willemj
Responses from willemj
| Filling speaker stands: sand, lead, steel, rice. Full, half, etc? Harbeth's designer Alan Shaw argues that the material does not make any sonic difference: Ikea stools will be fine if you like them or if the budget is tight. What matters are two things. First, height: the tweeters should be as close as possible ... | |
| Equalization Unfortunately there is also quite a bit of snake oil being peddled. As for room acoustics and equalization, including some useful links: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/room-acoustics-10 | |
| Total newbie question here about completing a system The one the OP linked to is not the ODAC but a FIIO. The ODAC is a now legendary design by an anonymous experienced engineer called NWavguy (you can google him and his description of the design process, plus measurement data) who was fed up by exp... | |
| Equalization Indeed. It is one of these unfortunate audiophile myths that tone controls (or balance controls) degrade the sound and hence should be omitted. Makers of high margin audiophile electronics were only too happy to oblige as it saved them money.The t... | |
| Pre amp or DAC A modern DAC with variable output is effectively a pre amplifier for those who have abandoned analogue sources (as I have). An alternative would be an Oppo UD 205 UHD Bluray disc player as it also has external digital inputs and can serve as an ex... | |
| Audio cables ,and power cords the most forgotton- part of an Audio system. As far as I am concerned 1% is the more correct ballpark. | |
| Anyone Tried Integrating Dirac Room Correction? DSP room equalization works very well for the lowest frequencies, as with subwoofers and in larger rooms. It will also work quite well a little above this, say up to the Schroeder frequency (somewhere between 100-200 Hz, depending on room size). A... | |
| Should I PURCHASE AN EXTERNAL DAC Sonic differences will be very small. The main benefit of an Oppo UD205 instead of both your disc players (why have two?) would be on the video side, where you would be able to play Bluray and UHD Bluray discs for far better picture quality than j... | |
| Total newbie question here about completing a system There are two ways to get a digital signal to your amplifier. The first is to use a computer. Computers have inbuilt Digital to Analogue Converters (DAC) but these are rarely any good. So you need to use their digital output, and that is almost al... | |
| Bi Wire vs Speaker Jumpers Bi wiring is one of these audiophile myths, just like the entire obsession with cables. | |
| Dude, where's my bass? Oh, lost to stiffened rubber surrounds...who knew? Speaker cones do age, and the surrounds even more. These speakers were introduced quite a while ago, so they may be fairly old. Degradation is faster in the sun or close to a heating system, of course.Some people manage to replace the surrounds, b... | |
| inexpensive preamps That Emotiva sounds like a good idea. It will give you digital inputs as well (e.g. for a Chromecast Audio streamer). | |
| Internet radio, streaming, and CD player. Oppo UD 205, plus Chromecast Audio as a source for streaming and internet radio. Add a beefy ss power amp with trigger input and you are all set (with the power amp hidden out of sight, turned on and off by the trigger. | |
| 20 Year Old Amplifiers compared to 2017 Older amplifers should be refurbished, of course. The first thing that has to be replaced would be the power supply caps, as these do degrade and can fail wtih nasty consequences. As I said earlier, with luck you can fit larger modern ones as they... | |
| Whats playing on your system today? JS Bach Weihnachtsoratorium, under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, streamed from Qobuz, the European 16/44 streaming service. It is my favourite performance, and the excellent sound quality does it full justice. |