Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

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  • I home demoed the ELACs. They were okay. Fucking ugly though. And very amp dependent IIRC. Might be better to look at some Kanto powered speakers in this price range. Look nice, compact, lots of connectivity…

  • If you had three tracks/songs to demo hifi equipment, upgrades etc. The aim being to find equipment you would want to live-with/invest in .. what you your go-to tracks be?

  • Hüsker Dü - Guns at my School
    Lori Anderson - Excellent Birds
    Mahalia Jackson - Standing Here Wondering

  • Sorry I missed your offer. You've just reminded me to try it again with some music - I've mainly been listening to the radio/podcasts.

  • North Sea Radio Orchestra - Kingstanding
    Tindersticks - Rented Rooms
    Mogwai - Christmas Steps

  • three tracks

    Michelle Shocked - 5AM In Amsterdam (Texas Campfire Tapes)
    Focus - Hocus Pocus (Moving Waves)
    Wagner vs. Wiener Philharmoniker feat George Solti - Tannhäuser overture

  • No probs, DM me if you want it.

  • I’m trying to get hold of a mini-separates CD deck to hook up to an old Bose iPod dock via aux to play CDs in my living room. Going by eBay, there seems to be a few brands to look at - Denon, Teac, Technics and Yamaha. Popped into a local Cash Convertors to try my luck. Anywhere else online I could try?

  • I'm still falling over this if you can use it (maybe not mini enough?).
    https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16218361/

  • If @J0nathan isn't interested, I may be (if you would be happy to post and I covered the costs plus a bit more for your time).

  • That's what I generally use. I guess I could re-recognise and rename everything. Still probably end up with some issues with deluxe editions, etc.

  • Certainly @eskay all yours if it’s too big for @J0nathan

  • Go ahead @Chopsicle it’s all @eskay ‘s - thanks for the offer though! Do need a small one.

  • Three tracks? I’m looking for certain attributes:

    Impact / attack: Lust for life - Iggy Pop… if the first 20 seconds don’t have you dancing & grinning, and slightly scared, the system lacks Impact

    https://youtu.be/HuBU3pzy7is

    Vocal purity… And ‘weight’ of piano

    https://youtu.be/LLn3FT9BsRs

    Scale! Procession of the Sardar

    https://youtu.be/MueWVRMFodk

    Timing : for a bonus, to check the ‘timing’ of a system (or a room) … at about 2 minutes in - the music in this track starts and stops rapidly.. which sounds breathtaking on a system that can pull it off… leaving what feels like a vacuum hanging in the air for a moment. Lightweight cones and single driver speakers rule here

    https://youtu.be/cmpqYUaDT0c

    Have fun

    P.s. I’m using a pair of genelec monitors at the moment, and while nice, they basically fail at all of the above

  • Three tracks? I’m looking for certain attributes:

    Very similar check list to mine

  • If you had three tracks/songs to demo hifi equipment, upgrades etc. The aim being to find equipment you would want to live-with/invest in .. what you your go-to tracks be?

    The Charlatans, Page One on Between 10th and 11th

    It's over-produced and there's a lot of things going on. This track reveals compression artifacts well, and reveals any lack of sound stage. On a lot of systems the instruments bleed into each other and cannot be picked out. If I listen to this and I feel fatigued from the listening I won't buy the system. If I listen to this and it feels like an ascendance, that the music is wide spaced, crisp and I'm floating in the midst of it all and Tim Burgess sounds other-worldly... then this is a phenomenal system.

    It's not like I love this song... it's just a song that reveals systems and sounds very different from system to system.

    Radiohead, The National Anthem on Kid A

    It's a complex track with everything from a rumbling distorted bass line to strings, lyrics, crisp cymbals... but it's also really well produced. This shouldn't sound muddy or messy, it should sound quite spacious whilst also feeling quite tight and connected. It also should make you want to move, the groove within it shouldn't be rendered too clinical or sterile. I use this to test for the overall balance, sound space, bass muddiness, etc. This should sound good full stop... if it doesn't, the system isn't right for me.

    15 Step from In Rainbows is the better song, but this tests a system better.

    The third track though... ah, well now it depends. I'll either go to industrial rock (Nine Inch Nails - Wish), indie electronic (Chemical Brothers - Out of Control), indie rock (Dead Pony - 23, Never Me), vocals (Cat Power - Manhattan or Beth Orton - Stolen Car or Neko Case - Deep Red Bells) - or I'll venture into hip-hop (Wu-Tang or Beasties), jazz or classical, or even opera. I frequently will use a Belle and Sebastian track (something off of Fold Your Hands as that's the one I know most intimately and heard live, pre-production as well as masters, etc as well as having listened to the album thousands of times, and seen performed live tens or hundreds of times).

    I only use 2 tracks for accepting / rejecting things... after that it's fine tuning and I'll jump around like a madman.

  • I frequently will use a Belle and Sebastian track (something off of Fold Your Hands

    hisses in Bowlie

  • Do we have separate lists for our mono systems?

  • I get what you say about the vacuum between sound, I’ve heard it once at club volume on a very well set up funktion 1 system in a half full venue - the silence between notes was so crisp it felt loud.

  • Had a friend spinning at Brilliant Corners at the weekend on the Klipsch speakers, valve amps & Bozak mixer. First time I've seen moving coil carts on a DJ set-up. Sounded really good, surprised by how powerful it was.

  • This is currently making my lab at work a bit toasty. It's a Maplin Millennium 4-20 that I first built in 1996. Rebuilt it at some point with an uprated mains transformer and some improved internal cabling and a new set of EL34s, but it started playing up and has sat in the loft for the last 10 years. Been spending some lunchtimes checking it over and making some improvements like correctly isolating the mains transformer and making up some dummy loads. Got it ready to fire up this lunchtime and it's been sitting on the bench doing a couple of hours burn-in. Everything good so far. Now it's all working satisfactorily I'll have to have a think about what to do with the case.


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  • theres a bloke on retro rides ripping you off mate, pinching your photos and everything, go sort him out!

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Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Posted by Avatar for coppiThat @coppiThat

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