I would post my venue's gear (d&b J-Series) but it's not technically mine! dead beat, I'm only 10 minutes away - I've seen your rig on SP but didn't know you were so close! I would love to hear it sometime, I'm thinking of building labs myself.
Oh yeah, I'm "Spesh" over on SP. Think I've got my own thread in the Rig porn section of the forum, though I haven't updated it in a while. Where are you based then? I mainly do nights in London, but the guy I run the rig with is over in South America at the moment, so just taking a short break currently. And yes, you can't go far wrong with labhorns. The sub is so weighty and effortless. Very tedious and time consuming build though and they are incredibly large and heavy.
Seeing as Deadbeat went slightly different, my little setup. Full active setup as in one amp per pair of speakers. One of the few things i look forward to when i go to work is getting to listen to this CDT Audio CL EF 120 12" subwoofer in a custom fibreglass box tuned to 60Hz Hybrid Audio Technology Imagine I6 1-2 Mids and tweeters Genesis ST60 2X50W Genesis ST100 2X100W Genesis SM100 Bridged to 280W Headunit Kenwood 8041B
You can get these pesky foam-pads as far as I know, but I wouldn't really like them. My old ones are made from cloth and the foam is only stuck underneath.
Excellent, so I feel the thread has enough posters and momentum for me to pose "that issue". Given neither the title, nor the OP really specifies the purpose of the thread, I hope it's not out of place; also, I hope that being in our well knit little tech-orientated community and not on some audiophile forum I can get some honest feedback! Chaps, I want to talk about the great A/V con? Case 1 Surely. Surely, surely, surely, no matter your choice of quantum mechanic reconciliation; an equipment stand has no bearing on the qualities of audio produced by the equipment thereupon placed? I would even go as far as to say that the notion is frankly, retarded. Case 2 I'm sorry, what? Are we seriously discussing differences in the sound qualities of digital optical cable? Case 3 Speaker cables... I'm no electronics expert... But surely any cable of suitable gauge, material, insulation, (resistance?) will perform identically? I completely understand the need for a good source, DAC, amp, and speakers; I can even buy into bi-amping, if the speakers are so inclined... and of course quality cabling to some extent (OFC, good termination) but seriously? TL;DR: Ignore the first two points, I doubt any of you can change my mind. But speaker cables... talk to me!
There's definitely a difference between buying a 50p digital cable from ebay and spending a few quid more... the one that's a few quid more will still be working 6 months down the line. Can't say that I see a point beyond that. With regards to speaker cables, I've demoed some single-core silver speaker cable and there was a very notable difference between the garden variety stranded copper cable I was using. But then again I've demoed silver plated stranded copper cable and couldn't tell any difference at all to garden variety stranded copper. For the record, I'm using pretty bog standard speaker cable at the moment. For racking, reading about the audio benefits behind £2000+ worth of rack are always worth a chuckle. Sure, spend more on a rack for higher-end equipment because high-end equipment tends to be heavy, and thus needs more support, but any more IMO is a bit silly. I understand the logic, lower vibrations = better sound from the components, so perhaps don't place your electronics on top of your subwoofer or small-block V8, but anything beyond that strikes me as getting in to the realms of seriously diminishing returns. Racking is one thing, though, what about the magic stones you can place ON TOP of your kit to make it sound better? http://www.shakti-innovations.com/audiovideo.htm I have a valve pre-stage, which would in theory be more susceptible to vibration than most, and haven't noted any difference going from a rack with supposedly outstanding vibration damping properties (home made, measured with a stethoscope, not by myself, I should add, but an interested party when it came to getting of it), to an MDF Ikea cupboard. Conversely, if someone goes out and spends thousands on racking and cables to make their hifi sound better, and through the placebo effect it does indeed sound better to them, then is that not money well spent if it adds to their enjoyment of the hifi?
Racking for a record deck I can understand; when the primary mechanism is a very delicate vibrating object you want to minimise any further vibrations to it. Under things like amps / CD players I'm a lot more skeptical. I would however be interested in trying to conduct a blind test between racked and unracked kit mind.
nice labs speakerplans users unite. i thought you were ninebar for a second but wrong paint and no powersoft amps
Dad is the audio fanatic in our house - The only part I know about in any details is a Linn Akurate DS as it needed to be setup on the network. The whole setup is near enough Linn gear. I'll get his spec to post when I get chance My gear is more towards legoman's thinking. I've got a Alpine setup running there Imprint unit as a Full Active setup of full Genesis Audio kit... Alpine IDA-X100 Alpine PXA-H100 Genesis Audio Audiophile 16.03 Component Speakers Genesis Audio Audiophile 30.1 Subwoofer 2x Genesis Audio Profile Two Amps 1x Genesis Audio Profile Sub Amp Nothing in your face and tried to keep things sound quality based. I'm wanting to tweak a few bits this summer. Installed everything myself from making the sub box, all car wiring etc. Only thing I didn't do its re-vinyl the tweeter A-pillar pods as I wanted it to look good with it being on show
CD players make sense as they spin, if you can reduce unwanted vibration then you need less processing & error checking by the DAC so you should get a purer sound. You can argue with amps that less vibrations stops cables from moving (although you're talking the smallest of movements) which stops the chance of errors and noise entering the signal chain. Although I'm going to say that the chance of the human ear actually noticing enough of a difference to warrant spending more than £500 on a rack is tiny. The same reduction in error checking is the theory behind expensive digital cables. dead beat - nice labs. Same ones from the SJ rig porn thread?
As has already been said, vibration dampening is a valid expenditure if you're listening off CD or vinyl, simply because they have moving read heads and discs. IIRC the Sony SACD ES line players had a weighted brass CD stabiliser to reduce vibrations in the same sort of vein. I don't have a problem with people putting anti vibration stands or racking all their gear if it helps them enjoy their music. I may raise an eyebrow if you're racking fully solid state gear though. Similarly with cables, I can hear a audible difference(usually the sound is brighter) between silver and copper, but no difference between copper and silver plated copper. I'm not convinced by audiophile digital cables though. Fairly certain the jitter introduced by a little more error checking is smaller than the difference in jitter from optical to USB and I can't hear any difference at all between the two.
Audio-cables have alot of myth to them, while it's actually pretty simple electronics and physics... resistance and impedance. The most simple rule is: short as possible and as big as possible. Simple example: 1000W amp, 8Ohm speakers, 20m cable, 0.75mm² for left and 4mm² for right speaker. The left speaker will only receive 895W, while the right speaker receives 980W. So. Don't waste money on cables advertised for HiFi, but get pure copper-cables with the biggest possible diameter and make them as short as possible (cables for either speaker need to be of the same length tho!). EDIT: Here's a list for pure copper-cables... As you can see, a 5 meter long cable with 4mm² has the same result as a 1 meter long cable with only 0.75mm². Basically for everything under 2 meter length you'll hardly notice any differences, no matter what cable you use... 2% difference isn't really noticable I'd say. And then it also depends on the cables and the chokes used inside the speakers and the crossover. If the diameter and the quality of these is smaller and worse then your speaker-cable, then you're wasting efforts aswell.
While I have you all in one place... I am after a new pair of headphones and potentially mic to replace my Steelseries Siberia. I could probably keep the mic and clip it onto the headphone cable (would modify the clip so it doesn't bite). I would love a little amp or DAC or whatever (not really sure what would be best as I am pretty new to AV). My budget for headphones and DAC/amp would be around £100 if that is realistic? I can forget about a replacement mic for now.
Assuming it doesn't need to be portable you could get this Behringer UCA202 and a Creative Aurvana Live then get an amp later if you plan of getting headphones that would really benefit from amping.
Nope doesn't need to be portable though it might be nice. I think if I needed something portable it would be separate from my main setup. Cheers for those suggestions I will look into them right now. Just so I can do a bit of my own research into what is what, what sort of things should I be looking for to improve my audio experience on my PC?
In order of improvement: 1) Headphones/Speakers 2) Decent quality music and sound 3) DAC (to a point) 4) Amp (if required) 5) everything else Basically so long as you have good quality music and sound streamed from a decent DAC to a nice pair of (adequately powered)headphones or speakers you're dandy.
IMHO speakers are your biggest priority. The one thing that above all else needs to be right is the speaker - room interaction. Once you get speakers that play nicely with the room, then you look at the rest of the chain. I also think that speakers are where you see the biggest changes both tonally and in terms of quality. If someone gave me £10k to build a system with, £6-£7k of that would go on speakers and room treatment (I'm talking either electronic or proper panels / traps, not resonators, shakti stones or any of the other foo bollocks that permeate the hobby). Most of the best systems I've heard have all been relatively heavily weighted in favour of the speakers.