What new gear have you just bought?


 I figured this might be an interesting topic for people of all levels of audio knowledge. For folks like me at the lower end of the spectrum, we might even learn some things from it.

 I'll start off with a couple of my recent purchases which entails a CD recorder and a CD player.

 A couple of weeks ago I purchased the Tascam CD-RW900SX CD Recorder/Player. I bought this to make a CD out of an old cassette I made way back in 1988. The tape still sounds mint but it won't forever so I wanted the digital copy before it was too late. The machine itself works pretty good. I had a tough time with some of the instructions but finally figured most of it out. The CD's came out great. It took two blank CD's because it is a 90 minute cassette. If anybody is wondering, I used Maxell blank CD's. I'll get some Verbatim blank discs now that I know what I'm doing. The cassette was done on a Maxell XLll blank tape 35 years ago.

 

 My other recent purchase was this week. I bought a Rotel CD11 Tribute (Black) CD player. The Rotel name seems to come up on Audiogon a lot so I figured it must be decent for it's price range. I could simply use the aforementioned recorder as a player also  but I don't want to use the transport in the recorder for simple playback so it will last longer. The Rotel  sounds pretty good to me in my system for as much as I've tried it out so far. Especially for it's price range. All I've played so far was Robert Plant Fate of Nations because it was the first thing I grabbed off the shelf. This weekend I'll check it out further with some Pink Floyd and a little classical music to boot. Specifically,Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I love the rendition I have of that with real cannon and musket fire!

 The Rotel CD11 Tribute is not a super expensive CD player but it will be a good stand-in until I can get my vintage Harman Kardon CD players serviced. Two of them stopped reading discs just a few weeks apart.

 Anybody else want to share some recent purchases? I'll be sure to look up more information on anything that piques my interest.  Also, if anyone has any questions on my recent acquisitions I'll do my best to answer them . Thanks.

 

128x128toddsyr

I’ve just bought some Puritan Audio Labs products:

PSM 156

Ultimate power cable

Ground Master City

 

Bunch of recent purchases, but most recent were an Audio Sensibility power strip (star-wired) and an iFi GND Defender (safe way to lift ground).  Why?  After I paired my new Leben RS30-EQ (tube phono pre) with my almost as new Leben CS600x, I noticed a low level hum.  I played around with various combos of power strips, conditioners, straight to wall, etc., and had some success, but hoped I could do a little better.  Theorized that I had a slight ground loop.  So the combination of the AS strip, which is not very much $, with the GND Defender got my phono section within 2db of the noise level of my digital side.  Am thrilled with results, everything plugged into power strip.  

Btw, I came up with a crude but effective way of measuring noise:  I have the Decibel X app on my phone.  I measure noise at one inch from speakers.  Baseline is with volume at 0 - I call this “room noise.”  Then for digital and phono, I measure at noon on volume control.  My measurements were 38db, 40db, and 42db, respectively.  

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