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Post by funkle on Jul 2, 2019 21:47:10 GMT -6
For my home system, I'm using a nearfield desktop system. I don't really have space for a dedicated listening room, and do most of my listening while I'm working. In a many ways, this system kicks butt on some whole room setups. Not the loudest, but he imaging & detail from these speakers is hard to top without getting into some very expensive gear. The soundstage spreads out way past the speakers, and you can pick out each instrument in the space between them. Very close to using headphones, but with the sound in front of you, rather than right in your head. It's a very musical, engaging kind of system. Not super clinical sounding, but really sucks you into the music in a dramatic way. But still very detailed and nuanced so that you hear aspects of the music that you would not notice on lesser systems. Source: Mac Pro 5,1 mostly AIFF files & Tidal (master quality setting) speakers: Anthony Gallo Reference Strada II Amp: Opera Consonance a-120 hybrid amp DAC: Burson Conductor DAC/headphone amp speaker cables: Audience Ohno III Interconnects: Auricle Audio
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Post by xmiles on Jul 3, 2019 1:47:48 GMT -6
I have a pretty decent system that I upgraded to about 14 years ago. I still listen to CDs most days but find I am increasingly listening to stuff on Spotify whilst on my pc. My system is all made by Naim, a high end British firm. It cosists of a CDS3 CD player, NAC 282 preamplifier, XPS2 power supply, Supercap power supply, NAP300 power supply, NAP300 power applifier all on a ridiculously expensive Fraim stand and SBL speakers.
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Post by funkle on Jul 3, 2019 8:19:32 GMT -6
Nice socks. What are those? Thorlos? Walmart. That looks like a very Manley system you have . Want to give us the specifics?
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Post by JaySee on Jul 3, 2019 8:26:18 GMT -6
My humble entertainment center (from left to right / top to bottom)
Sony 2ch sacd Cambridge Audio integrated amp Samsung tv Sony bluray player
Digibox for using Elisa Viihde (HD pic, video rental, tv program savings, pay channels etc.)
NuForce Air DAC receiver for wireless audio signal from computer (uTX transmitter on USB) to audio system ProAc Response 1 SC speakers
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Post by funkle on Jul 3, 2019 10:40:46 GMT -6
That looks like a very Manley system you have . Want to give us the specifics? Very natural voices, spacey, very nice imaging, pretty intimate. I mean what are the components.
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Post by JaySee on Jul 3, 2019 10:59:08 GMT -6
Don't forget Porcupine Tree's The Sky Moves Sideways.
Do you use Rega's own cartridge?
What's the little box on the right side of the rack?
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Post by funkle on Jul 3, 2019 12:18:49 GMT -6
I was thinking of getting a turntable. A shame that I gave all my vinyl away rears ago. I have a pair of Snell Type D & Snell EII in storage that it would be fun to use.
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Post by xmiles on Jul 3, 2019 13:22:45 GMT -6
I was thinking of getting a turntable. A shame that I gave all my vinyl away rears ago. I have a pair of Snell Type D & Snell EII in storage that it would be fun to use. I got rid of my turntable 14 years ago. I don't miss it much.
My eldest son got rid of his hifi 3 years ago and sold his extensive CD collection. He still loves music but listens to Spotify Premium.
Times change.
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Post by funkle on Jul 3, 2019 13:55:12 GMT -6
I was thinking of getting a turntable. A shame that I gave all my vinyl away rears ago. I have a pair of Snell Type D & Snell EII in storage that it would be fun to use. I got rid of my turntable 14 years ago. I don't miss it much.
My eldest son got rid of his hifi 3 years ago and sold his extensive CD collection. He still loves music but listens to Spotify Premium.
Times change. As I see it, there is a continuum with convenience at one end, and ceremony at the other. Your media preference depends mostly on where your values lie (ceremony vs. convenience), because you can't argue on sound quality anymore (aside from vinyl, which is "different", but better or worse is preferential). Vinyl is at one end (ceremony), while streaming is at the other end (convenience). Cds are somewhere in the middle. Some apps like Roon have tried to bridge the gap. I generally fall towards the convenience end. But could see having more of a dedicated ceremonial set-up for some occasions.
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Post by GeorgeX on Jul 3, 2019 16:21:19 GMT -6
You were the guy who famously thought cd organization/care was too much of a hassle, so the thought of you considering a return to vinyl gives me a hearty chuckle! Try that, leaving discs around thing, you mentioned then, with vinyl. Not a happy ceremony
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TheBee
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by TheBee on Jul 3, 2019 18:38:31 GMT -6
As I see it, there is a continuum with convenience at one end, and ceremony at the other. Your media preference depends mostly on where your values lie (ceremony vs. convenience), because you can't argue on sound quality anymore (aside from vinyl, which is "different", but better or worse is preferential). Vinyl is at one end (ceremony), while streaming is at the other end (convenience). Cds are somewhere in the middle. Some apps like Roon have tried to bridge the gap. I generally fall towards the convenience end. But could see having more of a dedicated ceremonial set-up for some occasions. I argue with my convenience-oriented better half about sound quality all the time. In fact, when I went into the den a little while ago, she was watching some Netflix show and didn't realize it was over the TV's internal speakers. New rig, haven't worked out all the kinks yet. Tried to explain that flashing icon on the receiver that said "Mute" might have had something to do with it.... Now doesn't this sound a whole lot better in full surround on real speakers? (Birds chirping...) It's a symptom of the commoditization of entertainment in this day and age. Go to any concert and see it for yourself. What's the end game? Shoot cell phone video (don't forget to set it to 1080p!), watch it once to relive the missed experience, post cell phone video online, send the link to all the buddies, maybe 1 or 2 of them actually watch it all the way through, and then it's relegated to oblivion forever. Everything is disposable. Convenience and quality don't have to be mutually exclusive. With a decent setup (and a willingness to crawl around in the attic), whole home audio/video systems can be made to stream high def flacs over ethernet to any combination of fixed speakers around the house just as easily as streaming iTunes wirelessly to a phone. Well, almost as easily. We can argue all day about whether high def flacs would sound detectably different from regular flacs, much less VBR0 mp3s, but there can be no argument that a Klipsch Heresy (or two) is going to blow iPhone out of the water. The trick is in making it super simple to select the Klipsch. Seems I have a ways to go.... Just for the record, they're not Heresy, but home made jobs with many of the same components. And speaking of records, I do still have all mine, and a pair of Dual tables, but haven't hooked them up in years, though I've been meaning to. The only "high def" flacs I have are audience recordings from Dime when there are no 16/44 versions to be had. And I have lots of speaker cable, CAT-6/pass-through connectors, and RG-6/F-connectors left over if anyone needs any.
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Post by funkle on Jul 3, 2019 18:56:36 GMT -6
You were the guy who famously thought cd organization/care was too much of a hassle, so the thought of you considering a return to vinyl gives me a hearty chuckle! Try that, leaving discs around thing, you mentioned then, with vinyl. Not a happy ceremony Don't get me wrong. I'm still a huge fan of digital file access and would never switch to vinyl (Which is obviously impossible for everything we listen to). I'd never go back to futzing around with CDs, because the experience was never that great for me - those plastic cases that break, trying to get the booklet in and out from those stupid tabs, and no difference in sound. But a nice LP is something I could see myself enjoying from time to time.
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Post by JaySee on Jul 4, 2019 1:07:27 GMT -6
I got rid of my turntable 14 years ago. I don't miss it much. Almost 20 and ditto.
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Post by funkle on Jul 4, 2019 8:52:42 GMT -6
. The trick is in making it super simple to select the Klipsch. Seems I have a ways to go.... . There are so many great options now. Streaming has outgrown most of it’s growing pains. Check out Roon Labs. This is what I’d use if I was using a conventional hi-if set-up. Lots of affordable streamer options, great interface and open system plays well with lots of different hardware. But we just use Sonos for whole house music. Not so hi-if, but for the less than ideal in-ceiling speakers it is the best option.
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TheBee
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by TheBee on Jul 5, 2019 17:57:37 GMT -6
There are so many great options now. Streaming has outgrown most of it’s growing pains. Check out Roon Labs. This is what I’d use if I was using a conventional hi-if set-up. Lots of affordable streamer options, great interface and open system plays well with lots of different hardware. But we just use Sonos for whole house music. Not so hi-if, but for the less than ideal in-ceiling speakers it is the best option. That's a pretty nice looking interface. Time well tell if it catches on and becomes widely supported. Different areas of the house are going to have different requirements for streaming. Some, like the bathroom (she) or garage (he) may be best suited for a pair of portable WiFi speakers with the hair dryer, and respectively the table saw, making fidelity irrelevant. Ceiling speakers in the living room or outdoor speakers by the patio (and 2 more by the pool) are great for hanging out, having a couple beers (burp!) and firing up the grill. And so forth on to the higher end systems in the rooms where it matters. The objective, then, is to have the ability to source content at various levels of quality, and to be able to control the playback through increasingly visually pleasing interfaces like that Roon player. I'm a big proponent of "the more ways to do a task, the more probable it is that you'll find one that works closest to what you had envisioned" theory. And that leads to the use of existing standards and protocols such as SMB and UPnP/DLNA. Most home audio networking hardware and software setups, even those that are generally proprietary like your Sonos, are going to include support for either or both of those protocols. SMB is easy as sharing a folder in Windows. In fact, that's exactly what it is: sharing a folder in Windows. That's perhaps best suited for video, since you'll need a box with a fair bit of horsepower somewhere along the line to manage conversions of that video when needed, and that box is likely to support Microsoft Networking. We're talking home networking here, not online streaming. For audio, UPnP/DLNA is still useful, in that even if the system has its own proprietary software, its compliance dictates that 3rd party devices work with it. In other words, the media server can be any make or model, and the playback device can be any make or model, and they're supposed to both be able to work together and with any controller that's also compliant, visually pleasing or not, like Linn Kazoo or Lumin running on a tablet. It doesn't always work flawlessly - if only the foo_upnp developer had implemented UPnP search correctly before he abandoned the project.... Edit: Forgot to mention that Kazoo and Lumin are not UPnP/DLNA compliant, since they are OpenHome controllers, and take advantage of its ability to synchronize playlists. BubbleUPnP Server provides an overlay for existing UPnP/DLNA servers to make them OpenHome compliant. And it's freeware. In fact, every app mentioned here is freeware. I've had really good luck with the 2017 line of Yamaha receivers for multi-zone audio, and the proprietary MusicCast works well for combining the zones from multiple units (and also works with powered Yamaha speakers with built-in WiFi), although it will render DLNA useless while they are linked, as I just discovered yesterday. Edit: This is incorrect - operator error was what broke DLNA, not casting. 2017, by the way, was the last year they were fully compliant, and included a web control interface as well. And if you look around, they can be had for a lot less than what they originally retailed at. Most can decode audio at the upper end of the register from 24/192 flac to DSD to Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and DTS-HD. Therefore, they are just as well suited for a mid-priced home theater as they are cheapo ceiling speakers. A bit overkill for the latter, but that's where multi-zone comes into play, because it's the same unit powering both.
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