Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

I have a problem with an amplifier - no sound output on left channel. It is intermittent, but I don't know whats causing it...

Happens on both line and phono inputs, and on both speakers A and B. tried with 2 different turntables, line inputs, etc.

The fact that it is intermittent, (although only occasionally work) gives me some hope it's not serious, but I'm fairly certain it's something internal.

Who in London would be recommended to have a look/fix? Pref North/East or Central.

Purchases have been made to kick off my multiroom home media server project.
Mac mini 2014 2.6ghz 16gb with 1TB Fusion Drive plus a couple of Chromecast Audios for messing with.
Looking forward to the tinkering.

The volume control is a common point of failure and would affect all inputs and outputs. Could you open the pot and clean it? Sometimes turning it vigorously helps for a while :)

Stephen Horowitz is who I use - he's in Hendon, but did a good job on my HK

How much did you pay for the Mac mini?

Lets just say I am still within ‘budget’, although not much to spare!
It was 450 with a mouse and keyboard. You can get an older lower spec one 8mb for about £300

Turned it quickly for about 2 seconds and has sorted it out, Cheers. Now need to decide if I want to keep it or sell it...

I've got to admit that for that price I'd be looking at an NUC (although obviously if you like apple then it's a decent option)

If you are used to electronics and have a few hours it's relatively easy to open up the pot and clean the carbon wipers. The short term fix tends to stop working after a while. I guess you could sell it while it works but there's a chance the new owner would receive it not fully working.

If you can solder/desolder just buy a new audiophile grade one.

I always find that tough to recommend because there are so many technical details to take into account depending on the electronic and physical design of the amp. Ultimately though it's probably best practice.

Spotify is doing a special at the moment

0.99p/month for 3 months. 10er after that.

Didn't Spotify have hacking issues? Worth having a look at?

So far as I can gather it has really bad hacking issues. Loads of people I know have discovered play histories of K-pop and other random stuff.

No idea why that is though.

Also, is premium high fidelity?

320kbps ogg vorbis. I can't tell the difference between it and Tidal HiFi. Thought I could but it was definitely placebo. I tried very hard and just couldn't. It matters more about the master of a track that's been uploaded than the bit rate IMO.

Some albums I've saved clearly have been uploaded to Spotify in some ungodly bitrate that sounds worse than AM radio.

Cheers both.... Wonder if its worth the £3 for 3 months....

I also worry my personal data is at risk.

https://www.troyhunt.com/no-spotify-wasnt-hacked/

(There's no evidence that the Spotify accounts that get taken over are anything but people either using known weak passwords for their Spotify accounts - which are easily tested/guessed, or reusing email/password combos that were leaked elsewhere already.)

@mashton

Wasn't it you? You're security savvy right? Can you dispute greenbank?

Yes, I wasn't necessarily saying that it was hacked and data stolen. More that there is clearly something up with it whether it be passwords being compromised or it not being set up to detect likely indicators that an account's been compromised, is in the process of being compromised.

Dude it's hardly a major investment or risk. Just sign up and see if you like it. Don't make your password your birthday or credit card number and have at it.

You can set download and streaming quality in your profile. I've been using it for years and love it. Never had any issues and would be bereft without it.

Intrigued as to how other people use it though. I tend to save albums as offline playlists so I have a kind of mobile library of stuff to go back to. Probably about 10% of them I save to my device in case of no signal or wifi emergency. I also make playlists and subscribe to other people's ones. The weekly recommends playlists have been great too.

Only thing with that approach is that I do tend to go back to the same stuff more than I'd like. Every year or so I have a purge and delete all of my "album" playlists and start again.

Yes it was me.

It happened three times in 18 months. It was before I was using a password manager so the password, at least to begin with, was not a unique one. Possible it came from a leaked list I suppose. I am doubtful that I would have used the same password three times in a row though. I am a bit more security savvy than that!

It was enough to put me off and switch to Google Play Music. I then migrated off that to Deezer, when Google closed the service.

@Fatberg - sounds very similar to what I do but I don't purge. I tend to save albums as playlists.

I have a master Discover Weekly playlist with every Discover Weekly song I've been recommended going back to around 2015 I think.

I also hit the + button on songs I like. I'll then visit my 'Songs' list and visit the artists whose songs I've saved and listen to their catalogue more deeply. If I like an album of theirs, I'll save that as a playlist. Think that makes sense.

I tend to only save albums or playlists I'm listening to at the moment on my phone, along with the 'Songs' playlist. It's about 2000 tracks in size at the moment. Oh, and my Discover Weekly. It means I have 30 new tracks to listen to every Monday morning which is nice. They download automatically overnight.

I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with how inspired the discover recommendations are. I have an ever expanding playlist called “Discover Wins” of anything from a weekly worthy of the title.

Yep. Really are some outlandish picks in mine. Very good indeed.

I have to ask why?

A pot is just a variable resistor. A log10K or log50K, etc, etc is the same component it's just that some pots are better and more reliable than others.

Alps is always a good choice.