richardbrand

Responses from richardbrand

To Battery Or Not To Battery (12 Volt)
I run a domestic 240-Volt audio-visual system off-grid in my motorhome, from 12 Volt battery power. Two 100 Amp-hour lithium batteries are recharged from solar, the alternator or mains, if connected.  I use a 2000-Watt pure sinewave inverter and ... 
Buyer Beware
@lordmelton  There is no "Black Magic" about USB cables, they either have 2 or 4 internal wires. Well, that is true for the original Universal Serial Bus (USB 1.x) which had just two wires to carry data, one bit after another.  That's where th... 
??? My First Classical Concert,What Can I Expect ???
This is mainly to reinforce what others have already said! The six Brandenburg Concertos are very early 'classical' pieces and do not feature soloists like later concertos do.  The original meaning of concerto was 'playing together'.  The origina... 
DAC 'Scam' Vid
@hifikenobi  a DAC is more than just the DA conversion, it is also the first pre-pre-amp in your analogue chain Call me old fashioned, but how the US English language has changed! I still think of a Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC) as just... 
Garrard A70 Turntable
@guscreek  SOA means what exactly?  
Need Recommendation for Coffee Shop
I second the active speaker route - KEF LS50 if you can afford them, or KEF LSX.  
Vinyl Care
@dogberry  Benjamin Franklin will be most surprised to discover that he was US president.... (Though he was President of Pennsylvania prior to the formation of the US). My mistake!  I remembered from my schooldays that he was a US politician ... 
OT: Espresso machines
Just before we flew to Hawaii, my new partner took me to the local cafe in Sydney and said it would be better than any coffee we could find in the US.  Not quite true, we found an Aussie aficionado who actually knew coffee in Honolulu. Meanwhile,... 
Vinyl Care
I was rather hoping for a scientific approach to static on vinyl records - how it is caused, what its effects are, and how it is mitigated. @lewm comes closest by attempting to use a static charge meter, and detecting no change.  But this a gross... 
Vinyl Care
@billstevenson  As far as I know, Ben Franklin was the last US president to have been an experimental scientist? He was interested in electrostatic forces, and was renowned for flying a kite into active thunderstorms.  A presidential precedence ... 
Vinyl Care
@billstevenson  Do not worry about things that cannot occur such as diamond tracing vinyl producing electrostatic energy What a very strange approach you have to science, and the scientific method! Perhaps you would care, in your spirit of ke... 
Vinyl Care
@faustuss Yes, following up on your lead I discovered that the 382 uses the piezo electrostatic effect with a passive network to make it electrically like a moving magnet system.  Another 40-year-old design!  The stylus shape is patented but simi... 
Vinyl Care
@zobel  have been running the same 382 for more than 25 years at 1.25 grams I think the Micro Acoustics 382 is a moving magnet cartridge, I suspect with removable stylus.  How many playing hours do you estimate you get from one stylus, and wha... 
Best Holographic Speakers ~$7k per pair
@pinwa  Panel speakers also have relatively narrow sweet spots Well, that may be broadly true, but certainly does not apply to Quad's electrostatic panel speakers from the Quad ESL-63 and all subsequent models. The reason is simple, but the e... 
Vinyl Care
@faustuss  As far as the diamond creating "static" as you people like to call it, last I heard diamonds are made of carbon which is the most conductive material known to man. You must still be a few years short of getting a degree in materials...