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my best/worst audio purchase was a lifetime subscription to roon, I do not recommend it because it is stupidly expensive [even more so now than a few years ago] but it is awesome and integrating your local library with streaming is amazing I won't rattle off my systems but stereo rules and I'm never going back to surround sound unless I have a dedicated room. you absolutely don't need more speakers if you can position your speakers correctly in your space [I do have a subwoofer though] qirex fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 16:21
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I will suggest one product, if you need a usb dac, headphone amp or bluetooth receiver the qudelix 5k is amazing and made by a small company in s korea
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Jul 17, 2023 16:24
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mildly spicy take: schiit audio makes garbage products and you should avoid them. if you want a us assembled dac look at jds labs or geshelli
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Jul 17, 2023 16:34
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fart simpson posted:well thats why they call it poo poo audio
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Jul 17, 2023 16:38
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the main danger in audio gear is avoiding rabbit holes and slippery slopes, like there's apparently hundreds of folks out there who have 20-50 pairs of sub-$100 headphones, it's like funko pop disease why are you buying 2 new iems a month. conversely if you look in places like avs there's people who have like 6 18" subs in a closed room and they're mad there's not enough "tactile" bass for them "good enough" is anathema to audiophiles but if you figure out where it is for you it'll pay big dividends, or at least save you from wasting a bunch of money
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Jul 17, 2023 17:47
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lol dsd is the new thing now that mqa are not only shown to be fraudsters but also going out of business, it's like the reel to reel comeback, it's better specifically because it's not well supported
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Jul 17, 2023 17:51
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Skinnymansbeerbelly posted:serious question: what's the least effort way to tell if a given piece of broken audio equipment is garbage consumer e-waste, or somehow desirable for parts or repairs? if it's newer than the 90s and not from an extremely prestigious brand it's probably junk I guess also search ebay and audiogon to see if people are actually buying them
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Jul 17, 2023 18:16
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Share Bear posted:in other stuff, i'm sort of looking for new receivers. did all the hdmi crap get ironed out? is there something specific i should look for? who's a good brand now? rotor posted:i have a pair of refurbed sony MDR-1As and they're good imo
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Jul 17, 2023 18:57
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I do not understand why big headphones without removable cables exist
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Jul 17, 2023 19:29
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Snuff Melange posted:I might get run out of this thread for this (justly so), but am I wrong to feel like expensive computer headsets have very quickly diminishing returns for the increased cost? I run a $20 headset and I feel I great fine, even great audio. Several of my friends have $200+ headsets and it feels extremely excessive to me. I have a decent business headset but I spend at least 10 hours a week and sometimes much more in meetings so I decided it was worth it. it’s all about the mic quality and onboard mute button/mute light on the dongle, they sit next to my “real” headphones for music. I thought about consolidating to a single fancy pair of wireless headphones but I like what I have a lot
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Jul 18, 2023 14:58
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mediaphage posted:the diminishing returns thing really kicks in when you go up another level imo tho perhaps some golden eared motherfucker can tell the difference better than i can
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Jul 18, 2023 15:16
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mediaphage posted:yeah, i'm talking orders of magnitude, like there's $20 phones, $200 phones, and $2000 phones, and just like speakers at some point it's not worth it the good news there's always new music coming out and that's a lot cheaper than buying more gear
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Jul 18, 2023 15:50
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graph posted:im wearing v700s right now how do you still have a working pair?
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Jul 19, 2023 04:16
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if sony remade them with metal post holders I'd buy new ones but I will not fall prey to that nostalgia. besides I still have a working pair of 7506
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Jul 19, 2023 18:40
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Jonny 290 posted:it's true and if this wasn't the internet i'd blind a/b prove it till your ears fell off it's probably more work to build one that sounds different, that's why you have companies like chord rolling their own using fpgas or this polish guy who will attach light bulbs for seven grand. or you could just use some eq to tune your sound like a sane person but that would be a lot less expensive and complicated which would defeat the purpose
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Jul 26, 2023 17:48
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good news, friends! the absolute sound just published their 2023 editor's choice list of best tonearms $10,000 and upquote:This fabulous aluminum tonearm is built up millimeter by millimeter via a selective-laser-melting process to produce a resonance-free structure impossible to create by any other means. (Internally, the ’arm has tree-branch-like “limbs” that connect its inner tube to an outer tube, channeling resonances like a grounding wire channels RF.) With highest-precision/tolerance ceramic bearings, the TA-9000 is as sonically invisible (and utterly imperturbable) as Acoustic Signature’s fabulous Invictus turntables. Fully adjustable for VTA/SRA, VTF, azimuth, and anti-skate, the TA-9000 (in combination with the Invicti) is one of the most realistic-sounding source components JV has heard; when used with the fabulous DS Audio Grand Master optical cartridge, it rivals the timbral and dynamic continuousness and diorama-like three-dimensionality of reel-to-reel mastertapes.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:57
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lol at your pitiful, lesser-tier btrs 
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Aug 2, 2023 21:39
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nobody actually needs the btr7, it is too chonky for portable use I just got a good deal on an open box and wanted something to leave plugged in, I use my quedelix 5k for actual portable bluetooth situation e: I have used my btr7 and 5k wired from my ipad with my good headphones and they both sound great, I also got a lightning to usb cable to play with and it kinda works but the dumb chain of devices it creates is ridiculous qirex fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 21:41
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there’s a cool new phono preamp called the puffin that can do a lot of those diagnostics and correction. sadly it does this by doing it in the digital domain which means that analog purists refuse to use it [it’s still selling pretty well to non-idiots]
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Aug 4, 2023 05:28
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if anyone wants some actual bass the svs sale is on and you can get their entry level model for 350
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Aug 31, 2023 21:02
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yeah that's me. I'm assuming they bought it because they finally figured out nobody at samsung can actually write working software, unfortunately the roon folks now work there which means they can't, either. the good news is it'll probably take them a couple years to actually ruin it I'd guess an early order of business is figuring out some way to turn us lifetime license folks back into sources of recurring revenue. at least if it goes totally tits up is plexamp is getting better
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Nov 28, 2023 16:23
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my favorite giant headphones [focal elegia] are down to like three hundo if you can still find them e: oh if you buy them the stock cable is balls but it's not proprietary so I've been using the 2m version of this one qirex fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Nov 30, 2023 |
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Nov 30, 2023 18:06
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It’s hard to know where to start in describing the technology in Shunyata products, and hard to know where to stop. There is a lot of tech and it is not the same as in other companies’ power cords and conditioners. Typical power conditioners are made up of components that I learned about in school – transformers, capacitors, and inductors. With Shunyata, we get into new stuff, quite a bit of it. In some cases, the purpose of a particular Shunyata technology is similar to those components that we already know – Shunyata’s QR/BB™ module “possesses the ability to act as an electric charge reservoir”. This sounds like what a capacitor does – indeed the patent for QR/BB technology starts with a description of how a capacitor functions in a power conditioner but also mentions the problem with that application – capacitors are great at delivering voltage, limited at delivering current. This well-known issue even has a name for those in the power business: Power Factor. You’ll see ‘Power Factor Correction’ mentioned here and there – but the methods for doing that (correcting) are limited. Until now. This is how it goes with Shunyata – the founder Caelin Gabriel comes up with real solutions to problems that others leave unsolved. If I understand what QR/BB is doing it solves the power factor problem with a structure that seems pretty similar to a capacitor but manages to store more electrons (needed for current) than a regular capacitor would. In addition, QR/BB performs this function without adding the reactance that a capacitor would. You can think of reactance as frequency-dependent resistance that is inherent in capacitors. In the patent for QR/BB, there is a brief description of what I think of as “The Problem” – that’s “The” with a long ‘e’. Here is “The Problem”: “In a typical power supply for an electronic device, the power supply draws current from the power line in pulses. Current is only drawn at the positive and negative peaks of the AC voltage waveform. The storage capacitors for the power supply maintain a relatively stable DC voltage, and the rectification diodes only turn on when the AC waveform voltage exceeds the stored voltage level in the capacitor array. When the rectification diodes do turn on there is a high surge of current drawn *directly* from the AC power line. The sudden demand for instantaneous current from the power supply can exceed the capacity of the power line to deliver current efficiently…” It goes on but that is the gist of it. (Note: I added the italics and the “*directly*” in there). So, the notion that the DC power supply is solving all of the issues is not correct. It shouldn’t be surprising that using diodes to rectify AC to DC and then storing a charge with some amount of capacitance is not a perfect process, far from it. The need to draw directly from the mains supply at certain times is part one of “The Problem”. Part two is what happens when the valves (diodes) close. Let’s re-word that whole thing in terms of the water pipe analogy that works pretty well for AC power delivery. The basic analogy is there is a big pipe with fresh water from your local municipality. It’s got sufficient pressure behind it to get the water where it needs to go. The more one faucet takes the less is available for others but if the pressure is enough you wouldn’t notice – it all depends on the size of the pipes etc., etc. Okay, what is missing from that analogy is how the small pipes draw from the big pipe. Turning on a faucet for a steady flow does not mimic what is happening with a power supply that is converting AC to DC and using that to drive an audio signal (with its variations). You can come close to what a rectification circuit is doing if you were to modify the high-speed on/off faucet in some clothes washers and make them open and close multiple times in a second – thereby causing tremendous water-hammer and rattling your pipes, bigly. Back in the electronics world: quite simply, as the rectification circuit opens and closes, noise is sent back into the mains, affecting all the other components. This is a widely ignored issue.
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Nov 30, 2023 18:07
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if there's one thing audiophile reviewers excel at it's incredibly bullshit metaphors
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Nov 30, 2023 18:19
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yummycheese posted:for whatever reason it never occurs to these people that you could in-fact just run your hi-fi system off a couple of car batteries and be 100% DC power throughout the system and remove about 50% of the things they like to complain about. there are definitely people who do this, and a preference among certain segments to prefer linear power supplies over switching ones for some reason none of them has ever used an oscilloscope
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Nov 30, 2023 19:08
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I do not understand the iem industry where hundreds of tiny companies compete to make the most baroque arrangement of drivers in a tiny liver shaped capsule covered in glitter. I think they're like mobile gaming where they try to find "whales" who like the brand and will pay two thousand dollars for something like this. I also know this is halo gear to sell more of the sub-$50 stuff [of which there's people who buy 1-3 pairs a month]
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Dec 1, 2023 02:49
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cd changers are back, baby! only $550! I also enjoy that in their own publicity shot the feet and finish doesn't match their other stereo gear 
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Dec 6, 2023 18:47
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