Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Circa £450 to have the stylus replaced on the dynavector. Still, £100 cheaper than new!

I keep pushing the max I'll pay but it's happening over years and the record collection definitely gets played and enjoyed so there's that. Having 2 setups and 2 decks doesn't help, dropping £1k on 2 carts doesn't stack up for me when carts like the MP-110 are so good.

will a nad3020v2 be okay to drive kef q350s? keep reading that they prefer 'enough' power. but how much is enough? am footprint limited so vertical form factor of the NAD is nice but not essential

At one point I went from a 60w amp to 250w and the improvement in bass control was noticeable. Amps have a capacity to 'grip' the bass driver if they have enough control over power, this tightens up bass response even at lower volumes.

In my case 250w was twice the rated capacity of the drivers, obviously the gain staging was set up for that.

Is it just that the bigger amp was better?

This will do for some old speakers so I can use it with line in or my phone I assume?

Yeah. Looks like it has Bluetooth too.

Better suited to the speakers it was driving :)

It would be an odd comparison by specification otherwise. I would have expected some improvement maybe but it was pretty clear how much more controlled the bass was. Since the bass is the largest consumer in the cab and peak voltage demands often exceed the continuous rating by a large margin it made enough sense to me that the increase in power was the biggest factor.

The only other measure I would take into account would be distortion and both amps have very small distortion which is normal for commercial designs these days.

Best not to confuse the wattage ratings with tube amp comparisons, that would really change things!

Is there such thing as a headphone amp with Bluetooth aptx output?

What are you trying to do because the 2 functions might coexist but there's no real reason for it. Bluetooth doesn't need the analog amplification that a headphone amp would provide.

I'm trying to get the best feed for my B&W wireless headphones.

I'm using a laptop at the moment, but that means using the shitty on board DAC and the also quite shitty Bluetooth output from the laptop which doesn't support aptx.

If I head a headphone amp which supported aptx, I could plug it into my pre amp and I'd be getting the signal out of my DAC which I would guess is a lot better than what the laptop is giving me.

Seems like you'd be doing DAC then ADC. Isn't there a device which can take USB digital in from the laptop and squirt out the right kind of Bluetooth?

Why yes, there are many such things, e.g.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Azio-Micro-Bluetooth-Adapter-BTD-V401/dp/B00JAZGSXY

Interesting question. I assumed the Bluetooth output was analogue, but thinking about it, I guess it isn't?

I guess it isn't?

It isn't, it's a general purpose digital communication system. The digital bluetooth stream will go through a DAC process in your wireless headphones.

Great. No need to worry about upstream DAC then.

As you say, just get one of those aptx dongles and that should be as good as it's going to be on Bluetooth.

Another upgrade to purify the signal would be a dedicated streamer with USB out to get away from laptop signal noise. Plug the aptX dongle into the output and you might (might) get an improvement.

I've avoided streamers so far; quite happy with nas -> laptop -> DAC -> amp for general purposes.

The headphones thing does provide a slightly different challenge as the laptop is the "source" in a way that it isn't in the loudspeaker output chain.

I've just ordered one of those aptx HD usb dongles so we'll see where that takes things.

That awkward (hypothetical) moment you realise you've spent five times as much on your source as your headphones...! :-P

it's more that i think the headphones have more to give.

they are the most expensive headphones i've ever owned, but yeah, compared to other components in the place they are not the most outlandish thing.

No noise in the digital signal whatever the source (unless you’re talking about jitter, which is of negligible effect compared to Bluetooth compression and wireless signal issues).

I'll ask here as it seems sensible.
Double ended (easy) usb cables that will go from a chromecast to the amp usb (both micro?) do they exist? I would think so but 2 mins in google is finding not much.

actually
this?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/CableCreation-compatible-remote-Mobile-Adapter/dp/B01M5GZ3N0

2 mins in google is finding not much

With USB-C considered de rigeur (throw your manky old stuff away if it doesn't use it), it can be a bit challenging to find the right Micro USB cable. I'm usually pretty good at Google but it took ages to find the correct right-angle (or was it left-angle?) dash cam cable.

I think the linked thing should do it?
Micro to.micro

With all other things being equal, my streamer sounds better than my macbook, which sounds better than my budget windows laptop. Just my experience. Haven’t tried it with Bluetooth.

Haven’t tried it with Bluetooth

Between lossy compression and dropped packets due to RFI, Bluetooth is going to sound shit however clean the bitstream is before it enters the BT domain. Wireless data streams can be either accurate or timely, and for obvious reasons media streams prioritise timely.
"Audiophile wireless" is an oxymoron.