Welcome New Members to ASR, introduce yourself here.

[FurstMan]

Hi !

I already wanted to thank ASR for existing since you have allowed me on several occasions, as a visitor from the shadows, to obtain answers on a lot of questions.

I'm 30 years old, I live in France and I use Google Translate (sorry...). I own modest gear and don't believe in magic $300 speaker cables that make the sound sublime or solid gold USB cables that make the bass sound cleaner.

Finally, here is my current audio hardware:

PC :
- USB interface SPDIF : PHIREE U2S
- amp : Cambridge CX A60
- speakers : Boston Acoustics Soundware XS (2.1) (I used KEF LS50 before but the constraint of space and environment forces me to have smaller)
- headphones : Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro 80ohm

Home cinema :
- amp : Sony STRDH790
- speakers : Boston Acoustics Soundware XS (5.1)

For trips:
- headphones : AKG K450
- bluetooth headphones : Sony WF1000XM3 (defective, therefore replaced by the Google Pixel Buds that I received with my new phone)

I also had before on my PC :
- PCI interface : M-Audio Delta 24/96
- amp : SMSL Q5 Pro
- headphones : AKG K550

Thanks for reading and see you soon.

 

[AdamG]

Welcome Aboard @FurstMan . It’s good to come in from the dark right? Lurker no more!

 

[JSmith]

don't believe in magic $300 speaker cables that make the sound sublime or solid gold USB cables that make the bass sound cleaner.

This is good news... welcome.


JSmith

 

[Reddoc]

Hiya!
Joining from Australia, listening mainly to streaming via dedicated two-channel system.
Have enjoyed reading and learning from this forum.
Enjoying the ride of helping my system evolve towards something. Trouble is: I don't know exactly what that something will be!
Lots of fun.
Thanks for everyone's positive contributions

 

[JSmith]

Hiya!
Joining from Australia

JSmith

 

[thecheapseats]

New Member here - so "hey" to all... and a big Thank You to Amir for your long list of entertaining reviews and practical insights... additionally you've made me laugh a lot, for all the right reasons...

without much free time to interact (working jobs) - I decided it was time to make an account here as I scale back into semi-retirement after almost fifty years in audio production for a living... bad decisions made young, as the saying goes...

as well, I find it interesting to see some of the venerated pro-audio brands I've owned and used for years being mentioned and reviewed here as the lines blur between consumer audio and pro-audio...

be well everyone...

 

[henologist]

Hey everyone, after a few months of lurking it felt like the right time to make an account. First off, huge thanks to Amir and everyone else here for sharing their data and expertise. It is very refreshing to see an internet forum still operating in the classic mode and providing a space for (mostly) productive, insightful conversations.

My entry into this scene was as a teenage amateur music producer, getting the stereotypical 2010's bedroom producer setup: a first-gen Scarlett 2i2 and ATH-M50 headphones. That and some M-Audio AV-40 monitors were pretty much all I had for almost a decade, pinching pennies in college so I could afford tickets to shows and festivals. (There's still a huge hole in my heart from when Day for Night stopped.) It's only now that I'm past the post-college job hunt and into a (relatively) secure career that I feel comfortable even looking at where low/mid-price audio hardware is at. And it's so much better now! I remember balking at the cost of a friend's Schiit stack in that company's early days, and now they're offering competitively priced, well-measuring gear (partly thanks to ASR). Even Focusrite seems to have kept the Scarlett 2i2 up-to-date with what the market now expects at that price point.

I would've kept up with the hardware in my lean days if I knew there were resources like ASR out there, focusing on objective performance at every price point. At the time the only audio hardware discussion I was seeing on the surface-level internet was either people in my situation consulting Reddit and The Wirecutter or retirement age folks spending more than my annual salary on cables, to exclusively listen to one genre/time period of music. The focus on quantifiable data and the variety of musical tastes and backgrounds here make for super fascinating reading, and I hope I can contribute a bit to that. I also haven't been active on a forum since I was deep in on a now-defunct video game one in the late 00's, so it's been a nice nostalgia trip.

Happy listening~

 

[IAtaman]

Hey everyone! Discovered this a bit too late, already 245 messages deep and member since 2 years, but better late than never I guess..

I think I was born an electronics nerd. Used to save my allowance in middle school to buy electronic components to build all kinds of electronic circuits I saw in books. That's early 90's. One day I built an amp from a circuit in a book. It was a simple class AB amp, I suspect 50-50 sound to noise. Nevertheless, it worked, and I loved the fact that I built a device that worked and produced actual sound, so I started learning more about audio and amplifiers and electronics in an effort to make better sounding devices. That's how I started with audio hobby. My last project was a tri-amped active speaker system with 4th order Linkwitz-Riley active filters, based on schematics from sound-au.com with components I partially sourced locally and partially ordered from National Semiconductors. Waiting for weeks for those chips to arrive is how I spend my childhood

Now I just buy audio equipment - haven't built anything for ages. More into building software as a hobby these days, and my next project is a simple digital EQ based on cheap arm based MCUs. Wish me luck!

 

[SoundsNice]

Hi all,

I have been reading mainly in the speaker forum here for the past year or two, before subscribing late last year and continuing to lurk. I thought it was finally time to introduce myself.

I'm in my 50's and live in the UK. I buy based on what I hear and sometimes form factor (I live in quite a small house), rather than on subjective reviews. I have wanted the convenience of multi-room for some years, but don't like the sound of Sonos at all, no matter how many times I've listened to it.

For my sanity during the Covid lockdowns, I discovered Raspberry Pi audio and Logitech Media Server. I built a multi-room system with 5 nodes and use it daily. I have...

Bedrooms - Airplay speakers - a couple of B&W Z2 and a B&W A7.
I don't like the A7 sound much at all, but the Z2's are great.

Lounge - Cyrus 8 XPD QX amp with integrated DAC into B&W 601 S2 bookshelf speakers. REL Stratus V subwoofer. Hifiberry Digi on the Pi node.
Very muddy sounding.

Dining room - Cyrus 8a amp playing into B&W 603 S2 floorstanders. I've also hooked up my rather sad old Thorens TD160 to this - I bought the turntable when I was just 17. Hifiberry DAC. It sounds OK, but not great.

Kitchen - Cyrus 6XP amp with Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 speakers and another Hifiberry DAC. This system is a joy while we're cooking.

I may or may not have a few additional bits and pieces that are meant to have been listed on eBay already .

I'm not happy at all with the lounge system and I want to start with new speakers. The 601s muffle the instruments and a lot of detail gets lost. I have some £60 Mordaunt Short M10 that were originally bought for the kitchen system and I have a feeling they might sound better than the B&W 601's to my ears.

 

[palm]

Hi everyone! I live in France and I have been reading here for some time, more regularly lately.

My first piece of audio gear was a white folding turntable, Philips I think. Inherited from my mother and I listened to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in my bedroom. Later I got an entry range system in “midi” format with a double tape deck and a high speed dubbing button. It was written “2 way” on the speakers but I could never really hear sound from the tweeter and the woofer had a small extra cone like those full range drivers. Mid 90s I bought my first own setup, an Onkyo amp and Triangle bookshelves that had too much treble. I was reluctant to use the tone controls and loose “transparency”. Ten years later I was looking for replacing the cd player and left a store selling equipment before closing with Mission m52s and a Cyrus amp. In retrospect the improvement really came from the speakers but I really liked the look of this small amplifier. Both were seriously built.

Around that time I started acoustic measurements. It came naturally after failing blind tests on audio compression formats. I bought a nice DIY kit from UK with a mic capsule, a brass tube and a battery operated preamp to assemble. Bank called me the next day because of an international transaction of several thousands. The seller had made a mistake with the decimals and looked really sorry. I stressed for a few days until I saw the refund. Anyway, I think I was among the first users of DRC-FIR?

In 2010 or so I bought a pair, used, of Klein Hummel O300, ancestors of the Neumann KH310. This was a relatively long drive to try and pick them up and I was blown away when I listened to them for the first time. I added later a O800 sub, great for higher listening levels but at lower volumes the 2.0 was still superior, even with rePhase etc. The sub and high pass filter can be disabled with a foot switch, this helps to compare.

In the last years hifi became secondary for several reasons but I miss a good setup (and to be honest I also miss those measurements and tweaks). Currently looking for a streamer / dac / sound card / dsp and nothing seems to exactly fit. I’m also waiting for new windows which will hopefully reduce the noise floor.

 

[four_strings_good]

Hi everyone, I have been lurking here for a little while and finally decided to join. I'm 70, semi-retired, a member of the Audio Engineering Society and a semi-pro musician, engineer and producer. My reaction to questionable claims about audio equipment has always been "But can you measure it?" I have clearly come to the right place here and I look forward to reading, learning and posting. I'm attaching a block diagram of the audio inputs and outputs in my home studio/man cave. Not shown are a little pair of Yamaha NX-M5 speakers, a homebuilt pair of One π speakers (www.pispeakers.com) and a homebuilt sub in a sealed box loaded with a dual voice coil 12" driver from the now-defunct subwoofers.cc. The sub is powered by a vintage QSC Model 5.1 power amp. I listen on headphones mostly - Sennheiser HD 650 and Audio-Technica ATH-M40x - and I use SoundID Reference from Sonarworks to smooth out the EQ on the headphones. A couple of the components in my system have received unfavorable reviews here, making me wish I had found this place earlier. Thanks for a great site and I look forward to participating!

 

[Soez]

Hi everyone.

Have been following the forum for a couple of months, and very thankful for all the information as I've been selecting gear for both a stereo 2.1 setup upstairs (mostly this) and a home cinema setup downstairs.

For stereo (a rather big space, the family living room):

• Built around Buchardt S400 MK II backed up by an M&K V12+ sub
• Initially have been driving this with the Buchardt I150 integrated amp...
• ... but I'm setting up an alternative path using the Denafrips Ares 12th DAC with a miniDSP Flex Balanced acting as the 2.1 pre-amp with Dirac Live, and a boXem E4215/E2 as the power amp (the miniDSP and Ares still in transit), streamer is WiiM Pro

For cinema (small room, just the cinema and a fireplace):

• I would say the heart of the system is the JL Audio E112 sub -- love it!
• Main speakers are Arendal 1961 bookshelves (as they need to fit onto a shelf for movies that's not very deep)
• Other channels NHT SuperZeros
• Denon AVR-X3800H
• Reavon UBR-X100 universal player
• Epson EH-TW9400 projector

Listen to a lot of genres -- but mostly nothing too mainstream, very little pop and definitely no RnB etc. Some of the go-to tracks I always listen to when evaluating new gear are e.g.:

• Tetra-Sync by Squarepusher
• Brown Paper Bag by Roni Size
• Groove by Jamey Haddad, Lenny White and Mark Sherman

So... yes, bass performance is one of the key criteria for me.

Thank you Amir and everyone else for this fantastic community!

 

[John71442]

John age 66 from Claremont California

After years of not having a sound system and listening to music on my computer using an NAD D3020 digital to analog amp and a pair of T + A Elektroakustik Talis TLR 20 speakers. My stepson is designing a surround sound system for a new office being constructed in the garage.

Audiophile equipment on a budget:
Yamaha CX A5000 Sound processor/preamp
Anthem PVA 5 5 channel amp
NAD D 3020 amp to power rear surrounds (to be replace by a Parasound Halo A 23+ when funds permit)
Oppo BDP-95 CD/DVD Player
T + A Elektroakustik Talis TLR 10, Talis TLR 20, Talis TLR minis and Talis TLR TL3A speakers
Akai AP-D210 turntable (Bought new in 1978 and will be taken out of storage until I decide if I want to invest in something else. I am considering a vintage Garrard Zero 100 turntable. My uncle had one back in the day and I loved the sound)

Any recommendations on a cartridge and stylus for the Akai?

 

[Doodski]

John age 66 from Claremont California

After years of not having a sound system and listening to music on my computer using an NAD D3020 digital to analog amp and a pair of T + A Elektroakustik Talis TLR 20 speakers. My stepson is designing a surround sound system for a new office being constructed in the garage.

Audiophile equipment on a budget:
Yamaha CX A5000 Sound processor/preamp
Anthem PVA 5 5 channel amp
NAD D 3020 amp to power rear surrounds (to be replace by a Parasound Halo A 23+ when funds permit)
Oppo BDP-95 CD/DVD Player
T + A Elektroakustik Talis TLR 10, Talis TLR 20, Talis TLR minis and Talis TLR TL3A speakers
Akai AP-D210 turntable (Bought new in 1978 and will be taken out of storage until I decide if I want to invest in something else. I am considering a vintage Garrard Zero 100 turntable. My uncle had one back in the day and I loved the sound)

Any recommendations on a cartridge and stylus for the Akai?

Welcome to ASR @John71442. That's a nice set of gear you have.

 

[John71442]

Welcome to ASR @John71442. That's a nice set of gear you have.

I cannot wait to get it set up and hear what it sounds like. The room will not be ready for a few more weeks

 

[Doodski]

Any recommendations on a cartridge and stylus for the Akai?

Hi again @John71442. You may start a new thread for phono cartridge recommendations. You will have much better results asking your question that way.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/turntables-phono-amplifier-cartridges-review.48/post-thread

 

[yussef961]

hello everybody
I am new here and I have been interested in computer audio since the amstrad cpc...(a horrible 4 channel chip ( AY-3-8912. )
now I have a pc with only an onboard sound (alc 1200 on a gigabyte aorus elite ax v2), connected to a marantz pm 25 amplifier (from the 90ies) which is connected to 2 full tower cabasse mt 32 speakers...
thx

 

[Astoneroad]

hello everybody
I am new here and I have been interested in computer audio since the amstrad cpc...(a horrible 4 channel chip ( AY-3-8912. )
now I have a pc with only an onboard sound (alc 1200 on a gigabyte aorus elite ax v2), connected to a marantz pm 25 amplifier (from the 90ies) which is connected to 2 full tower cabasse mt 32 speakers...
thx

Welcome to ASR.

 

[yussef961]

thx i have just asked my question in , I hope, is the relevant, forum part thx

 

[idleherb]

Guten Tag,

I'm Eric, 38 years, from Germany. Discovered this forum a few weeks ago after a recommendation by a friend and read a few (ok, a lot) of reviews and supporting materials so far. It's been an enlightening experience, I literally had no. idea.

Been into audiophile gear for many years, went through many different systems (mostly passive speakers with integrated amplifiers) and close to setting up a new one, more modular this time.

I'm in love with vintage Infinity speakers, always loved their looks and sound. Feel free to shoot me a message if you ever want to talk about those

Speaking of which, my current listening systems are:
1. a pair of Infinity Kappa 100, a HK 3490 stereo receiver, a generic aptX HD receiver and a TEAC R-H300 tape deck (yes, tape deck)
2. a Ruark Audio R5

Regarding the other gear in the chain, I think without this forum and @amirm's work, I would've just went down the road to become another middle-aged boutique buyer who doesn't know how to invest his money better.
Like so many, I've felt lulled by the ever positive gear reviews in flashy magazines (and now, yt reviewers) and self-claimed experts in hifi shops for many years, not even knowing that there would be a whole different way of looking at the problem. For people without a background in electrical engineering or signal processing, the idea of measuring can be very intimidating and I really appreciate ASR making an effort in helping to understand these processes a lot better. Good job!