Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Several SMPS for the little boxes, but the sub is well away from these. It’s a ground loop thing, just wondering if It’s ok for the jacket of the RCA to be grounded to the earth. It solves the problem and stops the hum, just don’t want to damage anything.

Turned for the max: no. It’s only really noticeable when nothing is playing, all volume controls at “normal”.

I've read that the design of component earthing varies a lot between manufacturers, clearly the sub needs a ground which it should be getting from the RCA, the fact that grounding the rca stops the hum suggests to me that the hum is on the ground of the component or the cable is broken, have you tested the cables have ground continuity.

I'm waffling because I don't have a clue what might be causing it! :)

Short answer should have been, I don't see it as dangerous, but the Sub has no earth for a reason, if that reason is electrical safety then you might have some outlying possibilities becoming a little more dangerous.

I'm struggling to see how making an earth connection could increase risk.

Generally, products which are double insulated don't require an earth; in my understanding this is largely a cost saving measure.

I’m covering myself. I’ve said I don’t see it as dangerous. I don’t know the equipment or all the risks though.

https://twitter.com/RobOnABike/status/1264165104871976961

@RobOnABike: Does anybody fix (and use) nice old amps anymore. These all just have scratchy volume pots, an easy fix if you're good at sourcing the right parts.
Really don't want to landfill them unnecessarily if anyone wants them. Pls RT if that's the kind of company you keep.
#Oxford https://t.co/KTmZEeqb92

I’m covering myself.

yes, fair point.

For a laugh we could go over to an electricians forum and ask for the best way to connect an RCA case to the mains earth. Probably result in a 1000 page thread. :)

Hifi forums are no better tbh - seems there are lots of answers.

I installed RoPiee on a pi, and have connected it up.
Pretty sure i cant tell the difference (all ALAC library) between it and AirPlay,its also much more inconvenient (AirPlay allows me to start and stop, and volume control from the roon app and the hegel remote, now i have to start and stop from the roon app, not remote, and volume from remote, not app)

That's my understanding of the problem. You are in the best position to track it down and fix it.

Now if you were You Tube's Mr. Carlson you would have some idea of how to properly fix the problem.

Maybe you could change a setting in Roon to allow you to change the volume. There are some options for this.

you can DSP volume control, but feel whatever benefit i gain from not using airplay, would be lost by having to put all music through -Xdb volume dsp instead of controlling volume on the amp itself

Maybe try Volumio? My rpi shows up as an AirPlay 2 device.

my hegel supports airplay directly which was totally fine, but using ropieee over USB doesnt appear to support volume control

Can you change it in the settings? I get a hardware / software volume control toggle switch.

Out of interest what do you need to do over USB that you can’t do over airplay? Is it to connect a hard drive?

the only reason i tried ropieee instead of carrying on with airplay is there is a supposed quality limit over airplay compared to ‘roon ready’ ropieee

Ah ok. I’m with you, I can see why you might hesitate to get into that on here. At least Airplay is lossless. I’ve found that sacrificing some usability for a marginal sq benefit isn’t worthwhile.

I need speaker stands for my Kef R100s

I really like open frame designs, for example, but I have a carpet on floorboards.

Is that sensible or should I get heavier stands with flat feet?

Use carpet piercing spikes to ground the stands to the boards. They do less harm to the appearance of the carpet than feet do.

Is coupling to the wooden floorboards not much of an issue then?

It's not as good as concrete floors, but it's better than standing on the carpet.

I'm using airplay for a whole house Roon solution and I've yet to be worried by quality but that's not for 'critical' listening. I'm starting to lose track of whether 44/16 is really that limited, red book well mastered sounds just fine. I use a Marantz SACD which sounds great but even the red book stuff sounds good on it.

In our house Roon solved the sync problem that airplay 1 had but it was the metadata that got me hooked. It's been great for discovering new music.

I use dsp and volume levelling, switching between Roon output and HQplayer which sounds fantastic but has an 8 second delay. The small difference it makes is only noticeable to me on some pretty high end systems. I would choose the convenience of volume control and volume levelling over the minimal gain you might get without it.