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If you could do it all over again...

Sal1950

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feynman

feynman

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In my case I am looking for an all-digital system. All of my music is hosted on a local NAS, and I will figure out the necessary boxen (I love this) depending on the speaker system I choose. Again though, I didn't really want to make it about me - just a sort of visit to lessons learned, what made you happy, unhappy, what you might do if you were to build something from scratch today. I find it interesting, and of course enlightening.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.
 

SIY

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That green colour was copper oxide, caused by too little stabilizer being used in the PVC dielectric causing it to break down and react with the wire. Stabilizer was an expensive additive and certain wire manufacturers used far too little of the stuff in their formulation.

Sorta. Mostly, this is an issue with the transparent PVC. Pigmented and opaque PVC generally doesn't have this behavior.
 

GrimSurfer

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Sorta. Mostly, this is an issue with the transparent PVC. Pigmented and opaque PVC generally doesn't have this behavior.

Or at least we don't get to see it ;-)
 
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FrantzM

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The more I participate in this forum the more I realize that is where anyone should start especially today with adequate mike and their accessories for less than $200. The combination (that I have yet to be proficient at let alone master) of REW + UMIK should be where anyone starts their journey into high quality reproduction of music in the home. I am thankful to the fellow who wrote that extraordinary and high performing piece of software.
 

Sal1950

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Blumlein 88

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The more I participate in this forum the more I realize that is where anyone should start especially today with adequate mike and their accessories for less than $200. The combination (that I have yet to be proficient at let alone master) of REW + UMIK should be where anyone starts their journey into high quality reproduction of music in the home. I am thankful to the fellow who wrote that extraordinary and high performing piece of software.
Yes I think starting early with Umik And REW is excellent advice. It has a bit of a learning curve, but is worth it.

BTW, the fellow who developed REW is a member here and posts from time to time as JohnPM.

Here is a little bit of history about the development of REW software.
https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/john-mulcahy-creator-of-rew.85/
 

Sal1950

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Here is a little bit of history about the development of REW software.
Thanks for that, I enjoyed learning a bit about Johns background. ;)
 

MattHooper

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Sure (my phono stage is digital),


Heresy!

Actually, while I've kept my digital and analog systems "separate" - that is my vinyl set up is analog all the way - I have to admit I've done this mostly for conceptual reasons that satisfy my brain. If I introduced a good quality AD converter along the way I have little doubt I would be unable to tell the difference from the "pure" analog signal vs the one that has passed through one or more digital conversions.

But it's just the case that "I want my analog to be ANALOG, dammit!" It's a Non-overlapping Magisteria approach. And as indefensible as Gould's own concept! ;-)

And of course along the way I'm inconsistent in this to some degree as well: I have no big problem with vinyl coming from good digital masters.
 

StevenEleven

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I have gone through a full re-do over the past four years. My system is so mid-fi you will probably laugh. Two Pioneer SP-FS52 towers are the stars of the show, and then I added one subwoofer, and then another, and two surrounds, and a midrange Onkyo receiver with room EQ and separate manual EQ for fronts, center, subwoofers, and surrounds, and moved my subwoofers around a little as per various Internet advice, and bought a center channel speaker, and tweaked the EQ of the middle channel by ear until it was just so, and I generally use Spotify or Apple Music off of my Roku or Apple TV as a source, with all of the pretty info on my LG TV and being able to control things with my iPad (which I’m typing on right now). All cables and wires are of the slightly-above-junky variety. Sounds beautiful to me. I mainly listen to jazz and classical and bleeding edge modern music. I have always been skeptical of the high end scene, and after reading the Harman info on this site I think I will keep my listening training to a minimum in order to maximize my enjoyment with the least possible effort. :D I think perhaps anything better than what I have would be lost on me. If I want total realism I have guitars and a piano, although they are frequently subject to neglect and operator error.:rolleyes: Or there’s a concert hall down the road a little.
 
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Sal1950

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Sounds beautiful to me.
And that's the important element.
Although your list of equipment is short on names of fancy gear that costs 10's of thousands, I'm sure it delivers 90% of what the very best has to offer. Enjoy your multich rig without apologies. ;)
 

ernestcarl

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Little late here, but: I would have not bought compressed digital downloads from iTunes, Google etc. Would have preferred if I had the full lossless files or disks instead of lossy files. Although, I doubt I’d hear the difference in few more year’s time as my hearing starts to decline. Still, it’s nice knowing that you actually have the original unaltered bits of ones and zeros, whatever that means. All the discs that I have/had (old house flooded and nearly completely destroyed by river) were copied lossless, but I decided to compress them some years back. I regret that decision now as I don’t have the energy or inclination to restart such a project — then again, I also have hundreds of gigabytes of raw photos that I haven’t even had time yet to process and edit in Lightroom. So many projects e.g. macro photography, etc. that I fear I may never get to do properly, finish, or even start. Heh! I didn’t mean to go existental here all of a sudden... but thinking about regrets sometimes lead you here.

Anyhows: While we don’t have the HD version of amazon music here yet, I might switch to it eventually when it launches locally. So I might have my wish of lossless music playback granted after all? Hmmm. I hate the clunky interface, though; but I’m kind of already invested in the Amazon spy network infrastructure so... why not be part their bot network and reap the benefits? Sell my soul to them, so to speak. LOL
 
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