OK. Anyone care to talk about their HiFi?
Who’s been tinkering while trapped?
Have you been using any of your forced isolation time over the last few months to tinker with your HiFi gear between Zoom meetings and reruns on TV? If so, what have you done, what have you learned, what’s worked and what hasn’t worked?
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Hi, reinstalled and realligned my cartridge = worked cleaned the dust = worked swapped all the cables in the system = did not work fully , so i have learned not to upset some things cleaned all contacts = worked retightened speaker drivers bolts = worked tried to repair my R2R but spares have not arrived = did not work, learned not to order anything in situations like this |
Great, thanks for sharing! Here’s my list so far for my joint HT/HiFi system 1. took Xfinity X1 cable box out because wife took pandemic action to cut the cord - cable cord that is. Huge relief to get that noisy POS out, more detail and blacker background across the board for all other sources now, even with power conditioning Before. 2. Listening late one night got wild hair to swap unshielded Black Shadow silver plated copper/rhodium PC from my phono front end to my digital front end replacing home assembled shielded Furutech nano particle/rhodium cable. Wow, the Black Shadow was way better in every way. 3. Inspired, I some bulk silver plated copper DH Labs Red Wave bulk power cable on sale and swapped the Furutech F28 (R) plugs on it for my digital front end. Boom, lots more dynamic, much more “alive”. 4. Replaced Xfinity cable box with Amazon Fire TV Cube ($99). Adding Fire Cube added no appreciable noise system, so way quieter than Xfinity X1, better picture and sound too. But, Fire Cube was shutting down randomly while watching through my AVR. Trouble shooting with Amazon technician came up with possible problem that old Pipeline HDMI cable I was using might not up to snuff. Swapped in Audioquest Vodka HDMI (more than 3x cost of Fire Cube) I have and bang, considerably better picture and sound, and no random picture loss. Sticking with DH Labs brand for the time being, I got their HDMI Silver 2.0 and it is nearly as good as the AQ Vodka in every way. A Real bargain. 5. I have gone through a number of Toslink cables for my transport to my CD DAC and had (re) settled on Uniqueproductonline Glass Toslink Digital Optical cable as the best performer of the lot, but remembered the good people at The Cable Company telling me their favorite Toslink was the DH Labs Glass Master Toslink. Since I was on a DH Labs roll, I got it. I will say that it is at least as good as the Uniqueproductsonline glass cable, which costs all of $25... 6. I was so impressed with Black Shadow PC, I decided to try Mark Tunis’ Silver plated copper cable/connector Black Shadow RCA cable for my analogue front end to go with his PC. Turns out it is really great, in the same high quality - low price vein as my Nanotec 207 nanoparticle coated copper cable with rhodium connectors. 7. Newly appreciated resolution in my analog system was making records sound bright - so I fooled around with different turntable mats I had on hand, and landed on Tonar no static Mat II that had sounded very flat before, and not in a good way, but now sounding balanced and near perfect. Finally, plus one (or minus one) for offshore order problems in pandemic. I ordered a power supply from Hong Long in April and they said between 44-67 days to ship. Not here yet. I ordered some ridiculously inexpensive “Furutech” (fake?) cable parts from Chinese vendor on AliExpress and they never came. Canceled that order and money was returned. I have an order pending with Chinese vendor shipping via the Netherlands. We will see what comes of that. Plus 1 Parts Connexxion though, they came through with their orders like a champ, |
I’m getting a hell of a laugh reading these. The fact is: FREAKS HAVE BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR THIS!Time to listen and tweak and sit online shopping for gear. And then DC sends us $1200? Sure thing, I finished re-cableing my entire system. Now I get the fun of re-hearing a lot of old favorites, but finding new stuff on Qobuz is even more involving than ever. Thank goodness DT also sent $1200 to the wife. |
If you’re itching to get jiggy with it align all screw head in wall outlets, light switches, Door jams, door knobs and cabinets 🔜 In the house 🔙 so flat head screw heads are perpendicular 🔝 to the ground. Phillips screw heads should look like this ➕ Excellent for audio and video. 🤗 Hint: if your wife catches you doing this you should have a good story ready. |
Yes, I really enjoyed making a couple of serious upgrades over these past few months. Not "tinkering", but serious upgrades. First, I sold my previous turntable and then bought a new Rega Planar 10 and a Lyra Delos. Wow, was that a serious improvement over what I had. I now am hearing musical information that I never had before. And all along I had thought that I knew my vinyl collection very well. There indeed was more to be revealed in those grooves. Next, I thought that I had a good foundation for my turntable and phono stage but knew there was more to gain through some upgrades. After doing some research I landed on purchasing the Symposium Acoustics, Segue ISO with Rollerblock Jr + (the + denotes an upgrade to the tungsten/carbide balls) and also the Segue with Rollerblock Jr + for my phono stage. The sonic and SQ improvement was astonishing. Overall impact and definition of bass was greatly improved. And instrumentation of strings and piano was far more individual and delineated, as if before there had been some sort of "rounding" of the note. Full retail for these two sets is $1,100 but I did manage to secure a respectable discount and saved about $180. In all of my audio upgrades and new components over the years I have never experienced such a grand return on investment. Though I had spent a small fortune on the turntable and phono cartridge, a small additional amount of money spent on the isolation/vibration drainage system from Symposium Acoustics yielded a great amount of improvement. This virus has been devastating to so many and to so much, Nationally and globally. I sort of feel guilty about spending money and enjoying my time while so much suffering is out there. To all, please enjoy the music and let's be grateful for what we have. Wishing the best of health and safety to everyone. |
Yep..but not successfully. Wifey was on a girls weekend so I decided it was a good time to upgrade the quality and shorten the run of my speaker cables by hiding them in the baseboard of my living room. My speakers have to be on the other side of the room from my equipment rack. Everything was going great till I hit a water line / manifold that was poorly installed in my 1967 vintage home. Line was pinched up against the paneling and not round anymore. No where near center of wall. Took me five minutes to turn the water off. Flooded the frickin living room, hallway and guest room. Plumbing bill around $800. Carpets in hall and guest room are dried but a bit smelly for now. Parquet floors in living room buckled but starting to shrink back to normal. Wifey not impressed. Worst part....cables didn't get changed! On to plan "B"! |
Wow! I just pulled out my trusty Quantum Clip that I bought from PWB Electronics 20 years ago and treated my entire system with it - Headphones and portable Cassette player, batteries. The Quantum Clip is a weird looking polarizing (in more ways than one!) device used to treat wire and cables and components, etc. I had not thought to use the Quantum Clip I’m some time but I’m glad I did. The music is more powerful and clear. What?! Whoa, daddy! http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/product/images/q_clip.html Animate the inanimate: http://pwbelectronics.co.uk/product/quantum/quantum.html |
I doubt it is considered tinkering but, over the last three months, I ended up using iPod Touch with Bluetooth speaker and/or Walkman/earphones combination probably 97% of the time. I realized that I did not miss anything during that time. At least not anything regarding music reproduction. I bought a few CDs, too. |
@geoffkait..
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past two weeks, Geoff, you'd know that "Helter Skelter" is already here. Frank |