Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Is it the other one I posted in? Otherwise this isn't the most helpful post I've come across!

I fucking cracked. I kept my Spotify membership. Carplay voice commands are just too important to me. You also can't fast forward in Tidal in Carplay so that also was annoying.

@JB Currently also have both - I like my podcast library on Spotify.

A friend of mine that lives in Sweden just posted this on FB ...

Time to boycott Spotify (if you haven’t already).
Quick Google translate for my non Scandiwegian friends.
“In recent days, we have seen large companies such as Volvo, Systembolaget and the European Radio and Television Union EBU put their foot down regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It has been about boycotts of products, participation in ESC and more. The sports world has also been clear in its message when they deprived Russia of the opportunity to participate in various sports. At the same time, more and more countries have joined in support of Ukraine and tightened their sanctions against Putin's Russia.

However, it has been quiet from Spotify. Something that the Swedish Musicians' Association is now reacting to. A longer statement calls on the streaming giant to join the Western world's sanctions.

“A company that, on the other hand, does not seem to want to take a stand is Swedish Spotify, which as recently as February opened a new office in Moscow. Now the company has been in trouble because during the Russian invasion of Ukraine they are trying to recruit a new head of Russian-language podcasts. Several media outlets have tried to get in touch with Spotify, but the company did not want to comment on the incident”.”

Done... subscription cancelled.

Considered it after the Rogan thing, but this... this is unbelievable and the convenience of music is a very low concern in life compared to the loss of life in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion.

Sounds like they have at least partially responded.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/spotify-closes-russian-offices-indefinitely-084450107.html

My Dad's 70s AKAI AA1030 liberated from my brother's loft, and put to good use. Still sounds good, and loudness buttons are great. Seems fitting I play one of his records through it.

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nice :)

Your dad was Dave Brubeck?

No, he was Paul Desmond.

Someone asked if pi streamers are good.
Yes, my pi with allo boss DAC running volumio sounds nice and worked great, especially for the price.
Until I decided to update volumio and that didn't work.
Now I am on my second SD card and at the end of my patience/computer fumbling competence, and the thing is not booting up.

Yeah they can be annoying, I have two and have been frustrated with them myself!

You need an SD card writer and an app like Etchdroid then if it goes wrong, just start again...

My experience with rPi and Volumio was that about 1 in 5 times there would be an issue that would take half an hour of frustration to resolve and it would entirely spoil the mood. Even when it worked correctly there would be weird static issues and tracks skipping at random. I also found the interface a bit crappy. I now go straight from an iPad into a dac by usb cable and have no reliability issues at all, after getting annoyed with both chromecast and Volumio I’ve given up with wireless streaming altogether. Listening to music without needing to be near a phone and having to get up to change albums improves focus for me too.

Wow... as in the guy who wrote Take Five???

I've got 4 rPi's 2 just screens, 2 endpoints for Roon. All running Roipeee and the whole thing has been pretty dreamy.

You mean the SD slot in my mbp might not be enough? Worked the last time.

Will try to make the thing run with whatever raspbian is called now on the SD card, and then see.
Which might end with an audiolab a6000 play.

I couldn't get the latest version of volumio to work - would boot the first time - but would never reboot. Still just using the previous version and it seems fine. Use it for tidal connect mainly. Only skipping I get is the first second of a first selected track. Rest of the playback / subsequent tracks seem perfect. I wonder now if a shit card reader is my problem...am using a slightly hooky approach of an old 3G dongle which can also read/write micro SD. Could that be a cause?

Spotify boycott is definitely on.

https://copyriot.se/2022/03/05/spotify-made-a-cowardly-choice-to-submit-to-the-kremlin-rather-than-to-support-russian-dissenters/

I've imported all my playlists from spotify into tidal. I'd like to be able to select them all and then dump them into a folder. is this possible ?

What tool did you use to convert your Playlists?

one of the tools listed here - can't remember which, did it a while back
https://tidal.com/import-playlist

Does anyone know why a system would get quieter?
I bought a Denon M38DAB about 12 years ago and it’s given us great service all that time (apart from the rubbish remote).
But of late we’ve had to ramp up the volume much more to hear it
I know it’s pretty old, but is this reduction of output normal?

Been building a Mullard ‘two-valve’ preamp in my lunchtimes (build thread with almost no replies on Retro Rides if you’re interested). I’ve modified the circuit slightly so that the inputs have slightly different levels of amplification and the overall signal output has a slight gain to suit the big input wanted by both of my amps. Got it up and running and it sounds fabulous with my huge speakers. It’s got enormous bollocks because I didn’t put a rumble filter on it. Only thing I’m going to change now is the capacitors on the bass part on the tone control so it comes in and out at a lower frequency. Currently starts a gentle slope at about 1khz with full gain at about 30hz. So it’s got quite an old-fashioned sound, but I’m looking for it to start at maybe 500hz. I’ll start there by doubling the cap values and see what it sounds like.

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Nice, with electric prices the way they are will you be able to afford to run it?

Lol, a £2.99 tone control off eBay and some switches would probably do a similar job, such is the quality of even the cheapest modern components*. So this cost around a factor of 30 more to build and probably draws around 20W compared to maybe 0.5W?!

But it does sound so sweet. Can recommend an old Mullard if you have a big setup, especially paper cones on a valve or mosfet amp.