Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

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Is there a stereo equipment advice thread on ILX? I would be up for reading such a thing. I'm still using the same Richer Sounds starter-kit separates I bought with my first ever cheque from the Melody Maker 17 years ago, but the bits might need replacing some time soon (especially given how funny my 17 month old daughter finds it to clamber up to the stereo and start bashing the buttons and cranking the switches).

please don't shampoo your eyes (stevie), Sunday, 8 November 2015 14:52 (eight years ago) link

I helped a friend buy a system from RS in the new era and they punted her this weird CD player that may have sounded OK but had the crappiest firmware and interface. It took an age to do or respond to anything and didn't understand the concept of gapless playback.

Noel Emits, Sunday, 8 November 2015 15:11 (eight years ago) link

It didn't sound that good either.

Noel Emits, Sunday, 8 November 2015 15:16 (eight years ago) link

Is there a stereo equipment advice thread on ILX?

I turned up these:
Stereo thoughts
stereo question
Stereo Equipment

austinato (Austin), Sunday, 8 November 2015 16:16 (eight years ago) link

Thanks Austin

please don't shampoo your eyes (stevie), Sunday, 8 November 2015 19:53 (eight years ago) link

There are also a couple of threads with audiophile in the title.

koogs, Sunday, 8 November 2015 21:25 (eight years ago) link

Upper mississippi otm upthread re chromecast audio - just got mine, and after years and years (that followed years and years of napster, ftping, torrents etc) of only using physical media at home I feel like I've travelled back in time to the joy of discovering the possibilities of p2p music sharing - which is all just to say: considering what this gizmo does and how well it does it the price point is absolutely incredible

I work at this webshop https://www.hifiklubben.dk/ and we sell a lot of streaming devices, and while Sonos Connect, Heos Link and Bluesound Node all offer better sound (the passive streamers), very good app control (esp handy for multi room purposes) and more, they're also 10 times the price. Curious to hook up the chromecast to a proper dac (it has optical out!) and hearing the results.

I don't consider myself a great authority on hifi, but have worked with it for years so happy to give advice on equipment itt.

@tom violence: iirc the nad wifi dac has a few differnt frequencies of transmission to choose from. Maybe you can eliminate some of the dropout issues - which are surely signal/interference related - by trying another one.

niels, Monday, 9 November 2015 18:21 (eight years ago) link

I'd buy a few Chromecasts in a heartbeat if the iOS version of Google Play Music app wasn't so awful. Having my full iTunes library available in the cloud (for free!) is amazing, but I can only bear to play it through the Sonos interface.

early rejecter, Monday, 9 November 2015 21:54 (eight years ago) link

Curious to hook up the chromecast to a proper dac (it has optical out!) and hearing the results.

Woah hadn't thought of that

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 10 November 2015 01:57 (eight years ago) link

http://wathifi.com

MatthewK, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 12:19 (eight years ago) link

Wow, this one is amazing!

http://www.musicdirect.com/p-7419-ps-audio-noise-harvester-black.aspx

Eliminate noise right at the source. The PS Audio Noise Harvester is the world's only device that actually eliminates line noise from your home's power lines. Most power conditioners attempt to isolate your equipment from all the power line noise, but they cannot eliminate or remove power line noise. Only the Noise Harvester removes AC noise and converts it to another form of energy, light.

So basically you're paying 75 bucks for a small blue LED lamp.

Tuomas, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 12:28 (eight years ago) link

Some gems on that site.

I used to buy in to *some* of this stuff. Not the power conditioners or magic stones or floating racks or whatever, but I did spend an awful lot of money on cables between 1996 and 1999 and I also stuck a Musical Fidelity valve output stage on my Marantz CD player because I found it too "fatiguing". "Mike's Little Distorto Box" as my friend liked to call it. I have no doubt that's what it was doing - adding some vacuum tube even-order harmonic distortion to sweeten things up.

Michael Jones, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 12:53 (eight years ago) link

Even power conditioning, I'm not 100 sure about but playing gigs at local clubs with amps there could definitely be problems with certain outlets where the amp would really buzz then you'd plug it in somewhere else and that would be fine. Watch is an extreme example because guitar amps are pretty prone to buzz and the club's probably had grounding issues but it doesn't seem impossible that a/c current could cause distortion on a stereo amp

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 10 November 2015 13:04 (eight years ago) link

The idea is that the power supply in the amp or CD player itself does all the filtering you need, or it can't be really be fit for purpose. This is in a domestic environment where you're hopefully not subject to grounding problems or crazy surges (again, your device should just shut itself off in that circumstance). So there really should be any need to "clean" your mains AC before it gets to your stereo gear. But that kind of fits with the audiophile mindset that really exotic equipment is a delicate flower, sensitive to every little thing, and needs to be protected (rather than immune to it, if it's been designed properly).

Michael Jones, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 13:17 (eight years ago) link

Really *shouldn't*, I mean

Michael Jones, Tuesday, 10 November 2015 13:18 (eight years ago) link

yeah i spose. i don't know why guitar amps are so subject to weirdness in power supply out of the wall then...because it happened w/tube and solid state gear and ALL the time.

anyway

niels - what if i mated my Google Chromecast to something like this? (or what's a good affordable DAC w/an optical in you'd recommend?)

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=833986&gclid=Cj0KEQiAyIayBRDo4vjdqJrgxZ0BEiQAhOYCYK9H_Hn7pvxpeq5QlDMa4MdK0vOYqNFJA2ir6tBlbIEaAgBZ8P8HAQ&is=REG&m=Y&A=details&Q=

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 10 November 2015 16:39 (eight years ago) link

I'm limited in that I know mostly about brands in our line-up (NAD, Denon, Cambridge, B&W, Dali, Audioquest) but that Audioengine D1 is well-reviewed, has optical in and 24-Bit 192 kHz support, so looks good to me. I guess maybe you're paying a bit extra for a headphone amp, but then again it may come in handy. Will it be placed near your computer or will you use a usb power adapter?

In order for the Chromecast to remain a bargain, I guess we need to stay well below the $499 price of a streamer like the Bluesound Node 2, which has v good internal DAC http://www.bluesound.com/en-us/products/node-2/?cl.

Anyway, you can probably try it out and return it if you're not satisfied with the improvement in sound. Curious to hear the results, I'll try to take a few different DACs home myself and try them out when I get the time.

What do you have in your system?

niels, Wednesday, 11 November 2015 09:37 (eight years ago) link

i don't know why guitar amps are so subject to weirdness in power supply out of the wall then...because it happened w/tube and solid state gear and ALL the time.

You're taking a small signal from a partly shielded guitar / cable / pedal setup and amplifying it to the max - any ground loops, odd terminations in pedals, partial connects for cables etc. are going to act as receivers for noise. Sometimes even grounding an amp can make it amplify the difference between ground and a floating signal.
But any competently made CD player / turntable has fully shielded signal paths and the mains coming in has no interaction with the signal.

MatthewK, Wednesday, 11 November 2015 12:14 (eight years ago) link

thanks for the explanation matthewk that makes sense

niels:

I have:

Cambridge 540a Azur amp (8 ish years old?) with the companion/optional phono stage that was sold with it. This has a good headphone stage so I don't really need to pay extra for a headphone amp.

Rega P1 turntable w/glass platter upgrade & Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge

Marantz DVD player I got on clearance from MusicDirect

Speakers: EPOS ELS 3 bookshelfs with HSU Research VTF-1 powered sub

so....basically a bunch of good value "entry level" audiophile stuff.

But your point about the headphone amp is good, I don't need that. this isn't near my PC, I strictly want to stream wireless from Spotify at extreme quality into my stereo system...

Would a Cambridge DAC be a good choice just because I have one? Obviously looking at the lowest range of price for a respectable DAC, or tell me about any of the other options would be great.

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 11 November 2015 16:56 (eight years ago) link

The moment this thread became useful it became waaaaaaay less fun

as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Wednesday, 11 November 2015 22:44 (eight years ago) link

If I didn't respect your work in the Doors so much I would have created an especially sassy retort to that post

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 11 November 2015 23:47 (eight years ago) link

More like DORKS amirite????????

Austin, Thursday, 12 November 2015 00:34 (eight years ago) link

That's great entry level stuff, I'm sure it sounds awesome! I was thinking of buying the DacMagic 100 for myself, think it'll be a good value upgrade and a very good match for your system. I'll see if I can take it home tonight and try it out. Can't come up with anything better - though you may also consider one of the new Cambridge amps w built in DAC such as the CXA60 http://www.crutchfield.com/S-pfePpt2A3YH/p_779CXA60S/Cambridge-Audio-CXA60-Silver.html - have only listened to it once but was impressed.

niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 12:32 (eight years ago) link

yeah i've been happy with it. i'm not really looking to upgrade my amp. so i'll checkout the DacMagic, just adding a $35 Chromecast Audio and a solid bargain audiophile DAC should be good.

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 12 November 2015 14:44 (eight years ago) link

I might be looking for something that can play a USB thumb drive through a home stereo...would one of these aforementioned DACs be the solution? Or something else?

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 12 November 2015 15:14 (eight years ago) link

a Heos Link can do that (and many other cool things) http://usa.denon.com/us/heos-link

niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 15:21 (eight years ago) link

Ums: brought the dacmagic100 home and tested - gotta admit I'm no big fan of a b demoing... but think it works really well, it's not a huge revelation but it makes everything sound more clear and relaxed, I'll probably get one (or a more expensive dac)

niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:11 (eight years ago) link

Have a somewhat expensive system that sounds a bit cheap w/o the dac but proper expensive w the dac :P

niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:12 (eight years ago) link

Thanks for the info, niels!

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:20 (eight years ago) link

You're very welcome

Applying for jobs that match my degree in literature a bit better, but always happy when my experience with hifi turns out to be just a tiny bit useful outside of current job

niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:33 (eight years ago) link

Cool Thx, also read about the Musical Fidelity V90 which is at a similar price

Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 12 November 2015 21:55 (eight years ago) link

So I looked around and for OSX users there's a desktop app called Soundcast

https://github.com/andresgottlieb/soundcast

which will send iTunes audio, and audio from a browser, to ChromeCast--

seems to work!

Swag Heathen (theStalePrince), Friday, 13 November 2015 04:58 (eight years ago) link

one month passes...

okay back on topic, Sennheiser's new $55,000 headphones!

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/03/sennheiser-new-orpheus-headphones/

"As you can imagine, there are numerous design improvements that work to stamp out any audiophile kryptonite -- such as building amps into the ear cups to avoid any noise introduced by cabling, and eight DACs in total with a sampling rate of up to 384 kHz."

Amira, Queen of Creativity (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 14 December 2015 22:19 (eight years ago) link

So if the amps are built into the ear cups, what is that marble tube amp thing?

schwantz, Monday, 14 December 2015 22:34 (eight years ago) link

that marble will tickle your eyeballs at hundreds of THz

Sufjan Grafton, Monday, 14 December 2015 22:35 (eight years ago) link

xp good question. anyway, by using crazy electrostatic headphones, you are forced to move away from small signal design in an area where you usually don't have to, so you can no longer leverage amazing and cheap op-amps. that is quite a trade off.

Sufjan Grafton, Monday, 14 December 2015 22:47 (eight years ago) link

Do these weirdos ever actually enjoy listening to music qua music or are they constantly listening for impurities/imperfections. Sounds maddening

lute bro (brimstead), Monday, 14 December 2015 22:59 (eight years ago) link

I don't really understand why you need 8 discreet dacs??

Amira, Queen of Creativity (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:00 (eight years ago) link

7 wasn't enough in the lab

μpright mammal (mh), Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:06 (eight years ago) link

they first tried 7, but their digital signals were analog and their analog signals were digital. so they added one more.

Sufjan Grafton, Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:49 (eight years ago) link

(it was shingy's idea)

Sufjan Grafton, Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:52 (eight years ago) link

24 bit signal, no more than three bits per DAC, otherwise the electron orbitals clash and there's some kind of gravitational interaction. Got to keep those bits as far apart as possible until they combine in the ear. They're triode valve DACs of course, one bit per ode.

If I keep this up I might get hired to write their promos.

MatthewK, Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:55 (eight years ago) link

two months pass...

I thought this was really funny:

http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/THETA%20Universal/theta.html

los blue jeans, Sunday, 28 February 2016 18:56 (eight years ago) link

that is utterly great

tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 28 February 2016 19:08 (eight years ago) link

lol, when the first paragraph described the size of the Theta, I thought to myself "that's bigger than a laserdisc player", and then I scrolled down...

bored at work (snoball), Sunday, 28 February 2016 19:14 (eight years ago) link

Amazing

robbie ca$hflo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 28 February 2016 20:08 (eight years ago) link

amazing story

goole, Monday, 29 February 2016 21:11 (eight years ago) link

looking at this and reviews of diff components online, they all read exactly the same -- "better definition in bass, greater depth and openness in the soundstage, increased separation in treble." i just read a review of a damn turntable mat that had that language

goole, Monday, 29 February 2016 21:22 (eight years ago) link


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