What have you been working on in 2020?


New system? Getting into DIY? New bands?

I’d love to know what you’ve been doing that is audio-related this year. Dare I hope some of you have gotten soldering guns? Heat guns? Cables or caps?
For me, I’ve gotten into Roon and the Pi 4. Finally set up my combined 2-ch/HT set up with a new HT processor, and done a little blogging on Roon and subwoofers.  Last night I took my Pi 4 apart and added tiny little heat sinks to the RAM, USB and Ethernet chips.
erik_squires
That reminds me! Replaced fuses, Blue to Orange. Took system pics. Built some cable elevator risers to help dress the cables with better spacing. Put fO.q tape, TC and Mats on the drivers in the old Khorus speakers. Forgot about that since they are gone now. Got the Walker Enzyme cleaning system and cleaned a lot of records. Bought a slew of Hot Stampers. Had a couple audiophiles from Portland up for a listen. One of them, Michael, for a second time. Improved my turntable mat clamping system with fO.q tape. Went through a series of interviews about joining Petrolicious to write a series of audiophile oriented articles, but they were unable to meet my terms so had to pass on that. Started the epic Tekton Moab thread. 


Bought and built a Nelson Pass Amp Camp Amp kit and both the experience and the outcome were very satisfying. The marketing for the kit claims that anyone can build it. Since I had some soldering/kit experience, starting with a Dynaco SCA-35 kit more than fifty years ago and a few other very small projects through the years, plus a lot of time on my hands, I went for it.

It does require a decent soldering iron and accessories, good quality solder and an assortment of basic tools but anyone with those, some patience and the ability to carefully follow directions and not get in a hurry could do it.

It was a big success, no smoke came out when I turned it on. The casework is very attractive and the sound is astonishingly good for the price of less than $400, better than many of the amps I’ve owned at multiples of the price. It's not quite up there with my Raven Audio Blackhawk but you could buy ten of the kits Highly recommended as a way to pass the time with the addition of a great piece of gear.
1. I rebuilt the crossovers on the speakers in my secondary system.
2. I added additional treatments in my dedicated room.
3. I ordered a Swarm system for the dedicated room.  Duke gets the     cabinets this week.   I hope I will have the Swarm in my room before the end of the month.  I expect to spend most of September dialing in Swarm placement and finishing room treatments.
4. Today  I ordered SR orange fuses to try out on my M-60 amps.
5. I really need to sell my Frankenstein amps.  I just hate selling stuff and keep putting it off. 

Swarm was last year for me. You are gonna love it. Way easy to set up- put em near corners, adjust levels, enjoy. I hate selling stuff too but turns out its worth it if you use the proceeds to buy Tekton.
Changes to my main system thus far :
Sold my Aqua Acoustic LaVoceS3 and replaced it with a Mojo Audio EVO DAC. Sold the Cambridge Audio CXC cd transport that was in my second system, moved the one from my main system to the 2nd, and have a SimAudio 260d transport on order; hopefully will have that  by end of August. Added a CIA LPS to my Wadia 171i transport, LessLoss Firewall for Speakers ,  a couple of Audio Art Cable power 1 eplus Cryo power cords, and have  some Daedalus speaker DIDs on the way.