant musical cues typically buried in the background are clear and present. Very subtle details and textures within the sound of various instruments are quite palpable. Currently listening to "Overjoyed", and there's a water droplet sound just barely right of center, and it has a certain dimension and heft to it which I've never heard before. I mean, I've heard the droplet sound, but not with that dimension and heft. And speaking of dimension and heft, even the bass at these low listening levels are balanced, solid and extended. Naturally, you can't "feel" it, but you can definitely hear it. I just listened to this same exact album last week around this same time and volume when I got home from work, and it was rather bland sounding in comparison. I remember thinking how "average" this album sounded. I couldn't believe that Qobuz had this album in 192/24 and it sounding this blah. It's obvious to me now that it wasn't the album at all, but the Bluesound Node 2 not being able to deliver the goods to the Bifrost DAC. I'm finding myself re-listening to albums I recently played prior to the Pi 4, and getting new enjoyment and excitement out of them. Who says you have to play music at high levels to enjoy it?!

I tell you what, I too am a fan of RPi now. They're a great, compact device that offers a lot of different options for pretty much any project (the benefit of being a complete computer). An entire high end system... I'll have to try and find that online. What I would like to do is use an RPi to replace my old Roku, only because it's an original Roku 4 which has a Toslink output and all of the new Roku units only have HDMI outputs.

Well a few days ago, I got in a brand new Raspberry Pi 4, the 2 Gb RAM model. With it, I also purchased a 32 Gb micro SD card for the OS, and a nice aluminum Flirc case which doubles as the processor's heat sink. I flashed RoPieeeXL which makes the Pi 4 into a Roon bridge. The entire package is connected via WiFi. And speaking of connections, I'm using one of the USB outputs to a Wyred 4 Sound Recovery via the included 6" USB cable that came with the Recovery. On the outgoing end of things, I'm using a 6" long Wireworld Ultraviolet 7 USB cable to the Unison USB input on the Bifrost 2 DAC. It's a rock solid little setup. It's been running non-stop for the past few days without a single issue. The case dropped the processor temp by 14* F. And as for sound, it's bucket loads better than the Bluesound Node 2 that it replaced. Not that the Node 2 is bad or anything, but this little Pi 4 just performs better and sounds better. Then again, the use of different cables and input on the DAC also make a difference. Anyway, a few pics for fun... In the process of setting up and waiting for the case to arrive in the mail... And installed in the case along with the Wyred Recovery... And an overall shot...

Very true. Not that that's a bad thing.

You definitely have to ditch bluetooth and go with a physical connection to get the best possible quality signal to the DAC. Also, even though the Schiit Ragnarok 2 is an excellent unit, it has nothing to do with DSD. Jason Stoddard wants nothing to do with DSD, nor will he ever implement DSD decoding in any of his units. Same goes for MQA for that matter. I have a couple dozen DSD albums and they sound perfectly fine going through my Bifrost 2. Yes, they're converted by the time they hit the DAC, but that's fine by me. They still sound great and the music on them is excellent.

Small world! So when are you moving to Lakeland? LOL And thank you for the compliment!

I strongly believe all of those horns are excellent, but I'm not too sure if you realize how gargantuan they are in comparison to the small size/limited space of my room. Even going for a pair of open baffle (W-baffle) subs would be fairly large as they would house dual 15" drivers each. Realistically, I may end up having to go with something like a pair of Rythmik F12 subs, sealed, servo controlled, flat to 20 Hz, and compact.

A lady wanted to take a milk bath, so called up the milk man and ordered 30 gallons of milk. The milk man asked if she wanted the milk pasteurized. She said "No, just up to my t i t s."

In stock form, my 2016 Nissan 370Z was electronically governed to 155. After I performed all of the mods to it and several flash tunes, I ran out of "room" just under 180. My 2001 Lexus LS430 that I drive now is capped at 131. However, I have a remapped ECU coming for it, and one tweak of that remap removes that cap. Not that I'll test that in this car. I don't think I've ever had it any higher than about 115. All of this done on a closed course... In Mexico... Of course. 👀

I switched jobs a few months back. Got out of retail and now work nights for a large pharmaceutical firm, 6:30 pm to 3 or 4 am. Typically I get home and fall asleep around 6 or 7 am, then wake up around noon or 1 pm. Or like today, here it is after 8 am and I'm wide awake. I need to look into getting onto the day shift. I hate sleeping the day away, just to get up and go right back into work. Not to mention I don't really get to see my other half all week long since she gets up and goes into work while I'm sleeping, then when I'm leaving for work, she's coming home from work. Blah. 😶

I have been pondering the idea of building either a "W" baffle or ripole dipole subwoofer system OR some kind of folded horn subwoofer system. A couple issues though is getting them to extend down to at least 20 Hz (and have usable output at the freq) and keep them pretty compact, a word very seldom used with such a project.

Found it! Thanks Claude.

This IS the thread we're referring to, correct? https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/150280-super-heresy-1-baby-cornwalls-mod/ I must be missing something here, because I don't see a post with the link. Sorry...

I'm sure there are. I just haven't come across them yet as I've been looking at Heresy threads mostly so far.

Well it seems as though I just learned a whole ton about the Belle and La Scala. Ask one little question and get a plethora of informative answers. 👍 And since we're on the subject of the Belle and La Scala, what is the limiting factor of their bass extension? Is it the driver, the size of the sealed cavity, or the size of the horn? Since those drivers are asked to play up to 400 - 500 Hz, I would think that the horn is possibly more designed to help amplify and project those higher frequencies than it is to help in the bass department. Via Google searches, I've found a thread in a forum in Australia where a member modded a La Scala bass horn with a Crites woofer and then created a ported enclosure that attached under the horn with of course a pass-through from the sealed chamber to that ported enclosure. https://www.stereo.net.au/forums/topic/64191-3-way-eliptrac-horn-klipsch-la-scalas/

I'll definitely go check out the link to the 2.0 thread. Thanks for adding that! Speaking of the Belle, any idea why Klipsch never continued this model? You would think nowadays where a lot of people are a lot more concerned with looks than sound, they would prefer something like the Belle over the LaScala due to the addition of the grills. Other than the grills, there were basically the same speaker, correct?

Nice. Years ago, I had the older version of those, the KG 5.5's. In some ways, I preferred them over the Cornwall's. They had better bass as well as better treble. Smaller and lighter was a plus as well. The Cornwall's had better midrange though, but that was only after I had upgraded the caps on the old 1979 crossovers and added an inductor to the midrange circuit to make it a bandpass filter instead of the stock high-pass only filter. Those KG 5.5's are a speaker I kind of wish I kept. What I really wanted though were the CF-4's. I've tried near field listening before, and it's great. It takes the room out of the equation. But in a small house with limited space, it's not a practical setup unfortunately.

Thank you. I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good, perceptive listener. I try to eek out as much performance and possible from my system, more so from my speakers since they are the easiest things to tweak, free tweaks at that because you're just moving them around and giving a listen to see what the results are. And those are instant results as well.

Thank you Claude for the very informative post. There certainly are a lot of options for these little Heresy's. Different drivers, different horns, sealed or ported, even 2-way options. I'll have to search for that 2.0 thread though. And I didn't know that about the Heresy saving Klipsch. Then again, I also didn't realize that the H III has been around since 2000 either. I just started seeing and reading reviews of the H III's in the past two to three years, so I thought they were only around about 5 years or so.

Neither was the OP. He said it is an Audi A6. Last time I checked, those were German. Mine certainly isn't Italian, but I've had a few, and still have one. Though, it's assembled in Mexico, so there's that. 😒

You don't have to beat the snot out of it. Just take it out on the highway for a nice weekend drive to nowhere every now and then. Just get it up to 70-80 mph and cruise there for a few hours. Getting the entire engine, transmission and all fluids up to optimal operating temperature is key, and to keep them at or slightly above those temps for at least 30 minutes or more. Preferably more. This loosens up carbon, boils out all the moisture (water) in the fluids and clears out all of the oil and water galleys. Just beating on it a little bit here and there in the city isn't going to do much of anything other than waste fuel. Again, all of the temps need to be up to full operating temp and remain there for 30 minutes or more. Driving like a fool will do nothing but waste fuel, waste tires and brake pads, and waste your savings away when you get those traffic violation tickets for driving like a clown. My car for instance (2001 Lexus LS430) has over 201k miles on it, most of which are highway miles, fluids changed regularly, etc, etc for the past 19 years. Technically, the engine should have no more normal wear internally than a city driven car with 20k miles on it. At least, that's what everyone says. I tend to agree though. The thing runs like a top. Ultra smooth, quiet, not a single rattle or leak anywhere, no smoke, no blow-by, no excessive usage of oil. It's just like a new car still.

Whenever I get around do getting a pair and playing around with them, they'll be for our bedroom system. But I will try them out in the main system as well just for fun. I'd also like to eventually build quality crossovers for my III's as well.

And that's all I ever wanted. We all have enough nonsense going on in life these days. That nonsense shouldn't extend into the forum(s). I use music, audio equipment and audio forums like this as a little getaway to enjoy and relax and listen to my system and forget the outside world for a little bit. So with that, I hope we all move on in good company.

Very true. Most companies use the same chipset, then like you say, they add in their own filters and processing to make their DAC different than the next. The PA Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC that I had implemented 3 different filters (normal, fast, slow) or something to that effect. I honestly couldn't hear a difference between any of them. Even when using several different loudspeakers, I never heard a difference between those filters. Neither did my brothers or my girlfriend. I just left it on filter #1 and that was that. A couple of things that really attracted me to the new Schiit Bifrost 2 DAC is that it uses a totally different type of chipset, and the only feature added to it is a Phase switch. At least with the phase switch, you can clearly hear a difference, though I don't use it much. But the few times I did, it made an improvement.

No worries. Thanks for the apology... Accepted. 👍