Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Like this.

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ah ok. i have a few sets, but nothing that length

i have a new sales pitch for shit i am selling on ebay. if it isn't moving, i just hook it up and listen to it! once i hear it again and think, "shit, this sounds great, i don't need that £100, I'll just hang onoto it..." some fucker buys it.

Nah bruv

I wouldn't use aluminium cable.

There are many options in copper electrical cable, depending on your prejudice, e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-3182Y-Flexible-Length-Meters/dp/B01KHR9BAU/ 10m for just under £10

Or pick up from Screwfix for less in white
https://www.screwfix.com/p/nexans-3182y-white-2-core-1-5mm-flexible-cable-10m-coil/7968t

Can't really go wrong with OFC QED cable

That's a good pitch!

needs more poo

Sounds like it cost 20 quid.

😓

Motivation to get my arcam repaird sooner.
I think I'll do it myself, should be able to source parts. And I found a wiring diagram. Also finding someone appears to be impossible.

That thing is functional, but it's like eating a pasta you made at home, versus one in Bologna.

Makes sense. I imagine the difference in price is analogous too.

Do you know what’s actually wrong with the Arcam?

In the main one, a single capacitor at first glance. And where it sits in the wiring diagram makes sense for that to be the sole issue.

The power one, not yet. I need to take it out the shell and inspect more the find the issue.

I bought a new toy, an ESR meter. Always good to get new toys.

As the evenings seem really long these days I’ve decided to use the time to rip my CD collection.

Am I doing this right?
I’ll get an optical drive - is the quality of this important? I’ll also get an external SSD, rip from one to the other via something like Exact Audio Copy, then plug the SSD into the USB in of my streamer where Volumio should handle the rendering.

I’ll get an optical drive - is the quality of this important?

IME - no.

I've ripped a couple of thousand CDs to flac using dbPoweramp; all good.

I have them on a spinny disc in the PC which is mirrored to a NAS. It makes sense to have two copies as I don't want to have to do them all again.

At some point I'm going to change the NAS to SSD - mainly to get rid of the noise.

Cool, so best get 2 hard drives, keep one connected to the streamer, write to the computer one then copy it across the network?

Oh and does the read-speed matter? Is slower better?

As far as I'm aware, read speed doesn't matter. In my set up, the file is buffered in the laptop's ram in any case.

I guess ymmv depending on playback arrangements, but I haven't heard of HD read speed being a thing in terms of sound quality.

On another (previous) topic, the avantree usb Bluetooth transmitter that I'm trying to buy from Amazon seems to be permanently out of stock right now.

So I could get one of these instead:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07J58KY3X/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_uNhKEb24J0CN6

As far as I can see, that will plug into RCA output of pre amp, which will mean I can stream my turntable but will also mean that digital stuff is going through DAC twice. I guess in reality that probably doesn't matter much?

I guess in reality that probably doesn't matter much?

Using any radio in the path gets you thrown out of the audiophile thread, an additional ADC-DAC step just gets you thrown further out 🙂

Yeah, this is all about the least bad option.

The original plan of usb dongle transmitting aptx-HD from digital source was probably the least bad option. But I can't find one of those dongles which does aptx-HD at the moment.

Pretty evident when I opened up the p85 and got the board out.

On a google, this is a know failure point. The resistor in the sanken transistor goes.

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CD ROM read speed IS important! Not for quality but if you’re ripping a thousand CDs you don’t want to do it at 1x playback speed.

The constraint on ripping isn’t HD write speed but the speed at which you can pull the data off the CD. so get the fastest one you can :)

get the fastest one you can

Meh. 24× will rip a CD in 3 minutes, you won't have finished editing the ID3 tags on the previous one in that time.

My turntable has started to play up. Pitch stability is gone and it takes ages to get up to speed, where it used to be half a revolution. What a great time learn to how service an ancient idler drive tt. (Lenco L75). If it's anything like my bike mechanic skills it will take me a few years and quite a few broken parts to get to a barely acceptable level.

Nice when you don’t have to piss around fault finding.

Yes. Though it will be a bit of a work to fix that mess.
I will check everything else.

The upside is the A85 only has one capacitor gone. So should be working again tomorrow.