russbutton
Responses from russbutton
| Favorite song to demo or test drive speakers? Feel free to download.Scott Hamiltion "That's All" | |
| How to accurately gauge speaker sensitivity to match with tube amp? This whole discussion around impedance only highlights what a can of worms you get with passive crossovers. Here's WHY active crossovers are so very much better than passive. A single loudspeaker driver is an inductor, and provides a frequency de... | |
| Why Don't More People Into Music Reproduction At Home Play Around With Musical Instruments I’m both an engineer and a performing musician, which is why it was natural that I live my life as an audiophile. I’ve been doing location recording for more than 40 years. My wife is a professional violinist here in the San Francisco area. The li... | |
| Best CD player under $2000 The best CD player under $2000 is a $300 pro grade CD player, like a Tascam, with an optical feed to your favorite DAC. | |
| speaker recommendation for 35watt tube mono blocks One of the very most musical systems I ever heard had a Mac C22 preamp, Marantz 8B power amp, and a pair of KEF Calinda loudspeakers. Absolute f'ing magic. The 8B power amp is 35 wpc and was a good match for these loudspeakers.They're a little h... | |
| Hand me down audio equip- upgrade advice Build the SEAS Thor kit. The whole project would probably run you about $2300 when you were done with it. https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/mtm-speaker-kits/new-thor-kit-pair/That may seem like a lot, but you'd get a speaker very similar to... | |
| Affordable US Made Tube Pre/Power or Integrated Options The tubes4hifi pieces are all available as kits. They really aren't that hard to build. Tubes4hifi also provides excellent support for builders. For about $2200, you could easily afford their best preamp, the SP14 and the ST120 (60 wpc) power a... | |
| Which one to choose between two 80K$ tube amps? If you're dumb enough to spend $80,000 on a amp, then it doesn't matter which one you buy. | |
| Tempted to buy a Macintosh Mac made their rep with their tube gear. The Mac C22 preamp is terrific. The Mac 275 amp was the Gold Standard. *Was* is the operative watch word. It’s still a great amp. There are those who see the VTA ST-120 as a Mac 275 killer.https://www.audio... | |
| Best bookshelf loudspeakers under 10,000 for the pair The Joseph Audio speakers being touted here use stock off-the-shelf SEAS Excel drivers, which are exceptional. But you can buy the very same drivers from Madisound and build a speaker every bit as good for a fraction of the money. And Madisound ... | |
| Time for the Dynaco to go, Affordable Integrated or Separates for Wilson's Under $2.5K? The Dynaco mod you want is the driver board replacement from VTA. Do the mod they offer and you'll be more than happy. Much more. And you'll be able to do it for a small amount of money. Unless of course you WANT to drop thousand$ on something... | |
| Are 500 hours too many for a used hi-end cartridge? If cartridge aging is an issue, then y'all need to know of this guy, who does phono cartridge repair and retipping.http://www.phonocartridgeretipping.com/index.html | |
| My list of seller red flags As one friend used to say, "This is a free country. You're free to ask a price, I'm free not to pay it."If a seller says his price is firm, then it is. If it's too much for you, then... don't buy it. Should I list something higher so I can th... | |
| Choosing between floorstanding speakers. Consider building a well engineered kit. The SEAS Thor kit, which sells at about $1800 for the drivers, is very similar to the Joseph Audio PERSPECTIVE2 Graphene, which sells for $13,000. http://www.josephaudio.com/perspectiveThat $1800 only ge... | |
| seeking recommendations for a preamp The Don Sachs preamps are just gussied up VTA SP14 preamps. The straight VTA preamp is pretty plain Jane in appearance, but is very affordable. You can save a fair amount and get enormous satisfaction if you build it as a kit. They provide exce... |