The HiFi and Home Theater thread...what gear are you listening to?

[chuckmiller]

I don't have any of the equipment you guys talk about here but it has been a joyous trip down memory lane seeing names like Nakamichi, Carver, McIntosh, Harmon.....
In 1980 I had a distant friend who had a Nakamichi Tuner/Tape deck/Phonograph set he bought in Japan a few years earlier. It was his baby and he smiled every time he talked about it.

We lived out in the sticks and my favorite place in town was Sound Advice, Tampa.

[Rdenney]

Sigh. HK deck lasted a whole week. Right channel crapped out, after the Dolby chips but before the headphone amp and output plugs. Gotta go on the bench for more detailed troubleshooting.

So I bit the bullet and bought a cassette deck from rather higher on the food chain, though still not high end.



Nakamichi’s best “affordable” deck, circa 1988. I paid ten times as much as for the HK deck (“fully serviced!”), so I hope it lasts more than a week. But if it doesn’t, it will be worth the overhaul. In playing back old recorded tapes, it’s awesome—the best sounding deck I’ve ever owned by far. Just ordered some empty tapes.

I also added a Yamaha YDP2006 parametric equalizer. It’s digital (20-bit), so I won’t routinely use it, though it adds the least mud of any EQ I’ve ever used. Mostly bought it for EQing home recordings. Six EQ bands, high-pass, low-pass, and four notch filters per channel. But I do hear the -80dB hiss floor it adds if I turn the volume all the way up, compared to when I defeat the processor loop on the preamp. (My system is substantially quieter than that.) Not important at settings the building structure can handle, for when I really need EQ.

I’ve been hearing 60-cycle hum in my phono input, and it appears in needledrops at around -50 dB (about 45 dB below music peaks). Some of it was the Thorens AC transformer wall wart, which I replaced. That helped by about 10 dB. What remains that Yamaha EQ can notch out with its notch filter set to its highest Q (it does not noticeably alter a tuba low Bb at 58 Hz, to demonstrate how narrow that filter is). Hum disappears. The -80 dB hiss is invisible beneath the cartridge noise floor. So far, no damage to the sound that I can hear.

Rick “whose stereo pile is like a collection of vintage Seikos” Denney

[Rdenney]

The Nakamichi BX-300 really is a great cassette deck. Empty tapes arrived and sound fantastic. Now, I can make some tapes for my vintage Toyota truck.

Latest find is a Tascam CD401 CD player. I paid $25 for it, in non-working condition, mostly to get rack ears for my other one. But after moving those to the other deck, I couldn’t resist opening it up. The belt had turned to goo and that’s why the drawer wouldn’t open. Replacing that solved that problem.

But then it wouldn’t lower the CD onto the spindle when the drawer closed. I removed and disassembled the transport, and discovered that it had been transported without the lock engaged, and the plastic part that flips the clutch for the lowering tray was broken off. I superglued it back in place. Deck now works perfectly. The transport is the upper-line Sony KSS-151—worth saving if possible. The deck is a commercial unit with balanced outputs, but I usually use the coaxial digital output to my Musical Fidelity DAC. An hour of repair time well spent.

Also bought a PreSonus Studio 24c for making recordings, mostly because it has a good microphone preamp and my mixer board is producing an obnoxious amount of 60-cycle hum in the left channel. I recorded a backing track for my quintet, and another one for some larger ensemble as an experiment. I listen to recordings of myself unhappily, I must say.

Damn, that new Rick Wakeman album is astoundingly good. Listening to it again as I type.

Rick “fun with Superglue” Denney

[Samanator]

After several talks with Walter it has begun.

These were ordered last week. Sorry Alta Audio Alec speakers.



And this was ordered yesterday. Krell K300i with the DAC module.

[chuckmiller]

Disregard, I just read the other post.

[geoffbot]

They look like Altas to me?

[skywatch]

While not exactly "high fidelity" I am building a DIY project for an art piece. It does involve audio, though.

[Samanator]

While not exactly "high fidelity" I am building a DIY project for an art piece. It does involve audio, though.

Looks like something using Raspberry Pi so possibly a streaming audio player. Not certain what the microphone is for?

[Samanator]

After several talks with Walter it has begun.

These were ordered last week. Sorry Alta Audio Alec speakers.



And this was ordered yesterday. Krell K300i with the DAC module.

Today a VPI Prime Scout turntable was added to this pair. Probably overkill and a bit more than I needed, but it helped continue the US manufactured theme I had going and better aligned with the Krell and Alto speakers.




Sutherland Insight Phono Preamp. I believe this is US made too, but that was not really part of the discussion. My contact just raved about this brand of preamp and felt this was a required piece to hook the VPI to the Krell. In all honesty I did not research much on phono preamps and cartridges. Walter and I hand mostly discussed a VPI turntable that came in with a preamp and a cartridge as part of a package. Last night I asked if that was still the right turntable for this setup or should I move up some on the VPI line. Today I just suggested a range and we talked about five brands of turntables with some being less than the VPI and a few being more. I was happy to see we arrived at nearly the same conclusion I had over the past few days. The preamp is the only thing I totally missed on and came in about three times what I budgeted. What I had, which I will not name names, seemed good and was priced about 40% more that the VPI made one. It was shot down in seconds and the list were all up in this same price range.


I believe this is the cartridge we settled on, but I need to check since something sounds wrong: ORTOFON - Quintet Blue MC Phono Cartridge (Danish)




i was hoping Grado would have come up, but it was not even suggested (made in Brooklyn NY)

CD will be via a Cambridge Audio CXC v2 CD transport (UK) utilizing the DAC in the Krell. Consensus is this was the best until you get into some far more serious players (over $4K)which i did not see the need. This is mostly for my wife who has a pile of Asain music on CD that does not appear on most prime streaming services.



All this will be cabled together with a small fortune worth of AudioQuest cables(US). Now, like most things, I wait for things to show up. Many thanks to Walter, who fielded weeks of questions, helped me with the two prime pieces and hooked me up with a fantastic contact for the rest. This person had heard the Krell/ Alto Alec set up at an audio show and was very familiar with the capabilities. I was on a four-hour phone call discussing turntables, preamps, cartridges, CD players, and cables that will compliment the Krell and Alta Audio pieces. They asked questions, and I asked questions back and forth a few times. I think we narrowed down things to the right items that all complement each other.


I had a few times in the past weeks to read through this entire thread a few times. I kind of giggle at the initial premise for a system Walter proposed at the start of this thread. It was the premise I approached him about. Talking to Walter and him sending me to do some homework had that system kind of getting left on the side of the road. I saw this starting with a Carver tube amp or a thing or two from Macintosh since this had always been my gold standard for audio. That list has expanded quite a bit now. I've done massive amounts of reading since then, and all the main pieces except for the preamp and cartridges were on my lists of possibilities. The speakers were the hardest part to choose. I cannot wait to get these all in and patiently burn them in. Still trying to decide what the first song will be that I listen to out of the box and after sufficient burn-in. I have the time to listen to a few things until the parts start to arrive to make that choice. I'm hoping the speaker cables are not the last thing to show up. That could kill me to have the Krell and the Altas and nothing to connect them.

[skywatch]

Looks like something using Raspberry Pi so possibly a streaming audio player. Not certain what the microphone is for?

It's an installation piece for museums/galleries. I'll be making a few of them. It involves an interactive component, hence the microphone. If the basic construction turns out well (building a 24" plywood cube this afternoon as a prototype) I might be making a few of them.