dcbingaman
Responses from dcbingaman
| Magnepan LRS compared to the .7 or the 1.7i ? The LRS is a great choice for most rooms for two reasons. First, it has nearly all the best qualities of the bigger Maggies, and particular the magic midrange. It also has pretty decent bass for its size in a normal size room. With my RTA with pin... | |
| Another streaming newbie I vote for the Blusound Node 2i, especially if all you want is streaming from Qobuz and Tidal, and Internet Radio. The box provides MQA decoding as well as 24-bit / 96 Khz hi-rez recordings. Outputs are both analog (internal DAC) or SPDIF digita... | |
| 5A Vandersteen I've have always felt like the Quatros were the best value in the line, especially the Woods (CT or ceramic tweeter). I am using mine with an Audiokinesis SWARM subwoofer array which eliminates the need to go up to a 5 or 7 to get the better bass... | |
| Oppo Ceasing production On Oppo, I get that their business model no longer made sense to their Chinese Overlords, but why not sell their designs and IP to another manufacturer ? Something doesn't smell right.I have this sneaking suspicion that this is a Chinese power pl... | |
| MQA•Foolish New Algorithm? Vote! I like I like MQA as an option for some recordings and for a better way to stream stereo using less bandwidth. I do not like it as a standard for ALL music media or distribution. It imposes DRM standards which are unacceptable. It is also not a... | |
| Best amps for everything EXCEPT bass I would look at a Pass First Watt F7 or J2. Purest Class A amps out there. If you cross your Treo's over to the Swarm at 80 Hz, you really don't need much power - 25 to 50 watts will do pretty well.The Quicksilvers are already pretty good, but i... | |
| John Atkinson's thoughts on the New Vandersteen System Nine from LA Show I am currently using a 5.1 system with a front pair of Quatro Woods in conjunction with a 5-subwoofer Audiokinesis SWARM AND a Meridian G68XXD with Meridian Room Correction (MRC). I have compared this system to a number of stereo systems includin... | |
| Koetsu cartridges - what arms work? I am running a Koetsu Urushi Gold in an FR-64fx. Works great. I was told by a long lost friend at Sumiko that Koetsu's were originally designed by Sugano for FR tonearms. I also have a Sumiko MDC-800 and it does not work as well with the Koetsu ... | |
| Experiences buying used cartridges I've bought and sold a few. I think a fair batting average is about 75%, but in the worse case scenario, I think if the motor is in good shape, Peter Ledermann (Soundsmith) can literally fix any cartridge and make it sound better than new. I sen... | |
| Looking for CD player recommendations that are a great match with Classe & Vandersteen For a contrarian view, I'd get a cheap Sony Blu-Ray Player like their pancake thick BX-37 which plays almost everything on silver discs, and run its output to a Meridian Direct DAC. (Used to be called the "Director".). The Direct DAC uses Meridia... | |
| Hi-res digital audio vs sacd SACD makes sense for one genre of music - classical. The SACD catalog is deep and diverse in this genre. Also, much of it is 5.1 multi-channel (MCH). Digital downloads and streaming (Tidal, etc.) are indeed on the upswing, but they still trail ... | |
| DSD vs. PCM vs. MQA - Group listening experiment The question with MQA is it's staying power, not its technical excellence. It has a very tall hill too climb to become relevant. IMHO the only genre that really merits it is acoustic music, most of which is classical, and that genre is increasin... | |
| Ever Bought an Audio Product that was Stupid Good for the Money? IFi iPhono preamp. Unbelievable sound for the money. Also I just picked up a pair of mint Spendor SP1's for less than $900 ! They look brand new and have midrange to die for - like Quad ESL 57 good. Just beautiful sound. They are keepers...... | |
| High mass vs Low Mass Turntables - Sound difference? I like suspended tables which are placed on butcher block shelving mounted in an alcove in the wall using lots of space frame structure to prevent bass energy induced room vibrations from perturbing them. This seems to work well. I am using a SO... | |
| Oppo UDP - 205 No silver 205's are planned, according to Oppo. Also Darbee is at least 2 years away if they do it at all. If you have a silver 105D it's value just went up....The Oppo 105D will stream 4K with a Roku stick in its HDMI ports so you may not need ... |