Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

I'm sure the classical genre has some amazing recordings

So does country, but it doesn't sell like Lil Nas X. Of course, we're in danger in this thread of thinking that sitting in a quiet room concentrating on well reproduced music is normal, whereas what is actually normal is drowning out urban noise with shitty in-ear headphones. Mainstream production is geared to making music sound exciting in that environment, without regard to how tiring it might sound in the audiophile setting.

It's funny that the audiophile of the sixties coming home after work, slipping on a cardigan, and playing the decca recordings of kathleen ferrier on his garrard turntable, quad amp and ESLs, enjoyed the finest reproduction.

Maybe true for a lot of music. I have no idea how much because I avoid it. I think there's a strong thread of good albums about that are trying to be popular but turn out to be great anyway. They can also sound great on big systems. Hard to say if they are mainstream though.

How mainstream are artists like Cleo Sol, Lianne La Havas, SZA, James Blake, Robert Glasper Experiment, Tenderlonius. These are just a few I think have released great albums but they just don't feel 'recorded' like they used to. Compared to Tony Allen - The Source where it's all analog and proper attention to detail. Even Rhianna, Solange etc. have some good albums in their catalog.

So I kind of killing my own argument. There are still some good albums being made, just that they are being made rather than just recorded.

On this subject the new Kylie album is being toted as having been engineered by her during the lockdown. When you look at the credits there must be 100 musicians involved in it.

Yes, he's only losing out to a rare few of us modern types. :)

I laugh at myself padding round in my 'listening room' cleaning and cataloging. If only I didn't enjoy it so much.

What do they need - set up

Or repair?

Repair. Tracking is all out.

This is me now, for the time being.

It’s nice to have a good of vinyl set up again. The Rothwell pre and the Radford give nothing away to EWAs, they are much better at lower volumes (which suits me at the moment).

The only thing that I could have a play with is the digital, but I am not too bothered and now need to focus on getting the car done.

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I'm thinking about grabbing a pair of Dali Menuet SE this week, spoke to someone at Richer Sounds who said it'd be fine to return them if I didn't get on with them, from reviews they seem to be pretty much exactly what I'm after for the my 'hobby room'.

Don't suppose anyone has heard the preceeding iteration?

I'd be interested to hear how you find them if you do get them. They're on my list for when I ever sort out my setup.

Digital systems are so time consuming. That is a very well thought out system. Should I be saving still for the inevitable time you decide to sell the SP....

It looks really good.

You should just start spending big on vinyl.

It seems that a lot of the time people are lacking awareness of the headroom that traditional analog devices have. In comparison most people are mixing to 0db in daws but digital mixers will still have headroom of something like -18db. I've found that digital sources fed into an amp that push to around 0db a lot of the time can end up distorting a bit.

And tape used to largely have meters that gave you appropriate headroom indications. I'm not sure how I used to cope with volume levelling on my tapes.

Not really sure what the point is. Tape is allowed to be more difficult to gain stage than digital if you want. I'm talking about people playing mastered music which has been electronically adjusted to 0db so that when you play that you run the risk of pushing the amp into the edge of its performance.

If you do the same thing with tape you get saturation and compression naturally. Of course it's distortion in the recording process at that point.

It's my belief that digital systems are often overloading the inputs of amps because they get mastered to 0db or thereabouts very often in order to compete for attention.

Probably should have lead with 'digitally adjusted' by making the gain adjustment in a daw or as you say using compression and limiting in a mastering environment.

Why I went with 'electronically adjusted' is this part of the process can take place in the analog domain although obviously compressing to 0db in the analog domain without headroom would be tricky.

Think I've stumbled across a good setup for my home office... Been tinkering for a while old bits and pieces but finally bought a new USB DAC to replace an old fiio DAC. Running tidal premium into a smsl m100 II DAC, old nad c320bee and krix kdx standmounts. The sound is excellent. The new DAC has brought back a little sparkle and detail into the sound and noticeable tightness and punch.

It's now got me craving more openess and less "boxiness" to the sound. I would probably swap out the speakers but in a near field setting, with confined space I don't think there's a small speaker that would give me this... Is there?

Unfortunately not. My office is 1.9 meters wide and I have to cram myself right at the end so the speakers only have 20cm clear space behind and maybe 10cm to the side walls. Between them is my MacBook and a 28" monitor so can't move them closer.

I do bang on about this a lot here. Active near field monitors with front firing ports work really well in a home office environment.

new USB DAC......a smsl m100 II DAC

Im a fan of SMSLs

Nice that it's work so well

The Technics is staying. I have an Audio Note IQ3 and an arkless turbo phono stage (an EE on a hifi forum modifies cambridge audio 540p phono stages) and it is the best i have had. not sure where i'd go from here, without spending big on mc carts and suts.

I only listen to spotify through a chromecast, so the digistal side of things would just be swapping dacs about. I have a load of music on a hard drive, but cannot be fucked with the sorting.

I know this has probably been shared here before, but what are your speakers? Your room looks lovely btw!

Tannoy Cheviots.

Thanks! it is an awesome place to listen to music. especially in the early afternoon at this time of year...

Perfectly suited to Vaughan Williams in the early afternoon.. Full on English pastoral..

That is quite the room/view/set-up. Congrats man!

It more likely to be vaughn halen here, if i am honest...

Depends on the space but the smallest setup I've found that is relatively accurate is a pair of PMC TwoTwo.5 on PMC wall brackets with a PMC Sub 1 under the desk. I went through years of trialling different solutions to reach that conclusion. It is still much bigger than most desktop setups.

cheers dude - you need to come for a visit when the bataidz fucks off. it's a bit of a trek from you, though!

Everywhere's a trek from here dude. Cheers! Would love to!

I lol'd at the vaughn williams suggestion too.