mulveling
Responses from mulveling
| Balance control? L/R channel balance is definitely something that can drive me crazy. I’ve obsessed over it before. There are many sources of L/R imbalance in a 2ch audio system: acoustics / room cartridge - even high end MC cartridges are often spec’d at most... | |
| Re-tip Ortofon Cadenza Bronze You should also consider turnaround time for 3rd party retipping versus Ortofon’s rebuild. And I believe SS’s retip-only service is more expensive because of the care required to preserve original cantilever - so the price difference may not be as... | |
| Audio Rack Opinions +2 @lak ! I really enjoy having a rigid, gorgeously engineered & built rack, even if it's over the top. I also have nice platforms for my amps. 3rd party footers was a rabbit hole I quickly punched out of. Like you say, too stressful. What I ... | |
| Silver Speaker Cables @raindog911 I've swapped Fire IC with Colorado (older version of Earth) and yeah the difference is striking! The Fires and that WEL phono cable are fantastic. I've been curious to try William Tell Silver biwire, but sticking with the older large... | |
| Widow needs help: Sennheiser HD650 headphones Seriously, find a buyer who is far less pedantic. You don’t deserve the hassle over a $300 item. I’ve owned many examples of HD650 over almost 20 years, and yes there are slight variations but all are wonderful. 2011-ish is indeed a good year for ... | |
| Where did you buy your first audio gear? Bought my first audiophile gear off of Headroom.com in the fall of 2002: Sennheiser HD580 headphones, Total AirHead portable amp. The AirHead sucked balls. The HD580 were awesome. First speaker gear came a year or 2 later, from a combination of ... | |
| Have a tube that gets really bright when turned on and then dims quickly Very common for vintage Euro and British small tubes. Doesn’t indicate a problem or wear. If it’s a Russian, Chinese, or power tube, then you have cause for concern. I have a particularly wonderful pair of British long plate square getter 12AX7, w... | |
| Change of sound with Deoxit G100 Maybe that's how your cables actually sound, after the tarnish & oxidation & crap is removed. Perfecting system synergy & component matching is certainly a bear. So you DON'T want to have everything voiced around filthy connections wit... | |
| Audio Rack Opinions Not sure I love the idea of a wood frame rack for turntables. But if very well implemented, it could be fine. And the ones you've picked do look quite solid. What worked for me was a rack architecture that’s as rigid as possible, with isolation d... | |
| Silver Speaker Cables I think any differences heard are so miniscule per dollar spent, you’d be better off buying better components than changing a cable. When swapping components in the ~10 - 20K MSRP range, the differences are significant but matching consideratio... | |
| Disservice: XLR interconnects I moved from some random XLR cables that I got from Amazon to the Dealer bought Cardas XLRs. And I am just kicking myself for not having done it sooner.. That's cool! I know some advocate that the balanced standard removes audible differences b... | |
| What is the best tonearm for a SOTA Nova turntable? I agree with others on their adulations of the ARC Ref 3/3SE phono stage (I have a 3SE). It will ascend you above the fray of the ~3K phono stages. It was a big difference when I upgraded from $3K stages to this next level. Also my VAC Renaissance... | |
| Single vs Bi-wire Speaker Cable Every time I’ve experimented on my Tannoys, they’ve sounded better bi-wired. They’re an ideal use case for symmetric 50/50 bi-wire: a 2-way with 2nd order crossover at 1.1 kHz, which gives a much closer split of high/low energy than most speakers.... | |
| Disservice: XLR interconnects Did you move from RCA to XLR? A balanced component like the HiFi Rose will output double the voltage on XLR, usually while keeping noise floor the same. So that’s a huge advantage (and +6dB level boost), among other balanced drive advantages (comm... | |
| Silver Speaker Cables After experimenting with many various Audioquest silver and copper speaker cables - silver will render significantly more detail for sure. And that detail increase will be weighted more in favor of higher frequencies. But it won’t be strident, har... |