Pondoro
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Posts posted by Pondoro
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4 minutes ago, RandyH said:
Any Klipsch Heritage speaker will do whether new or from the 50-60's -70's ,if you like Jazz , that 's exactly what these speakers were designed for
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?
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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.
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38 minutes ago, grasshopper said:
depends on your wife...
I brought home a pair of bumpy black LS... My wife loves them. She particularly likes the looks/design.Yes, they do reside in the living room.... and are quite prominent
"and they are quite prominent" - Translation, "My living room is not a warehouse."
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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.
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3 hours ago, boom3 said:
Years ago, in either AudoXpress or Speaker Builder, there was an article about a an "AC hater" who created a motor-generator using a car alternator to power his hi fi rig. He was surprised/disappointed to find that car alternators (being 6 phase AC machines with rectifiers) put out a noisy version of DC.
Noise on AC mains is very real. The better quality amps whose power supplies I've examined with a scope turned up to highest gain show some residual noise, but it is-supposed to be-below the inherent noise of the amplification.
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.
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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."
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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.
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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."
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On 12/15/2021 at 12:05 PM, nikon f said:
I have both the SEX 2.0 and 2.1, they are very fun to build, the step by step assembly instructions are almost moron proof. The sound quality is fantastic! I have demonstrated the amps in over a dozen audio shows and they always receive great reviews. Some advice, read the assembly manual before starting anything, and take your time building the amp, you do not need to set any land speed assembly records. Build the amp in stock form first, use it for a while then add the C4S board and or change the caps. You will be very surprised how nice two watts sound. As a headphone amp they will power most power hungry phones. For additional info please check out the Bottlehead forum. Later on you can build their Moreplay preamp. There is a saying, "music sound better when you build it yourself", the quote comes from Dan the CEO at Bottlehead.
Here is a pix of my 2.1 amp:
Have you tried this amp with speakers?
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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.
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Did Klipsch change parameters when they moved them to front mount? Box volume won’t change much with the move.
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6 minutes ago, Blvdre said:
His mistake is that reflected sound in music reproduction space is not equal to the reflected sound captured in a music performance space.
Probably never could be, but that is what he chased.
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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.
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On 11/29/2021 at 6:41 PM, Racer X said:
What if one mounts the killer small Topping PA5 inside a broken Mark Levinson amp...?
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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2 hours ago, SWL said:
Remind me not to buy any Morrow cables....
Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
Perhaps all the posts by people who say "Cables do not help" are fake news! Maybe the beer, auto and cat food industries create them so we will not believe in cables, saving money to buy more beer, cars and cat food! They pay 17-year-old Romanians to make these disparaging posts.
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28 minutes ago, 314carpenter said:
This was my experience when I purchased Morrow Audio rca interconnects. Ordered 4 pairs in 2 different tiers to use for a new 7 channel amplifier. It took a few weeks to get them. I was advised to allow them to burn in for several weeks as prescribed by the manufacturer. I couldn't even wait that long to listen to my music at the high quality I was used to. Both tiers were lacking something. I say about a 5% decline overall, but not evenly across the entire audio band. I contacted Morrow and they were like, Oh no! don't disconnect them! they will reset and you will have to burn them in again. Returned them all for a full refund and learned a lesson at the same time.
So in your case cables really did matter!
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I have never designed an audio circuit since I added an extra speaker to an AM radio in junior high. But I have worked a lot with cables in aircraft. Lightning is a big deal. It will get into cables. It is millions of volts. It needs to get out really fast, preferably via shielding. The shielding is fairly pedestrian stuff but it is made very, very repeatably and is designed to never break. So the cables are expensive, but not exotic. No one obsesses over the cables, you make them right but you do not make them of unobtainium and you do not worry about strands conducting sideways, the strands are made out of copper, the electricity is happy in the copper and it will stay in the copper if it has somewhere to go. You do use cable supports, to keep the cables away from stuff that is hot or sharp. You keep really high voltage cables away from low voltage cables. But you obsess over the connections. The resistance of the connectors is measured in micro and milliohms. It needs to be repeatable, even when guys in the field make and break the connections at night, in the rain, in dusty environments. The resistance of the connectors also needs to not change very much over time. Low resistance and resistance that stays low is the mark of a good connector.
You talk about high frequency? There is really high frequency content in the strange harmonics at the front of a square wave. Lightning is a very square wave, 0 to jillions of volts in micro seconds. It will stay in the shielding if it can keep moving along. Bad connections cause problems.
I had a stereo that did not get played for several years. I turned it on and it sounded noisy. This was before Monster Cable or the internet. Called the stereo store. The guy said, "Pull the RCA plugs apart and put them back together several times so they clean themselves." I did that. It worked.
Connections matter.
I do agree that gauge matters.
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I am using a Schiit Vali while I wait for a Schiit Saga. The Vali is simply a volume control for my vintage tube amp. The Saga will be a remote control, a volume control, an input selector, and a y-adapter, should I want to use a subwoofer.
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41 minutes ago, captainbeefheart said:
I talked to Tom at Schiit about this, here is what he had to say.
Well, he said they didn't comment and then he commented. But it does not surprise me that the manufacturers generally do not comment on these accessories. Why tick off the highest spending customers? I will say it for the manufacturers: if you buy a power cable to filter your power you are insulting the designer of the amp.
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On the whole power cable subject. Let's do a thought experiment. You own a $799 Aegir amp. I'll assume that you are not going to spend $1,000 on a power cable. Let's say you spend $100. You are saying that Schiit did not design a power supply quiet enough for their amp. Either a) they are not competent or b) they cheaped out to the tune of $100. I am going to claim that Schiit could spend $20 and affect their amp as much as that $100 cable might, seeing as how they have the ability to upgrade internals versus just play with wire. But they didn't. Or maybe they did all that could be done. If you believe option a) then you bought an amp designed by someone who you believe could not design a power supply! If you believe option b) then you think spending $100 on the wire has more effect than anything Schiit could have done with transformers, capacitors, etc. for the same price.
Let's repeat the experiment. You bought a $7,500 McIntosh amp. Same argument...
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Quote1 hour ago, Curious_George said:
Power switch (no matter the position) does not imply anything.
You are right. Schiit stubbornly puts their power switches on the back of their stuff. It seems like a pain on a tube era console stereo. It even seems like a pain on an organ. Less so on a Leslie unit or an external organ amp or a guitar amp.
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Power switch on the back implies musical instrument? But it is stereo.
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Sounds bad. I have a pair of the R-51PM and love them but I worry about the electronics because Klipsch powered subwoofers have a bad reputation for the amplifier dying. I cannot imagine them doing a bad job on subwoofer reliability and then over in some other room deciding, "Our powered bookshelf speakers MUST be rock solid reliable!!!" If mine ever die I will probably try to convert them to passive.
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I had hum in a recently rebuilt tube amp. I ran a wire from the chassis to a known ground and it killed the hum. I tried jumper grounds from the chassis to the DAC and it did nothing. Grounding to conduit did the trick.
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The "Hi-Fi" gene
in 2-Channel Home Audio
Posted
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.