Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

In my new obsession with DACing all the things I was excited to find an optical out on my TV. Had to buy an active toslink junction as I now have 2 gadgets waning to use the 1 optical in on the DAC. Good news is it sounds AMAZING. The bad news is I hadn’t considered that I would no longer be able to control the volume with the tv remote and my amp doesn’t have one. Balls.

New amp time!

That’s awesome. Can you veneer?

I reckon they sound great, but I've been using them almost exclusively for the last ten years. The imaging or soundstage or whatever is amazing, vocals especially.

I imagine two or three way speakers with a really good crossover are probably better overall. I guess they're kind of the fixed gear of speakers.

I know a guy with a vacuum press, but I don't dabble in veneering. The baffles are 30mm solid sycamore.

Long stick time.

“Fixed gear of speakers”
Very much this, there’s a sense of integration with full rangers despite their natural limitations.

That’s how I’d imagined it. No compromising the signal path with imperfectly calibrated crossovers which I guess is the only sort you’d get without professional measuring kit and electronics skills. Hugely rewarding I’m sure, I’d love to have a go but my woodworking skills stop at bashing bits of CLS together with 70mm screws.

Build some open baffle speakers!

brakeless fixed gear

Whaaa? I can cut a hole in a piece of worktop. I’m in.

Interesting unit...

https://youtu.be/RJo13FP4UpI

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What DAC should I get for mobile and laptop listening?

What’s the budget? You’ll find my setup a page or 2 back and some slightly unedifying debate about a Bluetooth system if you don’t want the gadget tethered to your phone, particularly good if you’re on an android device that supports aptX.

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So much for being a home only system ey? Just teasing. FWIW, even on an iPhone with AAC it sounds muy bueno. Actually much better than several DACs I've had that use USB only.

There's a shed load of info online -but there's many considerations. Budget, wireless/not wireless, what kind of machine will be driving it and so on. Give us what you're using and we can make suggestions.

A good starting point for a proper desktop DAC is the Schiit Modi -but if you're gonna be using it out and about, one of FiiO or Dragonfly's USB options are good. Chord also make the Mojo which is nice, but a bit bulky nowadays, expensive, has a short-ish battery life and gets very hot. BUT it does sound very nice.

Yeah it sounds so much better I don’t want to be without it so I’ve been using it in the car which predates built-in Bluetooth. In that case I could have a gadget like yours permanently hooked up to power so it makes sense, particularly as I only stream standard compressed format as 4G struggles to keep up with hi-res on the move.

In home system news I moved the bigger speakers into the living room and they’ve been given approval. So I went from them being too big for the kitchen, swapping them for small ones which sounded crap, moving the setup to the lounge (much better, still not satisfying) to putting the big ones in and finally being really happy with it.

Who recommended the Topping DAC to me a couple of weeks ago? Looking at the D70, seems to be getting universal praise.

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Yeah - a lot of people use it in their cars tbf. It has a nice feature where it has a headphone-amp mode or a pre-amp mode for traditional hifi. I've been using it a lot recently as a pre-amp to my Onkyo amp recently and it sounds remarkable even just with Spotify.

Lovely joinery there!

Transplant complete. Wish I could have A/B tested. Moved one driver over first and did some frequency tests, panning from left to right. Defo more bottom end, and I think they have a much more linear / neutral frequency response. The little boxes were way louder from 130Hz to 200Hz. Whether that’ll translate to better sounding I don’t know.

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They look great. Is there an upgrade path with the drivers or are they matched to the cabinets?

With my joinery skills/tools I really should start building some speakers.

How are the new cabinets supported? That suspended floor looks pretty lively. IME putting a paving slab below can help isolate them and clarify the bass.

Please can I ask a really stupid question. When playing a CD on this setup, music comes out of both speakers perfectly. When playing a record, it only comes out of the left speaker and then when pressing mono on the amp, it only comes out the right speaker. Can't understand why it doesn't come out of both for both records and CDs. I have the red and black cables in the red and black slots for the left and right speaker respectively. Any ideas please?

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Better photo of the back

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