Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

In case anyone is interested, it turns out that the audio jack "standard" had been improved so wouldn't have been able to combine my old ear buds/cables with a new pair.

Ended up going for a pair of KZ ZSN Pro which sound pretty good for sub £25

I know this question and situation has probably Been asked 100 times but any info and input would be great ful.

Iv attached a picture of the floor plan the living room in the house we are moving into and need some tips on set up and location ect.

My partner does not want the TV over the fire place as it has a log burner installed and is worried about the heat. For this reason the TV has to go in the corner as in the attached image.

I have a 50in TV that will be connected too a onkyo receiver rubbing 5.1. Dali speakers. I have two floor standing speakers and two smaller one ls that are wall mountable. I am in the market for smaller speakers to help the situation as I feel the floor standing ones will not fit.

Any input will massively help as I'm used to my current set up in a simple square room.

Room dimensions Lounge (4.11m Max x 3.81m Max (13' 6" Max x 12' 6" Max))

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I had a try at something similar (after my old place was fairly square with TV in the middle) and gave up and bought a soundbar.

Sound was off unless you had the speakers in obtrusive places.

Worst case the tv can go in front of the window and radiator but not ideal it being in front of a radiator ect. And might leave a dead space in the corner.

I took an old Luxman amp to D R Osbourne (John) for repair last month. I said i'd follow up on here as he was really helpful.

For background- i was given the amp - but not in working order. It was old and dusty with no signal coming out at all.

After chatting to john on the phone he reckoned the amp was reparable and discussed the potential cost to repair vs the value of it once fixed.

Dropped it off with him, gave a £10 deposit for an assessment and got a call the next day explaining what was wrong with it and the cost and timeframe for fixing it.

Work was done in a week, full receipt and hifi set up advice given for free. @mashton he rolled his eyes at the cables you gave me years ago!

Highly recommend 11/twelvty

Phone number: 020 8697 2070

He's in Hither Green in a shop packed with jukeboxes, valve radios and 60's televisions if you're into that sort of thing.

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Have cycled past many times (including this morning, actually), great to know that it's as good as it looked

When I had my Quad IIs overhauled, the tech asked me if I wanted to use the 8ohm taps or the 15ohm. I went for 8 ohm as that matched my speakers at the time. I’m now using 15 ohm speakers - would it be worth getting the transformers rewired to the 15 ohm outputs? I am having to turn them up close to max to get 70db SPL at the listening position. The speakers are small and inefficient and the amps are only 15w, mind. Would this adjustment have any effect on this?

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tbh that doesn't seem like a great match - what are the speakers?

i've always favoured plenty of headroom with current delivery, i was influenced Antony Michaelson on this, despite never having owned one of his amps.

The LS3/5a replicas, which previously were 11ohm but I’ve now had 15ohm crossovers and drivers fitted.

I usually drive them with my other amp which is 60w and they’re fine. They’re fine on the Quads tbh, particularly with digital because the signal is stronger but from my turntable I just feel like I’m turning them up a bit high. I don’t hear any distortion, in fact they sound amazing but I just don’t really like having the volume at 3 o’clock for some reason.

Ideally you should get the taps swapped, yes. It’s not just for the volume, valves actually don’t like driving an impedance which is too high. 15R instead of 8R probably won’t bother it too much, but if you go too much higher you’ll damage the output valves or the transformer (I forget why). You should never run a valve amp with the speakers disconnected.

That’s great stuff, thanks. I’ll get them sorted out.

If anyone's looking for any Cambridge audio stuff their eBay store has a few decent bargains just now - additional 15% off too, just took a punt on a refurb CXA61 for £330-ish

That's a cracking deal. Love mine. Totally killed my desire to buy anything more expensive and I finally stopped browsing hifi equipment every day.

Sounds good - don't think i've heard anything other than glowing reviews of them, I had a look through their sold items & the refurbs were £500 not too long ago.

The extra 15% sealed it - also went for the cd transport for just over £200 - in for a penny & all that, with 4 months intrest free with paypal credit it'd be rude not to!

And now I can stop looking for a magic £50 Chinese dac that will change my life

They were like $1200 in the U.S. and I was able to get mine for $540 or something like that, so I know exactly where you're coming from. I use the built in DAC when I am watching TV/film, but I do still use my Topping E30 when having a listening session. I can't really articulate why in all honesty, but I prefer the sound of it.

I'd been looking at DACs around the £100 ish mark to simplify adding a couple of digital sources to the current amp, but this should give a good upgrade on the current setup without adding extra boxes & cables. Was on the lookout for a cd player too so if they turn up in the condition the feedback suggest it should see me right for years.

Still have my old A500 & CD6 in the kitchen with a little pair of Q Acoustic 3010s, so following the theme again

That Luxman amp is lovely - what else looks similar at a considerably lower price?

Couldn’t fit an alps pot into my tiny amp case without some editing so I used a wee plastic tub instead, for now.

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Early 90s Luxman integrated amps do come up around £200-£300 on eBay sometimes. I think they all work in class A for the first few watts so they should have a bit of magic about them.

They arrived - absolutely mint condition, all accessories still factory sealed, only given them a quick blast but really impressed, absolute pleasure to listen to. Just deleted all my saved hifi related searches from eBay, hopefully it'll still be going in 20 years like the old setup.

The unit I'm going to put them on has a small lip (~3cm) at the back which means I need a little platform to raise the base height a touch to allow cable access, anyone any clever ideas for this - chopping board / birch ply / granite worktop protector + some sorbothane feet?

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I used a few squash balls cut in half, won't make 3cm though.

Yeah I forgot about the squash balls, don't play anymore so would need be to buy some anyway - seen a granite worktop saver for about £20 which would give me a couple of cm, might actually look half decent into the bargain.

Then there's always eBay's finest £10 isolation feet for the posh option 🤑

Thanks!

I got a CXA81 ‘reconditioned’ from the CA eBay store just under a year ago. I’ve Had no problems whatsoever with it. Great Amp. I still don’t understand how it manages to make audio streamed over the built in Bluetooth sound so good. Also realised the other day that i can connect it to my apple TV 4k via bluetooth for audio when watching movies.

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