Racer X

I have the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound in a warehouse collecting dust...

From my brief Facebook experience, when one deletes, it merely inactivates the account. If you try to check back in to the Facebook, it reactivates your account. Never been happier when I finally stayed away from Facebook, it is one big time suck at the best. At the worst, (and most likely) it is greatly responsible for the prevalence of disinformation so common today. Feel sorry for those with a business purpose who most likely have no choice in the matter.

The person that tipped me to the Topping E30 told me for him it was better than the Dragonfly Red.

Very happy with Topping E30 DAC. Best $150 I've spent.

Agree. I like my volume knob to be between 9 to 12 o'clock, scared to move it past there.

Yeah, seems like I would also need to get some MCMs to explore the pro sound and the pro amps. For now, I recently went to 2" horns (2380 copies) and very large JBL D405 drivers, totally blown away. Never going back to the small stuff.

Oooohh, pro amps, always wondered about those big monsters.

I like the AQ, got some mid line Topaz for the 2 M run. Able to roll my own speaker wires and power cords, interconnects with shielding seem a bit more of a challenge I'm not quite up to yet. The old Distech Silvers 1 M s I have seem totally transparent compared to the AQ Topaz, I have a box full of those (AQ) I picked up on the cheap.

Not so freaky. As you mentioned, various synergies at play with different combinations. Interconnect story: I run three, 1 M, 1 M, and a 2 M preamp to amps. Read somewhere they should all be matched and was able to find a 2 M length to match my 1 M 's. Was happy for a while, things were totally transparent. But then too transparent. Swapped back to my original 2 M and that added back some color that I found a little better.

Agree. Of the few preamps I've tried, the volume control was always different. Some were not so linear, they had a flat spot. The size, feel of the knob also oddly important to me. Also whether just variable, detented variable, or stepped volume control.

Hmm, interesting. Well, for me, preamps are important as a user interface. The feel of the volume and balance pots, and the flexibility of the tone controls and switches drive my preamp priorities. Recently discovered the power cord on my amps have an influence on the sound. I roll my own wires, and never noticed the power cord changes much. Then recently upgraded just the wire quality on the amp cords (cheap copper to much better silver plated copper), kept exactly the same format, gauge and plugs. Was stunned by the change in bloom, dynamic character of the sound.

I also struggle to find differences among preamps, to me they are switches and pots that sometimes tend to get dirty and noisy, and differences among different preamps are subtle. Preamps are boring when not troublesome. Amps are an entirely different story, to me they contribute greatly to the sound, although not quite as much as speakers of course. Also, it is very important to match your speakers with amps (or amps with speakers ?) that complement each other, or play nice with each other.

So only Chief Bonehead should reply here ?

I find it odd some believe we would be better off having the dollar pegged to some odd commodity prone to hoarding and mining decisions. I believe anyone is free to convert their dollars to gold and back if they wish to continue their own personal gold standard.

Suggest Fun Tak (used to be called Blu Tak) to firmly anchor to floor.

Let's do wires on the next thread

Emile, I recently picked up JBL 2380 horn copy, very happy with the jump to 2" horn throat and drivers.

We see what we want to see, we see things as we are. That said, every amp I've used over 40 years has sounded different. I recently reset my stereo system to work my way up from the bottom. I thought my midfi solid state amp was fine until I went back and tested my esoteric tube amp. Then it was "Why have I been depriving myself ?" I first noticed this back in the 80s when I heard a Fisher tube receiver, it was astounding the difference from a midfi solid state receiver. So I believe it is most likely amps will certainly sound different from each other. Maybe very high quality solid state amps may sound similar, but I'll never know.

Thank you very much for picking up the ball and running with this, looking forward to learning more and discussion of various approaches.

Thanks, Edgar, for the excellent link. Any discussion of differences, similarities of bass traps vs. tube traps appreciated.

Nevermind

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