dgarretson
Responses from dgarretson
| Where to go from XP-15? XP-17? XP-25? I did it myself. You need good soldering and desoldering skills. The Pass unit is easily disassembled. There is space for the larger coupling caps mounted on perf board raised above a small section of the main PCB. The Bocchino RCAs are solderles... | |
| Where to go from XP-15? XP-17? XP-25? @inna All products are built to cost. Improvements are always available, whether through trade-in or thoughtful modification. | |
| Where to go from XP-15? XP-17? XP-25? Replaced the loading resistors, which are clearly labeled, with Texas Components TX2575 nude resistors, and replaced the stock electrolytic and MKP coupling caps with ClarityCap 4.7uf CMR. Replaced the stock Cardas RCAs with Bocchino Tomahawks an... | |
| Where to go from XP-15? XP-17? XP-25? From what I've been able gather, the main improvement of the XP-27 are dual mono power supplies that improve the already excellent noise rejection of the XP-25. I'm happy with my XP-25, the more so after replacing the stock loading resistors, cou... | |
| Less Loss Firewall 64x Module I heard improvements with the 1x, 5x, and 64x versions in a friend's SET system. I borrowed his 5x version and heard improvements in my Pass XP-25 phono stage. I've got two 64x on order. I'm curious to try one on a standalone basis at the IEC i... | |
| We are buying and reviewing gear all wrong @cd318 I’d like to believe in ATC as a full-service supplier, were it not for a dealer demo I heard several years ago with ATC speakers fed by an ATC preamp. The combination was opaque and sterile, whether owing to the speakers or the preamp I kno... | |
| Best MM? I have a Sonus Blue Gold, acquired NIB in the heyday of Raul's MM/MI thread. It's the highest compliance cartridge in my collection of vintage MM/MI. Mounted to a TransFi Terminator it was magnificent except for lightness in LF. I need to try it... | |
| We are buying and reviewing gear all wrong At various times in the odyssey I've gravitated to several components from a single manufacturer(first BAT and more recently Pass), but this pretty much ceased after discovering that almost anything can be improved or successfully re-voiced with D... | |
| Qubuz feedback and membership Plan Suggestions Since yesterday I’m noticing that some Qobuz titles (e.g. Stones Mono box, Springsteen on Broadway) that are shown by Roon as hi-res at 24/96 or above, are actually coming through at 16/44.1. | |
| Qubuz feedback and membership Plan Suggestions The only glitch with the Qobuz trial so far is that this morning the glorious 24/192 Stones mono box set crapped out in the middle of Disc 5 and now produces an error message instead of music. Hopefully they'll get their act together so I can mov... | |
| Where would you sell your vinyl collection? Contact the Presidents of the Philadelphia Area Audio Group and the New Jersey Audio Society and invite their memberships to a garage sale. Princeton Record Exchange will give you only pennies on the dollar. | |
| Pass labs XA-160.8 monos - or - Mark Levinson 536 monos for Magico's I’m completely satisfied with an AtmaSphere MP-1 into Pass XA-160.8 monoblocks. It’s a super clean direct coupled differential balanced tube sound. Give Ralph a call. | |
| New Bluesound's Node 2i I’ve been using a Node 2 as a Roon endpoint in a minimalist second system. The Node 2 benefits from a better power cord. I built a silver PC with Furutech and Oyaide ends. Also, it can definitely sound better through an external DAC. I took from s... | |
| Qobuz. @lalitk In the beta version, so far I've found at least several dozen 24/192 albums in the pop and jazz genres. (I have not checked out Classical.) The Qobuz and Tidal search functions to find them are similarly unwieldy. Roon's search engine do... | |
| Qobuz. Just today I was approved for the Qobuz beta free trial and have been poking around and comparing hi-res Qobuz to Tidal MQA streaming within Roon. There are fewer 24/192 titles than hoped for on Qobuz, but they sound amazing and are a clear notch... |