Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

“ The RME device is pretty sweet looking”
It is if you are ‘prepping’, like ham radio, army rations and tactical knives…

Have you looked at dCS? They might have something that tickles your fancy.

dCS

£12.5k for a DAC.

ROFL.

As always, your accountant will need to see the results of your blind A/B testing before authorising the release of funds for new audiophile woowoo.

You do have to be careful with AD running on USB. A dedicated computer running USB should be fine but any contention on the USB bus is not timed and can lead to dropouts. I was running an RME PCIe card for many years in a Mac Pro and it works seamlessly. When I switched to a Mac Studio and tried recording via USB I had some issues that seemed to be related to Bluetooth devices using the USB bus. I use the ethernet connection to a Motu 8D for that recording rig now which is 100% reliable.

RME kit is really decent. I went with Lavry AD/DA years ago and can't hear any difference between the source and recording so I'm not bothered about upgrading but they would be on my list. I have found it useful to have more than 2 i/0 channels though. I would probably look at Prism if I was buying now.

Less than 1/3 of a kitchen

True, it's all relative.

There are magic fairy dust cables that cost as much...

I just knew that ASR and Amir would rear their measurable head(s)!

Just to ruin your evening some links to the gnostic end of DAC..

https://www.abbasaudio.com/en/

and the hermetica..

http://www.lampizator.eu/Fikus/ARCHIVES.html

You can get away with a lot of things here, I move to my living room every few weeks when my nice upstairs neighbors feel young, but outside after 10 is probably difficult.

Have you looked at dCS?

Why stop there?

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I think I would like to combine the 2 plus some Stax
(I did audition a dCS/Stax combo in the spiritland headphone bar which was pretty good. )

@Mr_Smyth That Stax gear is nice looking- Naim vibes.

Do you mean this bunch?
https://wooaudio.com/sources

400 dorrah for a DAC cable, you say?
Fry.jpg

They're called woo and call their cable PHANTOM.

It's hard to think this isn't a story from the onion that's got out of hand.

Those speaker grilles now that they're fully in their place.

The amp is now mostly out of sight on the left hand shelves, at least it's not been given prominence in any way and is easy to ignore.

The grilles look different depending on the light, time of day, angle of light from the window, intensity. Sometimes the cones are extremely visible and the brass mesh is invisible, sometimes the brass mesh is shining so bright that it's hard to imagine there's a large speaker cone behind it. The walnut looks lush always.

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Those grilles look amazing - like a premium factory option

What are the feet you've got the stands on? I need something like that for my floorstanders...

My wife curated that RA show…

looks familiar, too:

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here's my tannoy set up at the moment:

I am currently having some new crossovers made. the new cabs are 120L and the difference is incredible. the rest hasn't changed much. I now have an arcam DAC which is also great (D33).

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Nice bookshelf - feel civic dutybound to flag that socket protectors are widely considered to be more dangerous than not using them as UK sockets already have better protection in them that the protectors neutralise... be warned!

can you help me out here?

Ah, was thinking that first living room picture was of your room and spotted the socket protectors pack on the shelf - if not, then ignore me!

ah fuck - good eyes!

that was our flat in brockley and that photo was taken with a new child - i think my wife bought every possible safety implement, as when was scared of the hifi killing everyone. i don't think they ever go used.

the tube technology valve amp scared the shit out of her, hence the bryston and the EWA being trialed in the pic

My wife curated that RA show…

Ah, my partner would probably love hanging out and chatting... maybe we do a listening to music day so they can natter.

What are the feet you've got the stands on? I need something like that for my floorstanders...

Two things:

1. Stands https://www.atacama-audio.co.uk/p/audition-300-speaker-stands-pair
   
2. Isolation feet https://isoacoustics.com/home-audio-isolation-products/gaia-series/gaia-iii/
   
   

The stands are just to get them to the right height, but they're pretty IMHO.

The feet I added to prevent damage to the hardware floor, and yes to help isolate the speakers from vibrations in the floor but far more to limit the amount of bass travelling from the speakers through the floor (i.e. don't offend the downstairs neighbours by avoiding turning the floor into a large bass drum where possible).