Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Another thread.

I think a laptop would work.
Portable too.

^oof.

So, building your own custom-length phono cables...

Van Damme + generic ends from Maplin + solder?

Of course not. That would be far too easy.
Pure silver wire, PTFE tubing as a dielectric, rubber hose as a core, some braided outer, heatshrink and gold RCAs.
Like this:
http://www.venhaus1.com/diysilverinterconnects.html
You're welcome!

Has anyone used the IQAudio digital amp for raspberry pi? Reviews look great and I could set it up headless as a secondary system - just wondered if anyone had any prior experience.

Also might be in the market for two speakers that can be wall mounted, if I take the plunge and build up said pi system - anyone got anything spare they might want to sell?

April 2016
"Hey fizzy, a few of us are going for a pint if you fancy it?"

• Sorry, I just dropped about a thou on .9999 cotton-insulated silver wire, I'm a bit strapped for cash.
  
  

June 2016
"Are you coming to Mark's birthday drinks fizzy?"

• sorry guys, I'm staying in to finish soldering my interconnects
  
  

September 2016
"Anyone want to come and watch Dunston Checks In on my new home cinema with DIY interconnects that have beaten $800+ commercial offerings at WADstock in Maidenhead?"

• tumbleweed
  

Ha, guess I walked into that. Just read back the post and see how it reads.

Basically, I've not bought any kind of hi fi system in decades and somehow imagined that by now they'd have come up with half decent sounding one piece systems of some kind or another. Admittedly I've not done any real research so was being lazy. Presumably that's not the case then.

The Marantz MCR611 is pretty close to what you want - no storage, though.

I'd use a NAS and stream rather than getting a device with storage. Better value for the storage space and useful for other stuff.

I'm looking for something similar, without CD player, but it needs to be under 10cm high.

Can someone buy this and then invite me round to visit it please?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262369471224?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Would anyone here be interested in some Chord Company Odyssey 2 cables?

1 x 2.5m
1 x 6.0m

Both are terminated with banana plugs and I'd like £130 (including postage.)

I also have a pair of AKG550 headphones. Hardly used and in the original box - £90 (including postage.)

Yeah I could be actually... thought speaker cables were best the same length though?

Probably! I bought a set of speakers and these came as part of the deal.

You could cut the longer one down to 2.5m and have a matching pair and some spare to use as a 1.75m pair or to make some jumper cables etc I suppose!

Another hi-fi myth, surely? The amount of time it takes to send a signal down an extra couple of metres of cable is negligible compared to the speed of sound waves reaching your ears if you move an extra centimetre away from the right hand speaker. Or is there some other voodoo that's supposed to be going on?

L C and R are all affected by wire length iirc, so there is some truth to it - but likely very negligible

So calculable but not measurable? (In a listening at home sense.)

Not even sure. I'm going to have a nap and think about it.

Resistance of the wire creating different loading on the amp, probably negligible. Best thing about expensive speaker cable is the way it looks :)

Electricity travels down copper cables at about 0.67c

Speed of light * 0.67 = 200 860 947 m/s
Speed of sound is 343 m/s

Moving 1cm further away from a speaker would mean the sound taking an extra 34300th of a second to get to you, which is equivalent to making the cable 5856m longer.

...but I swear that I can hear the difference..

Hi-fi quality conversations: it seems to me that they need to operate on these lines:

When you are convincing yourself of a superior sound quality for item-a over item-b, do what the hell you like.

When you are trying to convince someone else, you had better be doing double blind listening trials in controlled conditions or get in the sea.

I thought you were taking the piss till I saw the original prices for that cabling. Jesus Christ!

I know. Annoyingly, I'd just upgraded my cables a couple of weeks ago. If I hadn't done that, I'd be keeping this and using it instead - there's exactly enough for my two rooms!