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For the past few years, I have only listened to pretty capable speakers or good-to-great headphones, my daily drivers are definitely ASR-approved and are some of the best gear I've set ears on, personally. Today I fired up a portable speaker that I actually voiced myself, but something like 8-9...

I have a couple Hypex NC500 monoblocks from Nord Acoustics. One of them fails to power on promptly when it's been off of mains power for a long time. It takes about 20 minutes for it to actually switch on after both switches are on. I contacted Nord, and Colin North (to his great credit)...

I'm speaking a bit ignorantly here, but I've heard of instances where people who are born without vision, or lose vision at some point develop exceptionally acute hearing. I don't think this gives them extended frequency range, but there are recorded cases of blind people who develop...

The Verge's coverage of the WiiM amp release came up in my feed. I was surprised to read that it has "vintage audio hi-fi chops" since it just came out and streams over wi-fi. Wow, okay, ignoring the assumption that there are basically no other streaming amps, this guy believes passive...

The old main system is making way for the new. See also. These aren't TOTL or glamorous speakers, but they did sell for 4 figures in the 80s and IMO sound pretty reasonable with some room correction. They can get very loud (power handling = 500+?) and go quite low (solid into the mid-30s) for...

Selling 2 Nord Acoustics NC500 Monoblocks. I am the second owner, and kept them in a fan-cooled cabinet. I tried hard not to let them get above ambient temperature. As you can see they date to 2018, so even pessimistically they probably have 5 good years in them, probably more like 15. If you...

I thought it would be interesting to have some data on ASR users' rooms, since it comes up a lot and as we know determines a great deal about what systems ought to be recommended. Unfortunately it's hard to collect this information properly in the forum's multiple choice poll format, (each...

I'm moving at the end of the week, which is almost all happy news when it comes to my audio setup, because I managed to sneak some LS60s and KC62s into the furniture budget under the mandate of preserving decor and eliminating boxes/wires. It's all gravy, I don't mind having a nice-looking...

Decibels have been in use for measuring the strength of signals since the very early days. I looked it up and apparently they were first employed to measure attenuation in telegraph wires. They're useful because they are a tidy way to compare values across very wide ranges of absolute values...

I was just listening to a pop recording from 1980 and the hi-hats are mixed just a couple smidges too high for modern equipment. Then I remembered there are tools to fix tonal balance using EQ on a consistent and automatic basis. Anyone that's played around with DAWs or in the recording /...

You might have seen the recent claim that room temperature superconductivity has been achieved. It's probably bogus this time, but it's not out of the question that it would happen someday, so - what if...

Pace, Rhythm and Timing. So, I have seen this term around for some years, and I think that Pace and Timing maybe relate to perceived transient response. I am not going to work too hard to related subjective language to measurements, that's neither my problem nor my responsibility. However, am...

Long story short they have put together an ANC setup where a rectangular plasma transducer is used to cancel incident sound. It looks like it works pretty well, and they don't even need a helium tank, apparently: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230531102009.htm...

A while back I proposed some kind of study that would home in on what people are really referring to when they use subjective language about audio. Overall nobody was too excited about it and there are many people around here who regard that as an impossibility. Well, I don't like the word...

I have a UMIK-2 and a Behringer ECM-8000, maybe two if I can find the other one. The Behringer is probably just okay, but more importantly, I have no calibration file or measurements for it. Still, it might be useful to use it for certain types of measurement. If I take a measurement with the...

Located in San Francisco. Realizing that this combo is overkill for my needs, I don't use MQA either, so I am going to sell these and downgrade a bit. These are the MQA D90 and the non-discrete A90. Looks like they are going for roughly $500 and $350 on eBay in used condition...

Inspired by this thread, I thought I would share how companies can make their equipment seem amazing (when it isn't) without technically lying. I used to do this as a significant part of my job. I was careful never to lie about anything, but I had to make the product sound as impressive as...

I think we would all agree that a large part of the high-end audio industry is based on perceived (but non-physical) improvements in sound quality. The placebo effect / expectation bias is so strong that you could argue that fighting it is one of the primary purposes of this site. Let's take a...

Per some discussion on the "whence ABX?" thread, I figured I could kick off the FAQ we envisioned. Part of the idea is heading off the "But I definitely heard a difference between..." newbie threads without creating a bad experience for new, enthusiastic, but perhaps misguided users. I think a...

Many of us throw up our hands when equipment is described as "fast", "slow", "crisp", "warm", etc. It seems impossible to relate these terms to measurable characteristics. I have a slightly more optimistic view, in that subjective descriptions must be correlated with what people hear, and what...