Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Didn’t see that coming.

tl:dr - position and slotting into my life / shelves is everything, apart from when they sound great, then all bets are off.

Active monitors to valves and Tannoys. Love it.

pipe and slippers next.
then thumbing old catalogues for Decca London cartridges while mum shuffles in with the tea tray at 4pm.

"have you taken your tablets, David?"

Finally made a purchase for my TV/occasionally music system for the living room. Ended up with some little monitor audio bronze 50's and a Denon dra-800h. The Denon managed to fulfill my wishlist of some streaming ability, HDMI arc and optical. Sounds quite good together. I preferred the sound when I paired the speakers with a Cambridge audio axr100 but the difference didn't outweigh the convenience built into the Denon. Will see what it sounds like in my room once setup.

I do know that I far preferred buying these components rather than actives like Kef lsx or the dynaudio xeo. They just didn't sound right.

The Copland amps are a long way from the woozy rose tinted valve amps, like the leben is. They are clean powerful amps. As a tannoy DC and former Copland owner, it's a great choice.

Also tannoy dover might be around the same size as the autograph minis?

Yeah I bought some. Can't remember what they were called.

They pulled up as I was walking out of my house and asked if I wanted to buy some speakers. They were extra one ordered by mistake. I could have them for £100. They gave me the number of their office to call to check the price. When I did the sales girl said they were >£300 (I think). I had to get a lift to the cash point.

When I played them they weren't as good as my Eltax, but they weren't the worst things on earth. I remember being surprised as they were more wpc and had more speaker cones. I ran them plus my eltax. On reflection 4 floor standing speakers was probably overkill for my uni bedrooms.

Thinking about it now maybe I misremembered how much I paid, as even if they were complete junk surely there's a limit as to how cheap you could make them? I mean there is still a fair bit of wood. Doesn't seem like much margin.

On CDs, during lockdown I sold a bunch of CD-Rs of instrumental versions (not released, just for TV production use) of ten year old Indy LPs, they were going for between £40-£70 each. Mad.

Have you see the work this place in .nl does?

https://quadrevisie.eu/home-quadrevisie.­html

Hey ... seriously considering having him completely do the works on these including new interfaces. Funny that he hates RCA then fits them to everything. Thanks so much for the tip.

Active monitors to valves and Tannoys. Love it.

To be fair I haven't yet auditioned a combination of modern speakers and integrated amp... maybe there's something there.

The Tannoy Autographs were great, but now having heard the PSI Audio and KEF LSX but fall flat on their face in a large space I'm wondering if it's just the size of driver and even that Autograph is going to fail in the space... i.e. am I kidding myself and need to be trying out the Eaton Legacy in the room (too boomy in the shop, but this room is larger) or going to another type of floorstander, or some smaller speakers + subwoofer (which I've not yet once enjoyed).

Yeah I bought some. Can't remember what they were called.

This happened at Jeepster Records back in 1997 in Clapham Junction. Hilariously after purchase and when they were in the office we listened and they were awful, just awful... so we went and got a refund! I can't recall how we found where they were located but we went and parked a car across their drive and demanded a refund and returned the speakers. Achieved it too... full cash refund :D

Can you get a home audition? Surely you're spending enough dough for that. How did the stuff that was for sale on here sound in your room?

Well, pretty stoked you’re investigating this. I don’t think anywhere else offers to extend the 303’s life with such a good eye for fit and finish. Canny the way they offer tiers of refurbs, too: I wonder how many people start small and end up at “sod it, I’ll go for the full rebuild + respray” : D

‘Acoustic Response’ rings a bell from the 80s

Love to see that one of the many white van speaker scams included a brand called ‘Vandross’ - aptronym holding well, there.

Yeah, tempting. I kind of need to figure out what's wrong with it. Sort of reminds me of those vintage car makeover shows you see on shit TV channels. I'm bound to ruin it.

Love to see that one of the many white van speaker scams included a brand called ‘Vandross’ - aptronym holding well, there.

Wonder if they ever did an episode where Luther investigated these?

I once got stopped on Soho Sq by one of those van guys, I had £60K in down my jeans at the time (boring story, nothing too shady) and I totally freaked out, thinking they'd seen me leaving the bank. They hadn't, it was just coincidence they asked a paranoid fucker at the best of times 'psssst come over here mate I wanna ask you somefing' with a massive wad of cash stuffed in his Yfronts.

I'm surprised the Eatons were boomy.

I don’t think it’s just gonna be driver size. It’s a combination of everything. The LSX, PSI and LS3/5 variants are all near field as you say. They aren’t supposed to shine in big rooms. My Totem’s (floorstanders) only have a 5.75” driver but still do a wonderful job in filling my living/dining room/kitchen area which is roughly 600sq ft.

Glad you found something that seems to work, but yeah, I’d also really want to home audition if I were you. I’ve home auditioned so much stuff from Crutchfield over here in the U.S., is there nobody back home that does that?

The perception of boomy bass is often the result of the listeners position too. I have very even bass at the listening position but the corners behind that chair are 6 to 8db louder in the lower register thanks to physics. This phenomenon can also occur if the listening position is at a point where the back wall reflection comes back to meet the initial wave.

Main thing is to avoid one note bass.

New to this thread, I’m looking for advise..

I had this family Pioneer Stereo set up sleeping since a while, and I would like to make it came back to life..

Set is composed by:

Ampli SA 606
Tuner TC 606
K7 CT 606
Turntable PL 516X

Came with original case and speaker, everything brushed steel, seems quite qualitative..

Cables are old and dusty, platine belt need to be replaced..

What should I care about to make it came back to life ? Does it worth it ?

Thanks for the input

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Anyone using Tidal? can’t decide if i should downgrade or not? i have a unitiqute 2 which is not able to process the masters but do have an audioquest dragonfly red and a pair of Beyer DT 880’s which can but i only use them sporadically.

thats a bottle of wine or one bag of artisan hipster speciality coffee a month.

I tried it on a trial but couldn't get on with how it all worked. I just found spotify much easier to use.

I was going all wanky on the vinyl set up at the time, so i only had a cheap dac. Maybe it would be beneficial with a posh one...

I quite like tidal but I'm pretty invested in the spotify ecosystem now (i.e. my streaming collection/playlists are all on there) plus spotify have announced they're launching hifi audio sometime so will probably just stick

spotify have announced they're launching hifi audio sometime....

ha.

those bellends have been announcing that since god was a boy

as far as I'm aware, it's been a much requested and unsubstantiated rumour for a large time but they have now officially announced it's coming. "in 2021", though time is running out rapidly on that horizon