The audiophile thread | Page 6 | GTAMotorcycle.com

The audiophile thread

kwtoxman said:
Ya LePhillou as you probably know, form factor and audio do not go that well together. You can do a lot better than a sound bar for sound quality, but it loses form factor. The better it sounds generally the lower the WAF, lol.

A USB TT will need to do AD conversion since USB cables are digital. Then whatever it plugs into will need to do a DA conversion in order to be able to listen to it. So it's a double conversion back and forth and that doesn't help sound quality. Neither does a sound bar. But it will work and the form factor is small and nice.

With the CAM website you can see what more traditional options are. Some bookshelf speakers and a small amplifier (integrated or not) will get you some good sound for a low price if you want. And you can plug your TV audio output into it, as well as an analog TT.

Let us know what you think of whatever you end up with.

Cheers and GL.
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Alright, we've been using the setup for past month and a half/two months and let me tell you, as you allllll indicated, it leaves much to be desired ;)

But it works.

The sound definitely is better with the soundbar/woofer combo than without. The bass is abysmally weak, the soundbar does a decent job of providing clearer sound. I'm really dissapointed in the bluetooth connection quality with my phone (it skips 1 time out of 2 that i connect with it..but it's not as bad when i use BT connection from my PC)

overall it's worth the money for what i paid, and the vinyl tt well... wifey hasnt complained about it really. but lets just say its not the sound experience i was expecting so once again, you guys were all right about usb tt being *****.

oh well... works for now, we'll see if its a priority for us at some point to upgrade.
 
Cleaning up moms TV stereo setup. Three items going out Harman Kardon PM625, Pioneer AM/FM Tuner model F-5 and a Sony 5 disc CD player. The Harman and Pioneer my brother purchased new back in 1985-6.

So worth it to someone to pick up in Oakville or just e waste ??
 
GVH said:
Cleaning up moms TV stereo setup. Three items going out Harman Kardon PM625, Pioneer AM/FM Tuner model F-5 and a Sony 5 disc CD player. The Harman and Pioneer my brother purchased new back in 1985-6.

So worth it to someone to pick up in Oakville or just e waste ??
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The 625 looks ok, nothing special. It looks like you could sell it for something (people are asking ~$100, not sure what they are getting).
 
GVH said:
Cleaning up moms TV stereo setup. Three items going out Harman Kardon PM625, Pioneer AM/FM Tuner model F-5 and a Sony 5 disc CD player. The Harman and Pioneer my brother purchased new back in 1985-6.

So worth it to someone to pick up in Oakville or just e waste ??
Click to expand...

PM sent....
 
My Sennheiser HD598 headphones are still blowing me away. Enjoy your gear everyone.

This may be the most impressive song I've ever heard for side-to-side details; made for heaphones listening. Definitely produced in a manner to take advantage of that style of presentation. Deep, immersive and surreal. Enjoy.
[video=youtube;ksTFj6L0mao]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTFj6L0mao[/video]



On a separate note, I saw this and am posting it for general interest. I saw this from a documentary called The Real Mad Men of Advertising. Great doc and they discuss an amazing amount of racism and sexism in early advertising. Here's an audio/stereo ad from the early 70's. I only found one text reference on the entire internet from this ad... Lost to much of history, but I got it up here, it's literally a picture of my tv so don't mind the artifacts.
attachment.php


Old school advertising.
 
Thanks again to GVH for the gear. I restored the JBL L46 speakers. They had surround rot (very common for the age). I redid the surrounds on both woofers. Replaced all the capacitors in the xovers (dried up electrolytics to polys). The walnut veneer cabinets also cleaned up nicely with a treatment of Howard's Feed-N-Wax. Made up some gaskets for the drivers and sealed the xovers to the the cabinet to get rid of any factory air leaks.

They sound fantastic, classic 80s west coast sound.
 

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Here is the turntable (Pioneer PL300), new cartridge (Ortofon Omega). Cleaned, lubed, fully aligned and adjusted. Works great...

All my other turntables (Duals) have Ortofon OM cartridges, the Omega is a poor man's OM (OM body). Too bad they discontinued this cartridge, still some inventory out there (how I got this one). I figured worse case I end up with a spare cartridge, but the combo works good.

Thanks again to GVH.
 
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Heather is very happy that everything is getting used. I was talks to my brother over Easter. He remembered putting a switch on the one unit to turn off the display at night. Thanks for putting it back in use
 
GVH said:
Heather is very happy that everything is getting used. I was talks to my brother over Easter. He remembered putting a switch on the one unit to turn off the display at night. Thanks for putting it back in use
Click to expand...

That switch was funny. It is on the PM625, as I was deoxing the amp I noticed one of the input selector switches (AUX) was noisy and I tracked it down to the portion of the switch that powers the indicator LED. Not wanting to replace the input switch, I started reverse engineering the circuit looking for the best place to cut the power to the LEDs....that's when I found the DIY LED power switch, problem solved!
 
I was able to spend some time with new Sennheiser HD 599 open back headphones recently and thought I'd give some feedback for anyone interested in such audiophile equipment comparisons. After breaking in the new 599's (yes, they changed over the break-in), I AB demo'd them extensively against the previous generation version HD 598 open back headphones (which are legendary). Both are great headphone options in the open back design and ~$200 price category.

Not surprisingly, the HD 599 headphones are quite similar to the 598's. The sound quality differences were subtle, but still significant to the audiophile ear. I found the 599's to be a little more dynamic than the 598's but at the expense of the open soundstage. The 599's had good punch, but sounded more like traditional headphones where the music seems to be coming from inside your head rather that around you in a room. The 599's also seem to play a little louder than than the 598's for any given volume. That complicates listening comparisons but recognizing it and its effects is important. The extra dynamics (noticeable in the bass region) were welcome with the HD 599 but not at the expense of the natural open soundstage that was lost. If you want more dynamics closed back headphones will do the job even better, with the Sennheiser HD 598 Cs (closed back) series for example, plus other brands. My recommendations are to go with Sennheiser HD 598 headphones.

Other minor differences (which may be more or less important to you than I)...
The 599's look better in pictures. The 598's look better in reality.
The headband color, material and sewing is better on the 599's, the 598 has more head band cushion.
The 599 headband has no identifying emblem on the leather, the 598 has Sennheiser embossed onto its headband leather.
The 599's fit tighter on the head, the 598's were more relaxed in fit.

Cheers.
 
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Ok I get its the audiophile thread, but I need a kitchen radio. I'm leaning towards a Bose wave soundtouch IV , wifi and bluetooth.

We have a nice Denon that plays into multiple rooms with Energy speakers and a vintage Hitachi set running in the basement on French 3A speakers , so I have most bases covered.

We just want a kitchen radio so the whole house isn't rocking out while making dinner. Thoughts??? not lectures, thoughts........
 
@crankcall I use my google home mini, but the sound is tinny. Not sure if the full size home is better.
Alexa has a system that has a screen and speakers that you could use to pull up recipes as well, but not sure if it available in Canada.
The Sonos speaker seems to get good reviews as well.

Sent from my purple G4 using Tapatalk
 
The sonos look and are very good, the google home stuff just isn't pleasant IMHO. Its a two part problem, my wife listens to a lot of 70's / 80's pop, Celine Dion and The Captain and Tenille ect. I swear every time she plays that stuff through my stereo I need to sacrifice a chicken and burn some sage grass to purify the system. And just having a small system in the kitchen has value to me and if it's wifi, I can play internet radio when I'm in the room.

I know it sounds wankerish to complain about changing all the settings back to my specs on the house stereo but its walk into the room, push a button and there is CBC playing what I want (randy bachman vinyl tap on sunday nite) , or push a button and stare saying WTF has transpired in here.
 
We have a Sonos in our kitchen, its great. Sounds good and doesn't take up too much space. Nearly 2 years now and no issues. We bring it out on the deck and out to the pool sometimes, love it.
 
I have an old iPad stuck in a Samsung music dock that works great. Can play whatever I want from Spotify (or music library) and it keeps the iPad charged. I can link my phone via Bluetooth and play music from there too or use the phone as a Spotify remote controller.
 
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