larryi
Responses from larryi
| soft dome versus hard dome tweeters There are many drivers of all sorts of design, soft dome, hard dome, compression drivers, ribbon, heil, etc. that sound good. One of my favorites is ancient—the Western Electric 597 fieldcoil compression tweeter. I heard the souped up G.I.P. La... | |
| Am I alone in the world using a 1997 high end pro sampler as a DAC? Jond, You DAC-3 measured poorly back in 1995 as would a current DAC-3. It doesn’t matter. Audio Note DACs are among the most natural sounding DACs around. I really like them a lot. | |
| Does VPI ADS work with Basis Gold Debut? To do speed change properly, as Basis sees it, you cannot split the two phases by simply using a capacitor in the motor; the correct way involves the motor controller delivering two different AC phases to the motor. That means the motor also has ... | |
| Marianne Faithfull This is quite sad news. I like her versions of a lot of music. In particular, I like her version of the song she co-wrote with Jagger--"Sister Morphine." | |
| Getting a Divorce and can now buy floor standing speakers I agree that there should not be imaging issues with the Harbeth speakers. I've heard several iterations of the 30s and they are all capable of good imaging. Proper placement of the speaker and the listener and proper treatment of the room shoul... | |
| Getting a Divorce and can now buy floor standing speakers With that kind of money in play, you should go to a show or two to sample a wide variety of types of speakers. That should include large panel speakers (planar magnetics or electrostatics), Multiway systems employing widerange drivers to cover mo... | |
| Getting a Divorce and can now buy floor standing speakers My choice would also be low-powered tube and high efficiency speakers. In your price range, there are not that many commercial choices for horn-based systems. I like Charney (back loaded horn for single cone driver). But, you can go custom buil... | |
| Replace tubes yearly? Since I’ve settled on my current setup, about fifteen years ago, I’ve only had to replace two tubes and that was because a shelf collapsed and dropped my turntable motor controller on the power supply of my phonostage (it uses two 300b tubes as re... | |
| Adding a tube amp is a good idea? You kinda have to go out and hear some of the candidate amps. Tube amps vary in sound MUCH more than do solid state amps. I am a tube amp fan, but, I find that a lot of high powered tube amps sound brittle and unpleasant on the top end. This ha... | |
| Where do I go from here? A lot can be done with speaker placement and listening chair placement to improve sound such that room treatment need not be extensive and ugly. What you should do may depend on any restrictions you have on such placement. For example, if you ar... | |
| Replace tubes yearly? I have, and like, the Amplitrex tester. It is simple to use, tests at full power so the tubes are measured under stress, and it displays both test measurements and the specified values to compare the results to. But, one still needs experience t... | |
| Favorite Cover Album Another favorite of mine, for awesomely awful covers is the CD called “Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Singoff.” It includes two William Shatner numbers: “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”, Mae West doing “Twist and Shou... | |
| Favorite Cover Album Another good cover album has various artists covering the music of Richard and Karen Carpenter. The album is called "If I were a Carpenter." I particularly like Shonen Knife's version of "top of the World" and Redd Kross' version of "Yesterday O... | |
| Favorite Cover Album I particularly like the French duo who goes by the name Nouvelle Vague. There self-titled album is particularly good. They primarily cover Brit Pop. For the really outrageous, so bad it is interesting, I suggest: Pat Boone (Christian music) do... | |
| Replace tubes yearly? If you use tubes that will eventually need replacement, get a complete set of replacement tubes. You can "test" the old tubes by swapping in tubes from the reserved set; if the sound improves enough so you are willing to replace the old ones, you... |