Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Do you have a mic you use to measure and feedback, or just do it by ear?

I think that depends on what you want to achieve - a mic will help analyse what's going on in terms of quantified numbers but if you just want to tame the highs a bit, then fiddling and using your ears will work. After all, your ears are what you're trying to please here - no point it being 'flat' and sounding shite because the room timing is weird or you're used to a specific eq curve etc.

Yeah, true. Normally I'd just fiddle until I like how it sounds, but there is a whole powerful suite of room correction and auto tuning cross-overs that would be great to tap into. Might get one, fiddle around then see if I can borrow a mic of a studio guy I know.

Possibly dumb question...

... but can I just chuck this Allo miniboss on top of a RPi Zero, plug it into my amp and then stream music from a collection somewhere using something like Volumio?

https://www.allo.com/sparky-eu/miniboss-rpi-zero.html

A second, semi-related Q is if anyone knows of a budget headphone amp.

Cheers.

Yes.

thanks

A couple of things to consider.

1. Get the Pi Zero WH unless you're particularly keen on soldering.
   
2. I had to do some fiddling around to get the volume right (it may or
   may not be an issue for you, mine was for a bedside radio and it was
   too loud on the default setting (different DAC)).
   
3. It works better if you point it directly at the folders with the
   music rather than serving it up via Plex or some other media server.
   As such, you need to make sure the music is tagged nicely.
   
   

Overall though it is very easy to set up.

You could do the free trial of Roon and play with the DSP settings for digital sources to see if you like what it does.

Cheers.

I've never soldered proper electronics. Last time for my pihole I figured the extra £4 was worth it.

TBH I've got limited idea on how the whole streaming thing works, so just getting into the wormhole. But from a bit of reading that Allo hat sounds like it's actually alright and low cost at c.£50 all in. Everything else I looked at seemed to rapidly escalate in cost.

I don't really have any digital sources. Listening to a few records today was pretty good really, but there was a bit of boom and some sibilance up top. My current active crossover is sucking volume too so I reckon I've pretty much convinced myself. MiniDSP it is.

I think you’ll like it, dragging the frequency curves around and hearing the results is good fun, unless as you said you lose the analogue feel to the sound. I wouldn’t know as I only stream music.

Kind of late answering but I do use a specialised mic which has a factory calibration file so that a flat response can be calculated. I use REW to make convolution filters that can be used by Roon or HQPlayer in my case. It's all small gains but I've stopped fiddling for the last 6 months or more so something must be working!!

When I had problems with high end harshness it turned out to be the gain staging between the power amps or digital speakers and the sources I was using. Make very sure that you are not sending too loud a signal to your power amps. It's worth knowing rather than guessing what the optimum headroom from your source to power amps is and even measuring the voltage of a reference level sine wave.

If you don't yet have a test disk I would recommend getting one, you can test your phono amp output to make sure you don't have a strong resonant peak in the upper frequencies. Certain cartridge/cable/phono amp combos will do that.

Sounds like you also have standard room mode issues in the low end. They are so predictable you only need to enter the room size into REW and it will accurately predict the frequencies.

I'm guessing the 48khz sampling rate is where the minidsp is economising.

Not too late at all - lots of useful advice. I had started to suspect the phono stage, I have a Chet Baker record that produces obvious sibilance so I’m gonna A/B test it against a digital copy. Started reading about gain structure but my brain got full and I had to go to bed.

I didn’t know you could just give your room dims to REW - that’s really handy.

I missed that you were talking about your phono input. There are so many variables on a vinyl front end, which is an inherently flawed system (probably why we like it).

I’ll be interested to see if you think loses the magic with dsp.

I bet I couldn’t tell the difference between a well digitised vinyl and the original. I suspect my worries about 48kHz sampling are totally unfounded and the benefit of room EQing and fixing spikes in the top end will far outweigh any loss of magic.

Room dimensions and speaker positioning including a sub if you're that way inclined. It's pretty accurate but it's only got to calculate the length of a frequency and work out where it will overlap itself and increase the db's.

Gain structure is very difficult to get your head around. It's part of the game that it's so easy to plug components together without understanding their individual specs and they'll work fine, if you want optimal performance you have to understand what they all need to function at their best.

If you are running your phono amp into a pre amp then that could easily be adding some volume which is pushing your power amp input a bit too hard.

I am using digital speakers and I trialled them against an all analog setup, the all analog was nice but I needed to eq for the room modes so it's move or use an eq for me.

p.s. I can hear the difference between my vinyl recordings and cd rips on just about any system I play them back on, the qualities of the records have more impact than the difference between an analog or digital signal chain.

If I play back recordings of records on my main system I very easily drift into thinking I have the record on!

Hooked the DSP up as a crossover and a basic shelf filter from 5kHz up, already really like it. With a 5m USB cable I can fiddle around with the settings and listen to the results.

Records lose none of the magic, just some of the sibilance. Chet Baker is sounding lovely. Looking forward to getting a mic and running some tests to fix room modes and tweak the crossover.

My Rotel AL 930AX has suddenly started to get incredibly hot. Nothing else has changed in my set up, it's still sat between Rega Planar 2 and B&W 601s.
Anyone looking to shift an amplifier?

Nice one, glad it’s done the trick.

Made a bit of furniture for my gear. Just need to make a plinth for that speaker to get it to the same height as the other one.

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I had a look at my Volumio install yesterday and the Allo hat is a pre-installed option on there so it should be easy to set up.

@StevePeel looks great! 10mm birch ply? Have you finished it with anything or left it as-is?

I'm pretty jealous, I've finally unpacked mine and it's looking basic (though the "wood" floor looks less gammy than in real life). I'm waiting for party wall, building control, etc etc etc to open up the room, but in the meantime it's a 12' x 12' echo chamber.

Other than buying a load of rugs and egg boxes, does anyone have an options for cheap semi-temporary sound proofing?

Can get 32' sq of wedge acoustic foam tiles on Amazon for £40 which seems reasonable (I really don't mind about how it looks at the moment).

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It’s 15mm birch ply. I sent a cutting list to the timber merchant then just glued and screwed it together. Sanded and finished with wax.

Just fill the room with records, you’ll be right!

If you’re doing any insulating, buy it now and stack it in the corners (still in packaging).
Looks shit but cheap and very effective.

That yamaha. Is nice. I think you posted a link before, does it have digital and phono?