drbarney1
Responses from drbarney1
| Vinyl sounds better (shots fired) Be careful of playback systems that cost six figures. On youtube, there is a report of a double-blind listening test where audiophiles heard a phono preamp, cartridge, and a turntable costing $500,000 and a preamp, cartridge, and turntable costing... | |
| AC Power The "dirt" in AC is higher frequencies than 60 Hz. capacitive reactance goes down with the power supply capacitors shunting these unwanted signals to ground and up in the inductors in power supplies, stopping them from making it through to the DC ... | |
| One box solution There is a story about a man who was worse off than you were. He spent a decade or two and about one million dollars creating the ultimate stereo and listening room. It had only one seat in the ultimate sweet spot so only one person could listen t... | |
| Why did you purchase the equipment you have and what do you like most about it? I am limited in what I can afford, but I have enough training as both a licensed aircraft mechanic with experience wiring and installing avionics, graduate school physics up through a PhD, and years of building my own SET tube amplifiers and pream... | |
| Can you do anything to make power tubes last longer ? I saw an article about 833A triodes that says they last longer with the cathode run at 9.5 Volts rather than the full 10 Volts, and there is no loss of how they sound. Also, these tubes are built to last because they are used in AM radio stations ... | |
| More on XLR vs RCA considerations? Since my preamp and amp are single ended triode design, I can never use a balanced cable between them. This ultimately ends with a SET 833A, which has advantages I prefer over push-pull. Otherwise, I would go with XLR. | |
| Any piece of equipment you currently dream of ? I have always admired the Dhalquest DQ-10 speakers. They display the crossover components rather than treating them like indecent exposure. I remember hearing how clear and detailed they sound. Unfortunately, they are too wide to fit in my home an... | |
| Is anyone here still into live concerts these days? Pop music concerts use amplified public address systems which have no better sound than modestly-priced audio gear in the home. This makes higher end audio pointless. In an opera or a concert hall, where all music is acoustic, you get a better i... | |
| Bose buys McIntosh Mount Blanc was once a coveted brand of fountainpen. It had a lifetime warranty if it needed repair. Then it was bought out by a tobacco company and now you can't have it fixed if it starts to leak. Will this happen to McIntosh? | |
| Ken Fritz's $1M Dream System update This system's use was limited to a minuscule sweet spot of only a couple of seats when in a concert hall there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of seats. A music system or home theater should offer a shared experience with friends. That is the... | |
| The Rapid Rise (& Fall) of the CD DACs have improved till, for single-ended use, there is a new Sabre chip ESS9038 outclasses far more expensive and difficult to get accurate ladder DACs. I still use mostly discs: CDs and 5-channel SACDs, but I have some downloaded copies of symph... | |
| Watts! How many do we need? I like the simplicity and purity of the SET. But I also prefer inefficient planar magnetic speakers (Magnepan 0.7 which is all quasi-ribbon because pure ribbons are too fragile). I let a globe 45 SET transformer couple to an 833A run at 1000 Volts... | |
| Would you move to a bigger house if you could just to have a better listening room ? I would never give up my 26-foot diameter Futuro house because its design is so futuristic that it looks like it is from a far more advanced planet. It is big enough for Magnepan 0.7's and bigger Magnepans use pure ribbon tweeters that are more fr... | |
| The Horror Try comparing what you hear to a live performance in a concert hall or an opera house. You may find it closer to your system than many more expensive systems. I heard $50 K speakers that sounded more like an outdoor amplified festival than acous... | |
| Marantz SA10 sacd player I have a limited collection of 5-channel SACDs and an old OPPO player which has been repaired by OPPO. I have been to live performances of concerts where some of the orchestra, or one singer, is in the balcony above and behind the ground-level sea... |