Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Yeah I mentioned them...

@lynx

i was getting the name right, you refered to them as bobby vee.

my linn system

linn basik
nad 3240 PE amp
denon tu 260l tuner
marantz cd 6004 cd player
marantz sd - 50 cassette deck
all going through tannoy mercury v4 speakers

Once again, where are the rest of your records?

hmmm here

in smaller format with my quad 303 33 and fm3
quad 12l speakers and nad 541i cd player

one more full row of cd's below
stopped doing records late 90's for ease of listening and not having to flip records every 10 mins and due to limited supply ... regretting it a bit now
like many, thinking about getting back into them again

please don't say... and where are the rest of your cd's
or i'll be very jealous of what you've got at home

Ah, think I was thinking of the singer...

Mount your deck properly, it will improve the sound.

HDMI carries audio too, and once it's got to the telly most TVs will have audio out jacks... wire it back into your amp.

Is this a contest? Have ended up with quite a few peoples records as they went to cd and I have a second hand record problem that can't go past a record shop without looking at the records. Even school fetes and jumble sales get a quick record check.

@lynx

It's not a contest. It is a problem!

I'm guessing I only have three times what @dicki has (in London), I wanted to slim the collection down to one two by two expedit, I did for a year or so, but I now have another shelfs worth on the floor.... The rest are in storage (Three times that at my Parents house).

I think in the past week I picked up something like 14 Lps though, which is the most in a week in a long long time.

The contest comment was a pisstake, but yes it is a problem.

Even have ultrasonic cleaner that I use for records, carbs, other bits and bobs.

First yes to the 303 set up a few posts up, all you need are the big ass tonnoys and you've the full 70's set up..

Secondly rather than spending on upgrading your speakers/ amps just improve acoustics
Avoid putting speakers in corners or near right angled surfaces.

To absorb unwanted bass boost and to tighten up the lower mids build wooden boxes just big enough to house a sand bag and place each speaker on one. The dense but movable sand is great cheap sound absorber.

When working out speaker placement test your set up with a range of songs to get an idea of how wide range of frequencies react and always try and keep the speakers at least 3 ft from a back way ..

Sorry if all of this has all been mentioned before..

lots of nice linn turntables on here make sure you play this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTMyr9x6ZPU

20kg concrete blocks with blu tac to hold the speakers in place works well ?

I'm guessing I only have three times what @dicki has (in London), I wanted to slim the collection down to one two by two expedit, I did for a year or so, but I now have another shelfs worth on the floor.... The rest are in storage (Three times that at my Parents house).

I think in the past week I picked up something like 14 Lps though, which is the most in a week in a long long time.

1st dibs when you upgrade to MP3's ... unless you are a prog rock fan !

dibs if you are a prog rock fan

I imagine blue tac would actually be quite good, it has a certain viscosity so would be a really good absorber.. sand is better than concrete both in isolating the sound source ( there isnt any thing 100 solid for sound waves to pass through) and the small particles deflect the waves as they move through the sand.

'70s undergraduate speaker stands? Probably with the occasional scaffolding plank to brace across the speaker pair, damped by loading it with books?

Concrete has the advantage of high inertia and rigidity - surely a wooden box containing the sand would reverberate, necessitating an acoustically 'dead' filler to give it mass and an element of panel damping?

If the blu tac (or equivalent viscoelastic body) is effective as a vibration isolator, then the acoustic qualities of the stand will probably be less important than it's structural stiffness

Having said that, it would be difficult to make concrete look attractive...

surely you jest?

3 Attachments

" it would be difficult to make concrete look attractive..."
... when knocking up some home made speaker stands from concrete blocks at minimal cost.

Admittedly spending whole shifts down a coal mine in the' 80s feeding a pump packing system with up to 5 tons of quick setting concrete (as an alternative to traditional stone packs) has left me with an aversion to the stuff even now.

That last one looks more like soapstone.

Ridigity isn't something you really look for when it comes to the properties of your speaker stands or the construction of your acoustic environment.
I used to build studios professionally and although I'm sure there are a range of methods employed I can talk through the approach we used to take and this will probably be relevant to most home user and professional studios.

Firstly what is the ideal acoustic environment, - an empty field with no walls and no wind ( and of course all the kit you could desire ) the reason for this is that the sound would escape and not return to you.

Most of us however listen to our music in rooms. This increases the amount of reverberation so it is up to us to taylor what reverberation we are happy with and what we are not.
If you are mixing music, the answer is you want all frequencies dulled equally - and this will be achieved both through having speakers with a flat frequency response and a room with a flat acoustic.
For home users it's not such a problem if your speakers have a boost around 3k as this generally sounds pleasing to the ear but you still want the bass to sound tight and the high frequencies to be precise.
When approaching both the highs and the lows there are two techniques, absorption and defraction. For the highs both work well as the frequency lengths are short. Try to break up the right angles in your room as this will discourage comb filtering - the process where a sound wave bounces back on its self and faulsely gives the impression of doubling up in volume, book cases are good at this..
For absorbing high frequencies, pillows, a few shitty art prints, anything to break up surfaces and add create permeable ardor bing surfaces with encourage the sound waves to slow down and bounce in random directions, thus reducing the chance of comb filtering.

When it comes the bass frequencies you're talking of waves up to an over 5 meters in length so rather that try and block them you have to focus on just moving them slightly. That's why sand or surfaces that aren't rigid work so well. When the longer and more powerful sound waves hot them they absorb the impact ever so slightly, move a little bit, and breakup the sound wave in the process..
Finally back to the blue tack we used to use some thing calked green glue which wasn't too dissimilar to add a semi solid rubbery layer for absorption between extra dense plaster board layers in studio walls so on my head that not too different to blue tack.