[Closed] Audio buffs - what's your system?

Arcam Solo, Kef Q1s, Squeezebox Duet. It's simple and a bit of a compromise - the OH won't let me have a full system - but it's got great detail and doesn't take up too much space. The only thing it lacks is a digital line between the Duet and the Solo, as the Solo doesn't have a digital in 🙁

Audiolab 8000 per and power amps, pre Tag
Rotel 965BX limited Edition Discrete CD player
AVI red spot "Biggatron" speakers.

OP, nice Rega stuff, I miss my Brio amp and Planar 3

'puter > Airport > Benchmark DAC1 > ATC SCM50ASL

Linn Classik
Linn LK280 Power Amp
Linn Kan speakers

most of the music comes from an Apple TV via a better DAC, the name of which escapes me right now.

Rachel

Musical fidelity x-t100
Mac mini
Dac

My hi-fi system is cheap and ancient and I've yet to find the time to finish designing my prototype first hi-fi speaker models, been too busy with pro-audio R&D. Got some nice components for them so just need to do a whole lot of measurements and start getting some test enclosures and crossovers together.

Out of interest, what's the split of passive vs active speakers here?

Going to be setting up a mono-blocked system comprising two Air Tight power valve amps to a single Air Tight pre-amp. Then just got to have a think about what medium to play music through/via. Any ideas?

@pv - decent vinyl front end every day of the week.

@cgg - my father in law was apparently a wizard speaker maker but unfortunately he died before I ever met Mrs Danny. Apparently he was called upon by Jon Bon Jovi to re-wind his guitar amp speakers before a gig (he was very well known in the music scene as a)~ a guitarist and b) a speaker wizard).

Would loved to have learned some stuff from him...

Cheers

Danny B

See this wikepedia link for Dave Berry and the Cruisers. Roy Barber - Rhythm Guitar is the FIL.

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Berry_(musician) ]Wiki link[/url]

And Frank White who is mentioned as part of the second backing group played the main set at our wedding - anyone in the Sheffield area who sees his name - get down and see him. Proper 60's musician. Quite often plays the Riverside...

Cheers

Danny B

Naim nait 3 and cd 3. I've been messing about a bit with a computer lately linked by USB to a Cambrige audio Dac then to my amp. The computer has an external power supply of only about 90w. It has a ssd type harddrive and all that shit which is good for audio. Playing Flac my CD player pisses all over it.

I do some work for Sugden Audio so was thinking about something from them soon. If I can get some kind of discount. 😉

Technics 1200's, DJM600, Dynaudio BM5A's and BM9S, Mac Mini, Roland M1000.

Flac via the Mini is better overall than any of the insanely expensive passive Hi-Fi crap I've owned.

@JCL - you haven't owned expensive enough hi-fi in that case :)!

Cheers

Danny B

Clearaudio Champion Ltd AT33 > NVA Phono 2 > Exposure Integrated > MK1 Audio Physic Sparks, for digital computer into hifi via HK bluetooth.

Ooo NVA - I have NVA speaker cables - veery nice they are.

Cheers

Danny B

speckledbob - I *think* your CD3 uses delta-sigma conversion for the internal DAC (like my Linn) which probably means it sounds a lot better than the DAC in the Cambridge Audio DAC.

@JCL - you haven't owned expensive enough hi-fi in that case :)!

Karan amps, Brinkmann TT and Avalon Eidolon's?

It's all just tweaked frequency response. The room/speaker interaction is the largest factor. A pair of cheap actives in a treated room will destroy any Hi-Fi in the average living room. I used to work in the industry, it's a load of BS.

SME 10, SME IV, Lyra Helikon, EAR 834P, MF Nu-Vista M3, Linn Akurate DS, Vienna Acoustics Beethoven speakers for the main system. Naim Unitiqute and Guru speakers for bedroom.

Dansette.

Beggars Banquet was mixed to sound good on it. What more do you need? Has anything improved on it?

@JCL - what speakers are you running through in that case?

Cheers

Danny B

Cyrus DAD3. Cyrus CD3i (I think)

Monitor Audio PMC 703 floor standers

Banished to the shed for the last three years as wife detests them 😥

Synology DS212j, Rega DAC, Rega Brio R, Rega RP6/Exact & Rega RS3 speakers - sounds ace especially vinyl

Linn Basik turntable with pro-ject carbon arm and Linn adikt MM cartridge
Musical fidelity phono stage
Naim Uniti 2 integrated CD, Tuner, iRadio and 192/24 streamer
Mac mini serving >1 TB flac files
Castle Eden speakers

The Naim, whilst eye wateringly expensive is also amazingly good. It's totally transformed the system, and I now get deeper, tighter bass just with the castles than I used to with my old Arcam Alpha 3 and a Yamaha sub to help it out!

ATC SCM50ASL Active Towers
Benchmark HDR DAC/Pre
Squeezebox Touch
Music streamed as FLAC

Slight hijack but I'm looking for some decent good value wall speakers (white in colour) for the house. Was looking at Audica Micropoint as a mate has them...anyone got any other recommendations.

PC > Lavry DA11 > ATC SMC20 Active Towers.

Great to see some other ATC users;-)

Pretty low end, but never got round to upgrading as I don't listen to music as much as I used to...

NAD 3020i amp - will be 20yrs old next yr!
Luxman d322 CD player
TDL RTLII MK2 floorstanders

Since moving house though the speakers are on a wooden floor and it doesn't sound particularly balanced.
Tempted to swap the floorstanders for some Monitor Audio bx2s and get a NAS drive and streaming player at some point.

I had a 3020i and it was brilliant!

Actually, I think my brother still uses it with the Castle speakers I gave him

Rachel

25-year-old Musical Fidelity B200.
25-year-old Denon DCD-1500 CD player
Couple of titchy Mission speakers (not sure about vintage).

A naim 92/90 that's getting a bit old now. Rega 3 with sumiko blue point special, a pair of Leema Xero's which I love and a cheap beresford dac.
After I move I might recap the pre-power or get one of those uniti-Q all in ones from Naim. Don't know what to do about TT though it's going to need a new cart soon.

Edirol ua25ex interface > mackie mr5 monitors. Sounds great to me. May eventually get a sub for proper low end but dont need it.

Synology NAS > Sonos ZP90 > Avi ADM9RS Actives with Scanspeak tweeter upgrade

Bang & olufson upgrade on my A4. Sounds incredible when playing loud.

I probably shouldn't post this here because being shown superior kit for reasonable(-ish) money is the last thing audiophiles need, but Siegfried Linkwitz (of Linkwitz-Riley crossover and Linkwitz transform fame) has some really really really good DIY designs, and a website which is extremely educational (though it does get pretty deep). Well worth a read:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/

Squeezebox touch, Netgear Readynas streaming flac, Audiolab Mdac, Audiolab 8000a pre-TAG, B&W P4, REL Strata sub, Logic Tempo TT with Ortofon MC10 Super cartridge. A lot of it 20 odd years old but still sounding good. Might upgrade the TT but not sure yet.

Laptop

Audiolab MDAC

ATC SCM50ASL

ATC C4 sub

A lot of ATC love on this thread 😉

A lot of ATC love on this thread

And Frank White who is mentioned as part of the second backing group played the main set at our wedding - anyone in the Sheffield area who sees his name - get down and see him. Proper 60's musician. Quite often plays the Riverside...

I used to have guitar lessons with Frank when I was a student in Sheffield. Me and a few mates would go and watch him on a Friday night at a pub at Sheffield Lane Top. The lessons were properly bonkers, as I used to share with a mate who used to drink a bottle of wine on the way to the lesson (12:30 lunchtime) and Frank was a Jehovah's Witness who thought that we needed saving from the sins of the workd (we did). Didn't learn much, but it was interesting 😉

Primare A20.2 D20, Tannoy HPD315 dual concentrics in custom cabinets, and a Motorola Milestone 2 on FLAC duties.

Densen beat 200 pre-amp
Tag 100P power amp
Neat Motive SE2 loudspeakers

My CD player is a Musical Fidelity A3.5 which I hardly use now as I have ripped all my CDs to flac and stream them via a Sonos and Schiit Bifrost DAC.

I am very pleased with the way it sounds at the moment.

Erm. 😳

Ready NAS Duo
Naim NDS
Naim XPS2
Naim NAC252
Naim Supercap
Naim NAP300
Naim 300PS
Naim Ovator S600

Erm 😳

Naim HDX as a UPNP server
Naim Uniti

Erm 😳

A Sondek and a Planar 3 in the loft. With some amps. And a crossover. And another PSU. And some IBLs.

Jesus.

*Hides from wife*

Naim CDS2, XPS, 200/282, Intros. Regar Planar 2. About to all go into storage along with my CDs and LPs, and my hifi will be an iPod for the next few years. Gone temporarily, but not forgotten...

Michell Syncro Deck
Cambridge CD
Musical Fidelity Amp
Speakers are some Dannish make, name escapes me, begins with A, I think.

Anna, did you see my text about the USB drive?

Orbe SE/SME V/Koetsu Rosewood Sig
Linn LP12/Zeta/Koetsu Black

Wavestream Phono stage

Naim CDS3/552PS

Naim NAC252 with Supercap
Naim NAP300

B&W PM1 speakers

Also have a cheap Rotel amp/cd player with JPW speakers too.

@hadge - that's some nice cartridges you have - serious vinyl capabilities there...

Cheers

Danny B

Meridian 506.24
Rega Planar 3
Meridian 501.2
Meridian 556
Royd Doublets

Stuff that's not changed: azur 540R V1/CDP-NS900v/Refoamed AE 109s on paving slabs/QED 79 Strand [It's the odd number that makes it good, right?]/XLPS-V3/Planar 3/Ortofon 2M Red

I do have 2 new finds though:

[IMG] [/IMG]
BT 1KW mains conditioner "Property of British Telecom" £3

[IMG] [/IMG]
Mordaunt Short CS-1 £1

Excuse the mess, we're moving in a couple of weeks 🙂

Bad news is I broke a binding post on the AEs wedging tinned 79 Strand in there 🙁

NAIM.

CDX2
NAC202
NAP200
XPS
"HICAP"
NAPSC
Isoblue support rack
NAIM NACA5 (pointed in the right direction, natch)
Graham's Hydra
ProAc D15 speakers.

Message ends.

I'm trying to buy some Allison LS-120s - anyone heard them or any other Allison stuff?

Also - my dude downstairs has a Slim Devices Squeezebox, it sounds godly. You lot should really check them out.

PC Spotify over wifi to Airport Express via Airfoil
and then toslink into music fidelity v-dac
Audiolab 8000A
Mission 702e
Rega Planar 3 / rb300 / Linn K9
Arcam Alpha 1
Tannoy SFX sub

original wax cylinders, read by 17 green & blue lasers, this is picked up and transcoded into a raw digital format which is all processed on a 100% solid state air cooled (non forced) custom built audio processor which then sends the signal via oxygen free cryogenically treated directional nordorst valhalla cable to a series of six hand wired custom built mono block valve amplifiers (this is a two channel system, three amps per side, high, mid and low frequencies). The amplifiers as well as the all other electrical equipment is run directly from a bank of dedicated batteries (the system has a fail safe that means it can't be operated whilst the batteries are charging). The amplifiers feed the two three horn arrays which are all driven by electrostatically agitated mercury. I won't tell you how much it cost, but it sounds shit.

[b][u]Portable stuff[/b][/u]
Shure SE535 with ACS Custom molds
Etymotic ER4P
Grado PS500
iPod Classic
Fostex HP-P1 DAC/Amp

[b][u]Computer[/b][/u]
Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card
Monitor Audio BX5a near field monitors

Audio Analogue Paganini CD player -> Yamaha S500 Amp, MS 10i classic bookshelf speakers, fancy cabling.

Arcam AVR 400 amp
Arcam Alpha 7 CD
Tannoy Eyris 2's Floorstanders
BK XXLS 400 Sub

Fanless home made media PC
M2 Tech Hiface USB to S/PDIF
Chord DAC 64
Krell KAV-400xi amp
Anthony Gallo Ref 3 SA bass amp
Anthony Gallo Ref 3 speakers
Very understanding wife

@mrnutt - I assume your bike is just a halfords special then?

Naah, is a Lawson "Safety" bicycle.

Mac Mini -> HiFiMeDIY Sabre USB DAC -> Topping TP20 Mk2 -> eltax Liberty3+ speakers

Cheap, cheap, cheap but so sweet sounding for mp3/iplayer/internet radio sources, which is pretty much all I listen to these days.

bike? isn't this a coffee forum?

Sonus Faber speakers matching centre and surround
Related subwoofer
Onkyo receiver
Quad 303
Sony 7700ES CD/DVD
Radio via Freesat
ITunes streamed as FLAC

Used to run the speakers with a Music Fidelity A1 that now needs new caps.

Forget amplifiers, buy the nicest speakers you can afford. ATC for active.

JCL had a point earlier...

So out of interest, has anyone acoustically treated the room they have their system in? The room is part of the system

No, and I know that it's a problem. I have a 8*4m room as a listening room. The audio fires across one end, the speakers a meter out from the wall and my seat quite close to the opposite one [head 30cm from it]. This gets me hefty deep bass reinforcemt [Chase and Status has the whole room throbbing] - actually, it's great. The room has relatively thin, plastered walls, and a bare ceiling.

There is a problem though, as soon as the music is turned up beyond talking volume, it starts to get progressively more shrill.

When you clap loudly in that room, you can hear the echo for more than half a second, so what it needs is wall-hung rugs or such across most of the listening end. I would imagine that I would get much less room interaction then?

I had to change my speakers because of the room, PMC TB2's were just too much for quite a small space, I couldn't bring them out any further to drop the bass and they only sounded o.k. If I sat up and forward on the edge of the sofa. Sat back was like sitting in a fuzzy sub woofer.
Now got a tiny pair of Leema xeros that integrate much better with the room.

A lot of ATC love on this thread
Probably a lot of pfm'ers, too

MrNutt - Member

bike? isn't this a coffee forum?

Once upon a time, yes. But why would there need to be a coffee forum when I can get the same crema and flavour from some Tesco Smartprice instant as you can from a single provenance, small-batch roasted, burr-ground, Gaggia-made espresso.

That is sort of what you were getting at with your post about high-end hifi, was it now?

There is a problem though, as soon as the music is turned up beyond talking volume, it starts to get progressively more shrill.

When you clap loudly in that room, you can hear the echo for more than half a second, so what it needs is wall-hung rugs or such across most of the listening end. I would imagine that I would get much less room interaction then?

You could kill two birds with one stone and put up some absorption at the first reflection points (walls and ceiling), this would help reduce the overall reverberation too.

Aaah - yes, that's what I mean! I shall in the next flat I'm moving to in a couple of weeks 🙂

Room treatment makes a massive difference, it doesn't cost much, and it takes a bit of effort, but if you are serious about improving the quality of your system (and not just into throwing cash at buying boxes), it's a no brainer.

There's only so much you can do to deal with a room, especially at low frequencies where traps have to be huge. The dipole approach of the Orion (Linkwitz's design with open baffle midrange with front and rear firing tweeters and H-frame open baffle woofers) has much more consistent power response (sum of all on and off-axis output) from low to high, which improves the consistency of the direct and reflected sound.

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion-rev4.htm

If the reflected sound is delayed by a sufficient (but not too great) amount and is sufficiently similar to the direct sound then the brain ignores it.

Another approach pioneered by Earl Geddes uses big pro-sound woofers (12" in his least compromised current model) crossed over to huge oblate spheroid waveguides. These are placed firing diagonally in, with their tightly controlled dispersion causing hugely reduced wall reflections. As you can't control the dispersion at low frequencies (unless you use arrays the size of your house) the lows are then produced by multiple active subwoofers, each with independent control of level, cut-off and phase - by having multiple subs you can energise all the different room modes more evenly, resulting in smoother LF response. The main speakers are in sealed enclosures and run without highpass filtering so they too act as LF sources up in the 80Hz+ region.

http://www.gedlee.com/abbey.htm
http://www.gedlee.com/Subs.htm

Unfortunately the Gedlee designs don't fit terribly well in small western European homes, being better aesthetically suited to huge US or Scandinavian houses, even though small rooms are where the acoustic benefits are greatest! Hopefully we'll see mainstream manufacturers start to focus more on polar response because it matters far more than people realise.

CGG - I have a Q for you that I meant to ask last time we conversed.

Can I copy the [i]values [/i]of the components in my speaker's crossovers but with lower power handling components to create a x-over to put before my amp - and turn my speakers active [I have a 6 channel amp remember and speakers with 3 drivers apiece ]

I am also assuming that I can't actually use the x-overs from inside the speakers - there are two inductors that look like 200W toroidal transformers and I guess they won't work at such low signal levels correctly?

No you definitely can't! The response of a crossover depends upon the load it's driving - the impedance of a loudspeaker varies hugely in magnitude and phase, so a crossover designed based on an overly simplified resistive model won't work at all (so instead of a speaker varying between 4 and 50 ohms the simplified design assumes a constant 8 ohms).

With line level crossovers the load you'll be driving will be a few kohms, so all the values would be many orders of magnitude out. You can make passive line level crossovers but it's hard to go past first order with them. True active crossovers drive an essentially constant impedance load and use op-amp based circuits (or DSP).

I wouldn't do any crossover design without a measurement suite that can precisely measure magnitude and phase of impedance and SPL. And for the SPL measurements you'd need something that can do gated measurements for quasi-anechoic response or a big outdoor space and a still day.

especially at low frequencies where traps have to be huge

Traditionally yes, but there is something called the Compound Baffle Absorber which looks interesting for taming low frequencies in small spaces. I've seen that a few people have managed to DIY them on recording studio forums.

Also I made a tunable acoustic absorber out of a loudspeaker for my MSc project. The loudspeaker acts as a membrane and can be tuned by the addition of resistors and caps across the terminals.

Cheers.

Would [url= http://archive.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_30278/article.html ]this[/url] circuit be good enough it's OpAmp based, but doesn't have phase shift.

FLAC off a Readynas - Beresford Cayman DAC - SB Duet - Denon AVR1800 amp -> MA Bronze speakers

Have only ever owned one CD player, a Marantz CD52 which I brought in 1991. Tis still connected up

I used to chat with a guy on a car audio forum years ago and he was seriously into his acoustic treatments. I still have his spreadsheet dealing with room acoustics and mode points.

Never put anything in place but shout if anyone wants a copy.

Yes please.

sam{d0t}firth{?t}gmail{d0t}com

Worth a look if your not too sure.

http://audiophysic.com/aufstellung/index_e.html

gofasterstripes - Member

Yes please.

sam{d0t}firth{?t}gmail{d0t}com

It's at work so I'll ping you a copy tomorrow.

Would this circuit be good enough it's OpAmp based, but doesn't have phase shift.

It's the right kind of circuit but you don't know what else is going on in your speakers other than the low and highpass filtering of the crossovers - there might be notch filters, there's certainly some baffle-step compensation. And the slopes on that circuit are very steep, much steeper than the passive crossover in your speaker will be - not a bad thing but certainly different. I don't think I'd try to turn a passive speaker into an active speaker - you'd be better off designing a speaker from scratch (this will require a few years of learning!) or building a DIY active speaker kit (your best bet by far!)