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Pondoro

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Ohio
  • Interests
    Playing Music (with instruments). Stereo. Online concerts.

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  1. An old Magnavox, rebuilt by a pro, clothed in striped maple by me. It lives for Frank, Duke, Bennie, and more. I have a solid state Yamaha for Techno and Metal, it doesn't get used much.
  2. Yes I listen on Heresy and (on my computer) R-51PM. The R-51’s do well near field. The old school open backed paper two way system is for historical purposes. What would Sinatra have sounded like in 1955?
  3. I love music played on a very good system but I don’t feel the need to wring out every last percentage of improvement. I need good speakers but I don’t need to shake the walls. I love being able to locate the instruments in the sound stage but I’ve also gotten into original mono lately, as a side road. Not sure where that places me. I’m unlikely to ever buy exotic cables but I’m considering a vintage 1960’s paper speaker mono cabinet, just to hear Sinatra and Ellington the way a rich guy would have heard them in 1955.
  4. "and they are quite prominent" - Translation, "My living room is not a warehouse."
  5. I just heard a podcaster claim that he has transformers, then high end aftermarket power cables on his system. He later added vibration isolating feet under the transformers and he said it improved his sound. Doesn't this imply that the aftermarket power cables do not work? I truly suspect some people of making this stuff up.
  6. I have always felt that the power supply is the place to clean up power. The amp, preamp and DAC designers must be horrified to see people spending thousands of dollars on aftermarket power cables. If the amp designer was given that extra $2,500 what could he/she have done to improve the amp? Why do they not denounce the power cable industry? Because they would be angering the customers who also spent big dollars on their amps.
  7. I had a few NAD components in the past but no amp and nothing recent. One recent Yamaha lower end AV receiver. Right now the internet opinion seems to be that Yamaha is more reliable. My older NAD stuff still works but I have not bought in years. My recent purchase Yamaha works, but is only 1-1/2 years old. It sounds like you want value for $ and I assume "worry free", so the preponderance of internet reviews seem to say, "Yamaha."
  8. I have Heresy I's. I drive them with a 70 watt per channel Yamaha receiver or a 10 watt per channel vintage (rebuilt) tube amp. If I play techno or electronic stuff with a lot of really low bass a subwoofer helps. I only have a 10" Polk powered sub. I bought two and honestly did not think two was a lot better than one, so I diverted one to my TV room. But I am not a bass fanatic, I listen to mostly 50's and 60's jazz and 60's rock. I truly only played the synthesized bass stuff to hear the subwoofer working. You can hear it flattening out the bottom on stuff with real low bass. The sub also makes a noticeable improvement when I watch auto racing, hence moving one to the TV room.
  9. I am reading this, and I did not weigh in, but if I had weighed in I would never have said, "Change a few tubes."
  10. Have you tried this amp with speakers?
  11. I used my computer for a stereo but eventually started buying better components and speakers. I knew all about computers but nothing about computer audio. Since I had a lot of ripped files a computer is a permanent part of my plan. Here is what I learned: 1) Your PC probably has a DAC built into the motherboard. It came along when you bought the PC. The small "headphone/speaker" jack(s) are analog that comes from this very cheap DAC. If you feed a stereo via the headphone jack you are using the PC's DAC. 2) You can output to an external DAC using the USB, bypassing the cheap internal jack, but the external DAC must have a USB input. Most do. 3) There are high end soundcards that mount internally in a PC and will output digital via optical or coax rather than USB. 4) There is controversy about the best way to output a digital signal, there are people who claim USB is inferior, people who say it is OK, and people who say, "USB is really dirty but we can help you clean it." 5) There are people who say, "All DACs sound alike!", including the free one that is built into your PC. Other people pay $80, $100, etc. up to $15,000 or more, and say they hear an improvement. 5a) I have installed a $45 sound card on one PC and two $99 DAC's on two other PCSs. I believe I heard an improvement in all three cases. Some people will tell you that I imagined this. I am comfortable with their skepticism. I used an ASUS sound card and two Schiit Modi 3+ DACs. 6) Welcome to the world of Audio.
  12. Did Klipsch change parameters when they moved them to front mount? Box volume won’t change much with the move.
  13. Probably never could be, but that is what he chased.
  14. I only heard Bose 901's once, at a friend's house. We did not do any critical listening, he had them going in the family room as we grilled outside, ate in the adjoining dining room, sat and conversed. As others have noted the sound bouncing around in multiple directions let us move around and basically ignore finding any sweet spot - the sound was sort of "everywhere." But I heard Mr. Bose talk once. He was obsessed with reflected sound. He listened to live music in concert halls and his big demand for "realism" was the reproduction, actually the simulation, of sound reaching you from multiple paths. That is the way sound reaches us, but most stereophiles in that day wanted "flat", and good bass and good highs. Bose was willing to compromise a lot of other audiophile demands to get a mixture of reflected sound that met his unique vision of "realistic." Hearing sound from multiple paths was not on anyone else's radar except the disciples of Bose (I am not saying reflected sound should have been a big deal.) So Bose was off on his own journey. Marketing, and the mystique of Bose himself, brought a lot of people along. I am not criticizing, it was a journey that many seemed to enjoy. But the large number of fans of Bose seemed to infuriate the others, who had different goals for their systems. I think it is foolish to call Bose a failure - it s like a runner criticizing a race walker for being slow, the race walker has his own rules and enjoys his own game. Today the proliferation of easy to afford measuring systems has created a subculture who seek "flat" the way Bose sought a mixture of reflected sound. They measure and buy and measure and adjust until their system, including the room, is "flat" and they also often obsess on phase and timing and off axis response - everything that can be measured. People who enjoy tube equipment or who simply listen without measuring and proclaim a product "good" infuriate the Flat Crowd as much as Bose seemed to infuriate conventional audiophiles in his day. The difference (it seems to me) is that the "flat" crowd only dominates their own space, and they are the angry ones. So they get angry talking with their friends. Judging by the internet content devoted to "flat" versus "just listen" the angry flat crowd seems to be the minority. I may be wrong.
  15. I have some great sounding Heresy's that look really ugly on the outside. I bought two ancient but beautiful 1959 consoles for $100. The Heresy's fit inside the consoles...
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