drbarney1
Responses from drbarney1
| Do You Tell Others How Much You Have Invested in Your System? I design and build most of my own stuff. A SET amplifier using the best parts such as heavier duty output transformers than the most expensive factory made amplifiers you can buy and polypropylene capacitors in the high voltage power supply rated ... | |
| Amp Internal Wire In the case of tube circuits a centimeter or two of wire is in series with the conductors in the tube sockets and the pins up through their connections to the internal tube parts such as the plate not made of silver, the grid wires, and the cathod... | |
| 2-3k budget - adding DAC/Server to Bluesound Node? I got a Bluesound Vault a few years ago and ripped all my CD's onto it, but could not access the music by composer or symphony number. It only lists "song" and "artist" which only applies to pop music. I got some help transferring the files onto ... | |
| The new dynamic in speaker pricing I am skeptical about the extreme prices. In 2003 Stereophile Magazine did a review of a stereo amplifier that uses 833A radio station transmitter tubes with their grids driven by 300B SET. It sold for $350,000. Using the best transformers and part... | |
| Isn't it really about quality of recording? Let us not forget the performance. The most critically acclaimed conductor's interpretation of a symphony may not sound as good to some people as a lesser rated performance by a different conductor. Next matter the recording and the equipment incl... | |
| Tube Integrated Under 1,500 Don't overlook the possibility of building one from a kit or set of plans. You will be surprised at the simplicity of an SET. If you know someone to guide you you will have a successful and satisfactory outcome. You can go for polypropylene filter... | |
| Your sub experience: Easy or hard? I tried subwoofers with Magnepan 0.7's with no luck. I wired them up with a pair of DW-M bass panels which filled in the lower frequencies with much better integration. I connected the 0.7's to the 4 Ohm outputs on may Hammond 1642 SE Transformers... | |
| Turntable noobie...what advice do you have? Before you consider the more expensive moving coil cartridge consider the following: When the stylus on a moving magnet cartridge wears out it is easy and inexpensive to change the stylus. But when a moving coil stylus wears out it costs almost a... | |
| How much $$ do bells and whistles add to preamp? I made my own with a tube rectified polypropylene filter capacitor pi filter choke power supply for both channels (crosstalk due to low series equivalence resistance of the final 100 microfarad filter capacitor a small fraction of an Ohm) so I don... | |
| Large room with low budget for speakers Don't overlook what Magnepan can offer. They circumvent the complications of cabinets and dynamic drivers and save expense and you might like the planar sound. | |
| Speaker Questions Have you considered entry level Magnepan speakers? | |
| Can a Amp be "timeless" and compete with todays amps? The 1912 DeForest single ended triode is an example of a classic that has been resurrected. One manufacturer described the change to class B as making compromises to improve efficiency and other tricks to enhance measurement of distortion already ... | |
| Least Expensive Power Conditioner/Surge Protector That Won't Worsen Sound For surge and lightning protection they are a good idea, but higher frequency noise is better removed by anti-ripple filters in the power supplies where capacitors and inductors become proportionally more effective with higher order Fourier harmon... | |
| The Law of Accelerating Returns I can accept it costs more to produce better performing components. But there is some voodoo physics in "high end" products. One example is speaker cables costing tens of thousands of dollars. The issue of skin depth attenuating high audio frequen... | |
| Power Cables and Wall Sockets 10 gauge is a good idea for an amplifier that intermittently draws much current to power loud passages, but for class A such as SET, it is not necessary. Before you spend on "clean power" AC regenerators or filters do you hear all the claimed "dir... |