I’ve recently bought a new CD player and some new speakers. They are working really nicely and I’m delighted with them. The guy from the shop was very helpful when it came to choosing them. He also recommended I try some fancy isolation feet for the speakers and, despite my initial scepticism, I found they really improved the sound. After he’d installed what I bought, he suggested that when I was happy with it all I should go back to the shop for some upgrades to the mains cables for my components. I have looked around the internet for guidance and found plenty of people arguing that these things are a complete waste of money and others arguing that they can make a massive difference to audio quality. Having been sceptical about the speaker feet but found they made a huge difference, I’m wondering whether I should take the salesman seriously but before I go back to the shop I thought I’d see whether anyone here (I’m especially looking at you, @fentonsteve) can give me an idea whether it’s likely to be worth it.
All advice gratefully received…
How much copper wire does the juice to power your kit traverse before it arrives at your plug socket? Why would the last metre or so of cable from the plug socket to the component make any difference? Maybe if the cable supplied with the component is badly made it might but as the supplied cable will comply with industry standards that seems unlikely. Maybe the best way to find out is to ask your audio dealer if you can try a cable on loan to compare the supplied cable to the replacement cable. I have in the past made a couple of power cables and two of them are still doing duty in my rig. They are satisfyingly chunky and butch looking as are my speaker leads. Aesthetically I like them and their sheer size is reassuring but apart from that I couldn’t vouch for any improvements with any certainty regarding sonics.
Are your speakers on a solid floor or on a sprung floor? Is the room carpeted or bare wood? Just curious as to whether your speakers are coupled to the floor or decoupled.
Thanks @pencilsqueezer. Your argument seems like common sense and I’ve seen it made by others. The main point I’ve seen on the other side is that expensive upgrades will be better protected against “interference” than the ones the manufacturers supply – which makes you wonder why the manufacturers of expensive kit don’t supply them with adequate cabling straight out of the box but what do I know?
I suspect the shop would lend me some cables to try – they lent me a cd player and more than one pair of speakers before I chose the ones I bought – but I’m wondering whether it’s worth the time and trouble. I’m also slightly bored with listening to music for how it sounds rather than just enjoying it for its own sake.
The speakers are on a solid wooden floor. The difference between the sound with manufacturer-supplied spikes and with acoustic feet was huge.
It was the electronic interference thing that prompted me to make some leads. I use one on my amplification and the other on my dac. I use the supplied leads with my streamer and my CD transport. It all sounds fine to my old ears so who knows. My basic position on cables is to use well made properly shielded cables. This is the philosophy I’ve employed with all my interconnects. It doesn’t have to cost the earth. I’ve spent around £600 on cables.
I thought about replacing the spikes on my previous pair of speakers a few years ago with Iso-Acoustic Gaia feet but they are a trifle costly and I didn’t want to invest £500 on something that possibly wouldn’t improve matters and could even make things worse so I didn’t bother. Being in a first floor flat my speakers sit on a carpeted concrete raft and seem to be happy enough on their chunky spikes.
I couldn’t agree more with saying sod it after a while and just relaxing into enjoying the music, it is after all what the kit is for and that’s where I am at now. I occasionally get the urge to upgrade this or that but I think I’ll just stick to replacing components when something stops working. I saw a poll recently over on that Steve Hoffman Forums where the op was “What is more important to you. The music or the kit?” I was appalled to find just how many replied that it was the former rather than the latter. I find that response unfathomable.
Why unfathomable? Wouldn’t you agree that former (music) should be more important than latter (kit)?
I’m slightly off my game today, so it’s possible that I might have missed a deeply ironic, mildly humorous comment – if so, I apologise.
I’m guessing a former/latter swapsy.
The Hoffmanites tend towards the kind of music I wouldn’t give house room to, so why should I give their opinion on equipment any more credit?
I’ve tried helping out occasionally with headphone queries but my advice is mostly ignored in favour of some entirely wrong nonsense.
Oops I meant that the other way around of course. I need a sub editor.
Anything which is CE (or UKCA) marked must meet the legal minimum requirements for electromagnetic emissions and immunity. And the legal minimum levels are very low, I can tell you (having tested and redesigned products which have failed it).
There’s a lot less EM interference around now than there was 25 years ago, largely due to compliance with the 2004 EMC Directive being a prerequisite to “placing an item on the market”.
Yes, that’s the thing.
If nothing else is permitted to emit EM radiation, why would you need to buy extra stuff to isolate your audio kit against it?
Brexit.
The applicable standard is an international one, not just an EU one.
Sorry, Mike – it was a poor attempt at humour. Next time I’ll add a smiley face, just to be clear.
A bit of congestion on my humour bypass, currently.
;o)
Before I start, to address the flat-earthers: no, not all cables are the same – I’ve measured them.
Right, back to the answer:
Interconnect cables can definitely make a sonic difference. The source impedance is fairly high, the current flowing is low, the signal level is low (1 Volt peak), the load impedance is very high, and there’s lots of external interference from radio/TV/WiFi/4G which needs rejecting.
Speaker cables can definitely make a sonic difference. Source impedance is medium, current flow is medium, signal level is medium (about 30V peak) and the load is a complex impedance.
Mains cables: well, the source impedance is very low, the peak current flow is quite high, the signal level is very high, the source impedance is very low. In purely Physics terms, it shouldn’t have any impact *if* the power supply is designed properly (and most are, because of CE emissions rules).
In summary: probably not.
Most domestic listening rooms do not have ideal acoustics. I’d spend the cash on acoustic treatments (carpet/rugs/heavy curtains/acoustic panels, etc), interconnect and speaker leads, long before spending any money on posh mains leads, and even then I’d borrow the leads to demo first.
Put it this way: I have a pretty high-end system, a soundproofed and acoustically treated room, upgraded interconnects and speaker cables, a dedicated mains power ring circuit, and I use the stock power leads.
I read a good article on bi wiring speakers which went into the science and concluded that theoretically it does make a difference, but moving your chair into the right spot makes a much bigger difference. See also positioning your speakers properly.
Yes. There are many more problems to fix before you start worrying about mains power leads.
Yup. Room first. Then speakers. Those two things will make the most difference.
Amen.
No
I agree with Dai.
Me too.
I vaguely recall reading an article about this many years ago.
I decided it was bollocks when the writer started talking about “clean” and “dirty” electricity.
It’s all electrons and as far as I’m concerned while Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies to them, I’m fairly sure there is no indeterminacy between clean and dirty electrons.
Dirty, dirty electrons…oh, my!
There’s something to be said about ideally not running your nice hi-fi on the same ring main circuit as the washing machine/immersion heater/boiler.
Although, to be honest, most of the problems I’ve seen in the past (from thermostats, etc) were to do with EM interference rather than conducted emissions and best dealt with at source.
Thank you very much. That’s a decision made. I’ve got good interconnects and good (new) speaker cables. The feet are Iso-Acoustic Gaia ones. I’ve played around a lot with positioning which definitely makes a big difference. The new speakers need to stand in slightly different places from the ones they have replaced and they sound really good. I’ve reached the point where I can’t improve the sound further in the room (accepting that it also has to work as a place to spend time not listening to music) with the kit I’ve got. On the basis of this wise counsel, I’m going to stop now and just enjoy listening to my music.
Put on some Little Feat and crank it up. That’s electricity.
Just because I am a nosey bastard, how much were you thinking of spending on a mains lead?
I made mine some years ago for about £15 each. I’d put money on any audio dealer shilling cables that cost considerably more than that.
I hadn’t got that far. But I’m guessing they don’t come cheap. Hence the post.
The advice is always ‘trust your ears’…something which I recently ignored with almost tragic results. Like Steve, I was also in the market for a new CD player. My existing system was Roksan Caspian M2 amplifier and matching CD player, with a pair of Chartwell Ls5/fs, but the CD player started getting fussy about some CDs. It did this 3 years ago and I had it refurbed by Roksan for 400 sovs, which was a bit much, but hoped that would be it….clearly not. Not going down that route again, I decided to buy new. Now….in my defence I love the Roksan sound and all the reviews of the new gear were positive and referenced the heritage Roksan sound. What could possibly go wrong? They now only do a CD transport, having moved the DAC into the new Caspian amp, so I pushed the boat out….right out!….and splashed out on both. Built like a battleship, the amp would do your back in if you don’t lift it sensibly. Of course, there is a bloody app to download, and you are supposed to link it to both the amp and CD player. It wouldn’t link to the CD transort, but it seemed to work ok without. The control buttons are awful, tiny and invisible in low light. The amp has a huge single round knob which controls everything. The CD player sometimes played and no sound came through – or the amp would switch off randomly. The worst thing? The sound. Edgy, bassy and over bright, it was the most fatiguing thing I have ever heard. My old system was natural, relaxing, transparent- this seemed the polar opposite. Bugger! The whole lot went back, and I decided to just get a new CD player to go with the old amp. My HiFi shop have always looked after me, and went there and confessed my sins. My big shock was to hear that many manufacturers are ceasing to produce CD players as the mechanisms are going out of production. He could only recommend two, which I auditioned and went for the Naim. It sounds terrific with the Roksan amp….phew! Big lesson learned.
What a nightmare. I’m glad my nearly 30 year old Arcam system is trucking on and sounding great.
30 year old Arcam is the heart of my system.
No interest in “upgrading” it.
Yo brother
One of the main reasons I went for a Naim CD player (to go with my Naim pre-amp/DAC) rather than a cheaper CD transport, is Naim’s home-built CD mechanism. Hopefully it will be repairable in future.
To put it into historical context, CD players have been around about as long as the ZX81 home computer. So they’re now antiques. They’ve been replaced by this new technology called, erm, “record players”.
Just to add that Naim have stopped making CD players too. My shop had a couple left. My other option was a Rega, but I wasn’t keen on the top loader thingy, the display was a bit basic and the sound was harsh on some discs.
You sound like someone who might like Quad gear…
Don’t worry, Nigel, they offer a lifetime g’tee.
Did the Roksan have a red light?
Applause icon
But you don’t have to put it on.
But you do need one of these to make your streaming sound better 😉
https://www.audioquest.com/products/diamond-rje-ethernet-cable?srsltid=AfmBOoqvGNXWeNWkT30KD3Iwhktbc7fCG3i_PshOUzAQh_GzIKKpLDt1
“Dear Audioquest, please eff off…”
I agree with this too. Audioquest pah!
Just the other day I was looking at a report that there’s a current resurgence in CD sales, among some younger punters getting sick of streaming but not wishing to go down the expensive vinyl route. But that there aren’t many manufacturers of decent-quality drives any more.
I also seem to recall hearing that all of the cheaper CD players still available are using the same cheaply-knocked-out mechanisms that were formerly used in computers, designed just for data transfer.
Yes, the CD revival has been happening for a few years.
It’s getting very difficult to source a drive with a red (CD) laser now. Most are Blu-Ray drives which produce a beam which is too small for ideally reading CDs.
I have an old Toshiba CD-ROM drive (with a red laser), pulled from an old PC, which I put in a case and connect by USB for ripping. It isn’t the fastest, but it is the best, at reading scruffy CDs.
I have a couple of players. An old Marantz that I keep as a backstop for when my Audiolab 9000 cdt goes belly up. The Audiolab uses a Teac transport and so far it has played everything I’ve thrown at it. If I replace the Audiolab in the fullness of time it will probably be with a Jays Audio CDT 2 Mk.3 or the much cheaper option of a Shanling ET 3 if funds are tight. I may be wrong about this but the current trend seems to be for transports rather than players. I prefer transports, just add the dac of your choice.
Re CD drives and ripping, slowing the speed seems more efficient and effective in fashioning a serviceable CD R from a DL. Given my laptop no longer comes with one inbuilt, I have learned that max is certainly not the best.
(Excuse my lo-fi contribution to the post, but it seemed salient to mention to those of us who still like a CD on the shelf and in the car.)
Talking of, now cars too no longer have players, of course, and I wonder what the panel recommends on that front?
A muso pal spent ages on recording, mixing and mastering her CD, and the artwork, then got it duplicated at the cheapest place she could find. All 100 CDRs recorded at maximum speed, none of them playable.
My 10-year-dolf VW Golf still has a CD player (in the glovebox) but I play most from a USB stick plugged into the ‘phone charger port’ next to the ciggy lighter. It even plays Flac files at 24/96!
I use an Hitachi drive to burn CDs to the SSD that resides in the belly of my streamer. I have no way I can adjust it’s read speed but so far it’s burned everything to the SSD just fine.
I think Retro needs to take a deep breath and think about signing up to a streaming service. I recommend Qobuz. Take out a yearly subscription. It’s cheaper.
Thanks for that, ‘Squeezer 😉
I actually have a streaming service: Apple Music, which serves my purposes. And, yes I use it to find and test drive new stuff, I still prefer the clunky have and hold of a disc. If I like something I will, if available, buy a hard copy, usually, again, if possible, via Bandcamp. Similarly, if only available as DL or is prohibitively expensively only on import, I will then make a CD-R, even if it then just sits on the shelf.
I like Apple as it “keeps” everything actually owned, as opposed to just “borrowed: from Apple Music, for posterity, on the cloud, either by matching or actually uploading my version. So, along with the back-up hard disk, I have the discs and the clouds for back-up. The sound is fine for my ears, which are fairly lo-fi, anyway, I reckon. It’s also handy in that my phone is an I-phone and so is contiguous, content wise, with the MacBook.
I too prefer a bit of physical. I was thinking that maybe there might be a way of streaming music to some sort of doohickey attached to your dashboard, such as a phone that’s connected to a Bluetooth speaker.
Having nothing better to do I have timed myself finding a CD on the shelf, switching on the CD player, loading the CD and waiting for it to read, against the time taken to activate my streamer, load the app, find what I’m looking for and press play. The streamer maybe just edges it, but taking the CD from its digipak, handling it carefully followed by the satisfying clunk of the CD player drawer closing – you just can’t beat it.
Agree but needle hitting vinyl is even better.
Whilst I was discussing this in the shop the chap said that Teac were one of the few remaining drive manufacturers.
Presumably all this is being driven by the market and there just aren’t that many CD players being sold, particularly at the ‘upper’ end. Richer Sounds still have quite a few at various price points, but my experience with the Roksan Attessa CDT makes me very dubious about what’s inside some of them. The Roksan Caspian 4g amp hasn’t been matched with a high end CDT – to be clear, the DAC sounded very good with my Bluesound streamer and the internal preamp for my turntable seemed very good too, but I needed a great CD solution (and there were apparent technical issues with the app on the amp). For over £3k I wanted better!
Cyrus always seems to be the choice of the What HiFis of this world (and a friend has one), but I dislike the aesthetics and particularly the slot loading mechanism which makes me feel queasy about the thing coming out again. My shop (Gulliford in Exeter by the way – highly recommended) won’t stock the things as they feel the loading mechanisms are risky.
I loath slot loaders. My Audiolab and my Marantz both have a drawer mechanism which I tolerate. It will be top loader for me if I have to seek a replacement.
As an aside the Shanling ET3 transport has a Phillips SAA7824 drive and a Sanyo HD850 laser assembly. Around £620. I may buy one and mothball it just in case.
I’m with you on slot loaders, having had issues with Cyrus and IIRC Arcam too. Wouldn’t have another.
I lost a CD to an in-dash slot-loading car CD player. The Parcel Force van skidded on ice, crashed into my parked car, and wrote it off. The car electrics (along with lots else) died and I couldn’t eject the CD.
Luckily it was a CDR, so I didn’t lose much money on it. It was an old banger, and the CD player and aftermarket in-door speakers were worth about as much as the rest of the car put together.
My old 3.0 litre Legacy had a slot-loader that swallowed 6 CDs. Being of a risk-averse nature when it comes to my record collection, I never gave it a commercial CD in all the years I had it – always CD-R copies of my own originals. Bless the car, when it finally went The Way Of All Tin, it dutifully spat back out all 6 of its load without hesitation.
I’d do a bit of checking up before buying the Shanling ET3. I bought their cheaper CR60, which I really like, but the company got called out on the same Sanyo/Philips marketing. Shanling said:
“Discussed the topic of CR60’s Hardware with our main engineer, here is their response:
Sanyo discontinued production of the laser, but the original factory is still producing them unchanged. To our knowledge, the unit used in CR60 is the same as the original HD850, even if it’s missing the Sanyo marking. As far as we are aware, similar approach is taken by other CD manufacturers on the market.
We decided that going forward we will not be using Sanyo name in our marketing materials, to avoid any confusion.
Servo System is based on Philips technology, but there is no physical Philips mark on it.”
Sanyo was bought by Panasonic in 2009 and the brand had disappeared by 2011, certainly on the pro av side I dealt with. I was told that Panasonic wanted the battery technology so the microwaves, TVs etc were dropped as were most, but not all of, the projectors, although a small number of models were rebranded as Panasonic.
The Cyrus (and Rega) transports use data DVD/BD drives to ‘speed-read ahead’ and buffer the data in memory. This means lower jitter and any read errors can be re-read (rather like Exact Audio Copy does on a computer). But it also means old/scruffy CDs might not read at all, due to the blue laser.
My Denon CD player, pretty old now but not ancient, has “gone on the blink”.
It will no longer load, let alone play CDs. When I open the CD tray it immediately closes itself again, before I can put a CD in. If I catch it and put in a CD it then cannot read it.
Lots of cheap-ish Chinese options Mike from companies such as Fiio and SMSL.
The two Fiio models look really good at good prices. Probably getting the Denon fixed would cost more than buying the DR13.
A shame the DR15 seems to only be available with a clear lid. I don’t need to see the CD spinning, I’d prefer a solid lid.
Channel your inner Val Singleton and break out the sticky backed plastic.
I saw in a YouTube review clip that it comes complete with a screen saver for the glass lid.
Perhaps I could colour it in..
…with green highlighter, perhaps?
My old Rotel CD player has developed a similarly eccentric tic – the drawer has become very temperamental in its old age, sometimes gliding open and shut easily, other times juddering and sticking halfway. Still, I do like how it sounds, even if it looks like a boxy late 1980s Volvo estate, compared to the rest of my kit.
I had originally only planned to buy new speakers. I thought that my Musical Fidelity X-Ray CD player (which had been expensively uprated by Musical Fidelity in 1999) was fine but I was shocked to hear how much better a new Musical Fidelity player sounded. So I ended up buying one – and there weren’t many other options to choose from.
This guy does suggest a Blu-ray player to play CDs, plus you get the bonus you can watch movies too! Also SACDs if that holds any interest.
I concur that the Oppo players are wonderful, but sadly they don’t make them any more. They can be found used but normally for a pretty high price
Oppo was the brand to beat, but they used the reference design and SDK provided by MediaTek. This included a transport with two lasers – one red for CD, one blue for DVD/BD.
Sony and Cambridge Audio also used the same MediaTek platform ‘under the hood’ of their top-of-the-range products, but both are now discontinued.
I was fortunate to decide on an upgrade to the Oppo UDP-205 just a few months before they decided to quit the market. It’s a fantastic player – both as a CD / BD player and as an Roon Ready endpoint for streaming (my most used mode).
It’s still going strong, but I dread to think what I’ll do if it ever gives up.
My CD player went on the blink last year and it was part of an all in one (Arcam Solo Music). It was quite old so I treated myself to the amp and CD player from the Arcam A5 range, which I am really pleased with.
Also, sort of going back to the original question, I used to live in an old house and while the wiring always passed inspection it definitely hadn’t been wired recently. When I tried the ‘test’ of turning up the amp volume (without playing anything) to see what happens there was a loud humming / buzzing noise. I bought a Tacima trailing socket which might be worth looking at. It got rid of the noise and definitely improved the sound where there was a lot of bottom end, which could get muddy. A couple of Jenny Lewis albums in particular were much improved. Conversely it sometimes made the top end a bit harsh/sibilant.
https://www.richersounds.com/tacima-cs947/
The thing in the filter that looks like a green doughnut with orange icing is a Common-Mode Choke, and the yellow boxes are Shunt Capacitors.
The CM Choke adds impedance at high frequencies, but the power supplies within many amps don’t like that – they are designed around low-impedance mains, able to ‘gulp’ current whenever needed.
Typical complaints when using CM Cokes with amplifiers are lesser/softer bass.
That’s interesting thanks, I was wondering if the bass on some CDs was a bit soft. We moved to a six year old house last year, rather than 150 year old, so shouldn’t have the issue now but I just carried on using the Tacima without thinking about it. I will swap it out for a normal trailing socket if necessary as we do have lots of sockets now and see how I get on.
I use a Tacima. I have my tv, blu ray player, Xbox and streamer plugged into it. I tried plugging an amp into it when I first bought it and immediately didn’t like the result. The sound became too diffuse, too greyed out. I’d never recommend using them with amps.
I am definitely going to swap it out. In the old house we had the kitchen and bathroom rewired but the rest was on two circuits which I was never too comfortable with but it passed tests so I left it.
Good idea. I’ve never encountered any problems when using mine with anything other than amps. This is undoubtedly for the reason Fents has given.
Let us know if you hear an appreciable difference when you power your amplification differently. Hopefully you will confirm that I’m not irredeemably daft.
Will do, although as to how daft you are…
I know. Lost cause.
Hi @pencilsqueezer and @fentonsteve. I switched from the Tacima to plugging the amp and cd player directly into wall sockets yesterday and have done quite a lot of listening since.
It might be confirmation bias or just listening closely but what already sounded really good on the whole now sounds noticeably better.
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious knob, the bass and drums are now tighter and more focussed The odd track where the top end made me wince, eg the horns at the start of Let’s Stay Together are much better. The ‘muddyness’ of some tracks has gone as well.
Everything is just better defined and louder for some reason; I have had to turn it down.
I thought I might be being helpful posting about the Tacima, it turns out I was helping myself. Thanks for your responses.
I hoped that you would notice a difference. It’s not a huge difference but it is meaningful. You’re going to be fine plugging your CD player into the Tacima it’s just amps that suffer negatively from using them in my experience.
I agree with this, although you shouldn’t really need any mains filtering at all if your incoming mains is to specification and your house wiring is reasonably modern.
Unfortunately, mains to my house is down the end of a bit of thin string, which feeds the nearby industrial estate, and the mains waveform often resembles a fuzzy square wave. Naim use toroidal transformers in all their products and I’ve had to install “ifi SilentPower” DC Blockers to prevent the transformers from buzzing as they saturate due to grotty unbalanced and offset mains supply.
Also: only 5 or 6 more comments for a hamper.
I have a fairly budget setup with Marantz CD and amp and Monitor Audio speakers duplicated in 2 rooms of the house. I did splash out on some decent speaker cable and was persuaded to buy Chord Company interconnects (which I convinced myself sounded worse than the bits of barbed wire that came with the original kit). The setup in one room sounds rich, full and splendidly musical, while the other room sounds like a 1970s telephone. I’ve given up fiddling with different wires, speaker positions, checking connections etc. to improve matters, but the solution eludes my amateur skills.
I use Chord Company interconnects throughout and they serve me well. I’ve never driven two sets of speakers from one amp, maybe that’s the issue. Perhaps you could try disconnecting the speakers in the room that sounds good and see if that makes a difference to the room that doesn’t sound good. If that doesn’t make any difference then try swapping the speaker connections over on the amp. If that does result in an improvement to the poor sounding room then the problem is the amp. I’m assuming that you haven’t inverted the polarity of the speakers in the poor sounding room. It’s easily done.
I worded that badly – the whole kit is duplicated, not just the speakers, so I have 2 sets of everything. I’ve swapped the speakers from one room to the other and swapped the amps, but the problem persists, so I can only assume it’s the acoustics of the room or the position of the speakers. In one room they are against a solid wall, in the other against a plasterboard wall, so that may be the reason.
My advice would be: go to the other room, where it sounds better.
Follow me for more helpful advice…
Or use headphones at least to check the setup, takes the room out of the equation
Your post got me thinking about my own speakers and how they don’t sound as good as they used to in other locations so I looked up “ported speaker placement” and it seems to be a black art of trial and error.
I’m not helping am I?
As a basic rule of thumb speakers need to be positioned as far away from walls as possible unless the manufacturer clearly states that they are designed to be closer to the front wall. This is usually to enhance bass response with boundry reinforcement. Yes plasterboard walls will affect the sound differently to solid walls. My advice would be to get the speakers away from the front wall and if they are in a corner definitely get them out of there. Put them on solid stands and out into the room. If the floor is solid use spikes if it’s sprung decouple the stands.
If the speakers are ported try blocking the port with a rolled up sock that will change the speaker’s bass response. It may help if the speakers cannot be repositioned.
I have a pair of rear ported Wharfedale Linton speakers and they have a three foot clearance away from front and side walls with a 10° degree toe in. I’d like to move them further into the room but that wouldn’t be practical. Positioning of speakers is crucial to their performance. It’s worth the time and effort to get it right.
Thanks for the useful advice @pencilsqueezer. I guess I need to do more experimenting with speaker positions. Thanks again.
I’m moving house soon and am unreasonably excited about the prospect of giving my Lintons more room all around to do their stuff.
They will reward you. I’ve found them to be quite picky about positioning. They react to even small adjustments so patience is required but when dialed in they scale up noticeably.
@pencilsqueezer – I’m particularly grateful for your enthusiasm for them as that gave me the nudge to buy them last year – and they really do sound magnificent. They’re punchy enough for techno but come into their own with acoustic music. They’ll like their new home
That sounded like a euphemism and I decided to comment as the thread is on 99. Hamper for Mr Walsh, maybe it will include some Chord interconnects rather than a vintage Tyne Brand pie.
Do you use their speaker cable @pencilsqeezer? Their website is very hard to follow. Do they sell the components then you build them or do you go to one of their dealers? Nowhere can I see “good 10′ bi wired 4 to 2 speaker cables”.
No I don’t. I used QED Silver Anniversary for a lot of years until I bought the Wharfdales and swapped them out for a pair of Mogami 3104 12 AWG cables that I bought from World’s Best Cables. They cost me less than £100. The Mogami 3104 is a four core cable so it would be ideal for bi-wiring. Mine are in two twisted pairs as that suits me better.
I do, but I went to my local dealer, borrowed their demo pair, then bought them at a healthy ex-demo discount.
The cable which made the biggest change was preamp to power amp but, when taken together, there’s a system synergy or some such cobblers. It just sounds better, anyhow.
Mmm thanks v helpful. you a banana or spade guy? I’m tempted by these chaps.
I bought a new Marantz amplifier a couple of months ago, as some of the outputs on the old one had failed – it was 15 years old.
What struck me was that they now expect you to integrate it with more than just the external audio devices, like the CD player, so the set up was slightly more involved, not a simple plug and play, as the old one was. Although it detects the inputs, I had to plug it into the TV to follow the steps on the screen and confirm them. If you want to use the Heos software to listen to internet channels you have to install the app on your phone or tablet. They have also dropped support for digital radio, I don’t know if this is a sign that it is on the way out, or just because they sell it in countries where digital radio never really took off.
There is also the option to calibrate the speakers. They supply a microphone which you use for this, and a cardboard tripod to put it on. You are supposed to put it in 8 locations in the room so it can measure the sound. It sounded okay to me without that so I didn’t bother. This is on a fairly mid-range model, not something aimed at the audiophile.
All a long way from playing records on my sister’s Dansette.
I have room correction software available via my streamer. I tried it and it made things worse so I stopped using it. Manually making a few very gentle adjustments to the streamer’s performance via parametric equalisation however has been more successful. Basically I just dropped a very slight bass shelf in and made a couple of slight adjustments to the upper midrange and treble. All of this makes absolutely zero difference to CD playback of course. Generally I stay well clear of the function now I’ve had a little play around with it or I’d spend hours fiddling around rather than listening to music.
I paid a couple of hundred quid for the DAB & FM module to be fitted to my streaming DAC/preamp. I don’t think I’ve used it more than twice as broadcast DAB encoding (MP2) and bitrates (128k) are rubbish compared to the online feeds (320k AAC). The difference in quality is not subtle.
I do use DAB on our kitchen radio as the FM reception is poor, but even then the sound can be ‘gurgly’ enough for Mrs F to ask if there’s something wrong.
Another Monitor Audio fan here – I’ve used them for speakers for at least the past 30 years.
I have friends with much more expensive and well renowned speakers, but I still come back to Monitor Audio for a sound that I really enjoy (very clean mid range, not bass heavy). I’m very much the cliche of speakers being the bit of HiFi that really is down to personal taste.
On the subject of interconnects, has anyone used balanced XLR cables? My aforementioned Roksan set up had the option between the CD player and the amp, and I couldn’t resist the upgrade. I think it was an improvement if memory serves (this was a few years ago I made the chnge). Unfortunately the Naim doesn’t have that option…somewhat oddly it has Din sockets as well as standard RCA ones, and they recommend using Din. I thought these disappeared years ago!
I use them. I was advised to connect my dac to my amp that way by my dac manufacturer so I did, then I added a balanced headphone amp to my set up so I had to find a solution for running my speaker amp and my headphone amp from the same dac. The answer was adding a passive switch. The dac is connected to the inputs on the switch and the amps are connected to two of the outputs. Switching between the two amps is just a matter of turning a rotary dial on the front of the switch. It works perfectly. I imagine the same thing can be accomplished using single ended rca but the fact that I have a lot of cables in close proximity to one another using balanced connections stops me fretting over possible ‘noise’ getting into the works. The problem is that now I’ve spent a fair amount of money on balanced cables I’m stuck if I ever need or want to replace an amp with looking for one with a balanced input. I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I may be daft. This reply might, just might furnish further proof as to the veracity of that sad state of affairs.
I use ‘em where I can: namely, DAC to preamp; and preamp to power amp.
I tested/compared RCA vs XLR between the two amps and difference was rather obvious.
I haven’t made the same comparison between the DAC and the pre – but I’m happy to take it on trust, based on the amp experience.
With my tinnitus (thanks, Pigs7) and emerging deafness, fancy hi-fi equipment is wasted on me, and probably was 45 years ago, as I was a noisy little sod who’d already seen the Sabs, Quo, Motorhead, and led Zeppelin (plus loads of punk gigs between the prog). hence good audio has been no use for me from adolescence onwards. I’m just glad I can still hear.
For my CD player I bought the most reasonably priced mains cable I could find (a Wireworld Stratus 7). Is it a sonic improvement over the standard cable that came with the player? Erm … I don’t know. I didn’t want to compare the two in case I couldn’t tell the difference, which would’ve left me feeling a bit of a fool.
I use balanced Wireworld XLR Eclipse interconnect cables (bought second hand) between the amp and CD player. Do they sound better than the standard RCA alternative? Erm … I don’t know. I didn’t want to compare the two in case I couldn’t tell the difference, which would’ve left me feeling a bit of a fool.