retiredaudioguy
Responses from retiredaudioguy
| Your first concert was to see who and when? 1812 Overture & a Tchaikovsky Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall. I do not remember which orchestra was playing. It was 1958 or '59. The cannon's echo may still be running round in the Gods! I was in the local C of E youth club for about 5 ye... | |
| How old is too old? PS. Since others have wandered a bit off-topic, I am 81, I play golf almost every day in Summer and ski for a few hours every other day in Winter. Between seasons I play with building electronics and doing paper engineering for my wife who design... | |
| How old is too old? Take a look at used Esoteric SACD/CD players. The transports are built to be indestructible - think the offspring of Patek Philippe and the Sherman tank. I gave my 18 year old X-03 SE to an impecunious friend when I needed a DAC and I upgraded t... | |
| How close are you to being to your endgame? My system outline and I'm almost there. Your original post really made me consider the components of my main system. Some are, I think, endgame (I am 81 years old so no time for too many new generations of gear to arrive!). TT& Arm, VPI Scoutmaster, JMW Memorial + 3gm weight. Prob... | |
| Cartridge and/or phono stage upgrades I love the sound of my recent upgrade to a Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum through the Sutherland Duo. This does need a fairly high mass arm, I added a 3gm weight to the JMW Memorial unipivot arm on my elderly Scoutmaster. Superb resolution, ... | |
| Pass Labs XA-25 vs XA-30.8 amplifier I cannot comment on the 30.8 but the XA25 is a superb amp, utterly transparent, that will drive my Rockport Atria IIs easily. It is revealing of poor recordings however. You hear EVERYTHING that is on the source, a singer's breathing, a a guitar... | |
| What is your scariest moment in High End audio? Reading the great posts triggered another memory. I had bought a store's (several years old) demo unit of a highly regarded PP 300B amp, with its tubes. Some months later, as I was listening, smoke came out of the ventilation grid on the chassis... | |
| ??? My First Classical Concert,What Can I Expect ??? If you ever get the chance to hear a Mahler symphony (especially #2) live, grab the experience. Some wag said the Mahler wrote for HiFi! The dynamics (pppp to ffff) and shades of tone run from ethereal to brutal. Incidentally I use Mahler 2 as ... | |
| Musings on Switching Power Supplies (LPS for Oppo / DirecTV/ Radiance) I am VERY late to this party but I think that, as usual, it all depends. A good SMPS will beat a poor LPS, and can at best beat a good LPS. Notably, Benchmark uses SMPS exclusively to lower the noise floor. The LA4 pre is silent, at full volume... | |
| What is a good all around high quality speaker to purchase? +1 on Rockports if you can stretch, then you will never upgrade. I was listening to Sonus Faber and others and there were a couple of ones of interest - I'd said $18k to $20k - when the sales guy said can you stretch to $25K. I ordered the Atria... | |
| Out of Balance I find that many CDs, and especially LPs are out of balance, usually not by much - but it only takes a couple of dBs to make a huge difference in position. Have you moved furniture around? Did you wake up with wax in one ear, had you slept aw... | |
| We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes A complex topic when allied to digital music reproduction, made more difficult by S/PDIF. Assuming sound engineering the bits at the output of the receiver in your device at the end of the Cat 5 cable are precisely the same as the bits stored at ... | |
| ??? My First Classical Concert,What Can I Expect ??? Sit back and enjoy the experience of The Absolute Sound, real instruments in a real space - albeit in a space that is probably a bit too reverberant. Regarding applause, this is a source of amusement and irritation for me. Amusement at "Gala" pe... | |
| Why Use Aluminum for a TT Platter? Fourteen years late to the party I just found this thread. How do manufacturers of wooden platters manage the effects of humidity changes? The third certain thing in life is that wood moves! I am an amateur woodworker, apart from a few of the l... | |
| TU-8600S I managed to get the Elekit installed in my main system, the handyman is fixing the damage to the barn caused by a falling tree this winter, he is much younger and stronger than I. The TU-8600S is definitely a rather good amp. A bit laid back in... |