mulveling
Responses from mulveling
| SOTA STAR Sapphire Turntable Care and Feeding I got on the phone with SOTA to talk about refurbished turntables. Had a few nice conversations with Christan and we talked about my stereo upgrade plan, the room and my listening habits and tastes. Turns out they have one rosewood Sapphire III... | |
| Has buying and/or selling audio gear changed? I have to admit, I didn’t even realize you could do F&F payments via credit card, until this thread. That seems - rife for all manner of schemes, scams, and abuse 😅 Using F&F can mean a fee from your credit card company. Well that make... | |
| Has buying and/or selling audio gear changed? What difference does it make if it’s $20,000 or $600 if you are not making a profit it shouldn’t matter. @invalid You’re right, it doesn’t make ANY difference - and many audiophiles are showing how poorly they understand the tax code. I’ll pr... | |
| SOTA STAR Sapphire Turntable Care and Feeding Think about it: do you really expect the amount of vacuum created by the pump will take out even small warps inherent in a disc? A hold down clamp is much more effective in that regard, imo, although even with that the amount of pressure would ... | |
| Why don't we tire of music? Music offers the right combination of providing structure while granting enough freedom to form our own interpretations of meaning. These interpretations resonate at a very base emotional level - something modern society tells us to "keep a lid on... | |
| SOTA STAR Sapphire Turntable Care and Feeding Since I missed my chance for a local SOTA Star Sapphire turntable, I’m obsessing about getting one. And spousal approval has not been withdrawn yet so I need to act expeditiously. I’ve noticed some are vacuum and others non-vacuum. How much impro... | |
| 20 year old solid state technology..... I still fondly remember my old MC2100 amplifier, made in the 1970s. I had it restored by Terry DeWick before he retired, and I for damn sure should’ve kept it. Ugh! Kicking myself over that. There’s been both good and bad sounding solid state gea... | |
| SOTA STAR Sapphire Turntable Care and Feeding I still own my first table - a SOTA Star III in gorgeous Koa wood. Bought on consignment from original owner, circa 2007. The platter of that era used a short, stiff rubber platter lip to create the vacuum seal. It’s not nearly as effective as th... | |
| What is meant exactly by the description 'more musical'? Musicality is about room, speaker and component matching. Some experts say dsp can compensate, but I've never found a dsp able to change a speakers fundamental sound enough to fix the room and component misalignment instead you get a flat measure... | |
| What is meant exactly by the description 'more musical'? "Musicality" is clearly not a technical term - how could it be? Of course that applies to a lot of audiophile jargon, to varying degrees. Best to keep it simple. I think it usually means "I really like this", or in the context of direct comparis... | |
| Goodbye Everyone If you expect validation in the form of comments here, you're usually going to be disappointed. However, there's a much larger body of "lurkers" who read and appreciate but don't comment. I sometimes get a very nice PM or hook up on a sale with so... | |
| Phono Stage, Tonearm, Cartridge Question - Which is the most important? This question is really a moving target. Especially as you move from one tier / class of gear to a higher one. But in my cumulative experience, cartridge and phono stage are decidedly most impactful to the net result. Of course you don’t want to ... | |
| 12AU7 Gain Question The 2016 is clearly an error or "misprint". That’s more like a transconductance reading than mu (not possible to have mu that high). I wonder if the doofus seller mixed those readings up (don't do drugs). Don’t use a multimeter. I’d just use them... | |
| Tube amplifier - tube bias and time to warm up I was somewhat surprised that VAC Avatar's manual says nothing about tube matching, even output tubes matching. @inna VAC does recommend sourcing replacement tubes from themselves - which would include the necessary matching and low noise scr... | |
| Tube amplifier - tube bias and time to warm up Is matching output tubes necessary if I can adjust bias for each of four tubes ? Matching is not nearly as critical in that case, but still good to have. A bias reading is measured at just one point (idle), and you want the push / pull tubes to... |