|
tonearms
Mar 1, 2017 22:14:39 GMT
via mobile
Post by ant on Mar 1, 2017 22:14:39 GMT
Now thats just silly!:-) What the effective mass of it must be i cant begin to guess
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 27, 2017 18:02:47 GMT
onto a nice bottle of jameson, the talisker didnt last long
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 20, 2017 12:03:10 GMT
Around 2000 I wanted some new speakers and was prepared to pay around a grand ish to get what I wanted. Went to moorgate acoustics in Sheffield and tried a couple of different sets between 800 and a grand. The ones I wanted were b&w cdm1 nt's, but i decided to listen to other things first. Some rega things (cant remember what they were, some naim speakers than had a strange squared off dust cap, some quad 11l's and some proacs. I listened for a few hours and eventually was about to listen to the b&ws when the dealer threw the quads in as a ringer. Tbh i couldnt stand the b&ws and was quite disappointed. I found the quads the best balanced of the lot and bought them instead. They were the cheapest at 380 quid, when he told me how much they were, after I had decided I wanted them, I was expecting them to be more expensive that the b&ws, so I bought a set of Partington dreadnought stands aswell. We set our own expectations, perhaps it is better sometimes to be pessemistic about things and initially try to pick them apart. I did this recently with the benedict audio hothead phono stage. Tried to pick it apart in system before committing to buy it. And couldnt fault it. Im really glad I was leant it because I would not have considered buying a phono stage that now retails at around 500 quid at all had it not been here to listen to.
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 18, 2017 14:02:00 GMT
Yep the top is 18mm exterior ply, 15mm mdf core and 18mm plyy again. Nice and dead, rap the top with knuckles and the sound it makes just stops. Sounds like a heavily built speaker cab. Ive built alot of the furniture in the house as I never seem to be able to find what i want to fit in a given space. I did all the lot in my daughters bedroom bar the bed as its only about 7ft square so nothing from anywhere will fit in it.
Same in the 2 sons bedroom although it is bigger, 2 beds dont leave alot of real estate for drawers, wardrobes ect.
Still waiting for inserts, im an impatient person so i think im just going to drill and tap some threads into the base for the spikes instead. I have some blacks of walnut that will take a thread nicely
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 16, 2017 17:36:40 GMT
I decided it was time to build a rack as I have a shortage of space. I have enough space for my own system, but put something in to test it, and its a pain in the arse. having to dismantle and move things so that a different component can be hooked up isnt the best way to do things. Plus the tascam cd player I bought wont fit.... So. Putting some thought into the design of it, I decided that I wanted a cld top as the decks i build want to be tested on a decent support. I am not one for accessories of any kind, apart from supports for turntables as I know from experience that what the deck is stood on makes a difference, hence why I use a large piece of slate for my own decks. Second consideration was space to store lps, they are overflowing from where they are kept, and loads end up on the floor near the Tt. So it mades sense to incorporate this space. Third, it had to look reasonable, the missus wont allow things that look like they fell off an oil rig. And to be honest most of the racks I looked at were bloody awful. This fits with our aesthetic sensibilities. So i glued up the top and base and cut the legs from some scrap 4x2 left over from a conservatory build I then got the router out and squared up the blanks for the top and base and added a chamfer to the top and bottom edges, and did the same on the outside edges of the legs. I had previously run the legs through my planer thicknesser to make sure they were square and didnt have twists, and to remove the manufacturers inked stamps that you get on structural timber. Then dry assembled it to check the height Then added 2x1 spars for the shelves to sit on and to give the structure rigidity Finally added the shelves after a trip to the timber yard for the ply, and screwed it all together. I have some brass m8 spikes for the base, im just waiting for the threaded inserts I ordered for them to arrive. Total cost was around 50 quid and a couple of hours work to make it. No need to pay through the nose for a rack.....
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 16, 2017 16:45:29 GMT
Just buy an old planar 2. If the new ones are crap, go for an old one with an rb250 on it. Pre rb251, proper rb250 and stick that 1042 in it. Job done, no need to maintain it for them, just plonk and play. Id rather get a proper planar 2 than an new one with a warranty, they are as simple as it gets, a monkey can use one without breaking it.
I like project decks, they are good value for money but if it gets broken its broken full stop. Damage a planar 2 and you can get the spares for them from anywhere.
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 8, 2017 14:55:21 GMT
I had one of those! Bloody nextel paint was a sod to keep clean. Only meridian ive ever owned If you can find one the inca design katana is the best cd player ive ever had, I loved it. Redundancy forced its sale along with a load of nice kit
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 5, 2017 20:48:32 GMT
Just bought one of the m versions from a friend. This thing is utterly superb. A friend lent it to me this afternoon, took me all of half an hour to decide I had to have one. He then told me he had it on ebay for sale. Its no longer on ebay.
Using the demo lenco with modded rb 251 ( silver wired, drilled arm tube, modded c/w stub, detachable mic cable arm cable) Shure m97xe, into a passive and the pass f5, it just sounds right. Wonderful bit of kit
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 5, 2017 16:54:55 GMT
Its definitely a good idea to do, even if youre happy with what you have. As Martin says its a learing experience and will help folks understand what is actually happening in room. Its so much easier when represented visually to see what is going on. It gives a starting point. Plenty of people may have a nagging issue with their system they can quite put their finger on and it might just be a case of shifting something or shutting a curtain, rather than an intrinsic problen with a system wether that system is high end esoterica of a midi system
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 5, 2017 10:06:32 GMT
The room shouldnt stop you from buying what you want to buy and larger doesnt automatically equal better. When i designed the crossovers for my speakers I did a relatively simple test. I burned a frequency sweep to cd and used a simple spectrum analyser app on my phone. Pink noise would have been better but the sweep sufficed for the purposes of the test. I wanted to see where room modes were, and tweak the crossover component values.
When i ran the sweep it showed that the room was fairly dead, no large modes that would bugger around with the response very much. Based on the result I was then able to tweak the values of the crossover
The thing is, the app and sweep would also show where to start to tweak the room. Say you have a mode you want to tame, you could run the sweep as many times as you need to, identify the frequency which will not be what you think it is and say hang a picture or rug or whatever, move some furniture around ect ect until youre happy. There is no reason to arbitrarily sat that big room good small room bad. It doesnt work like that, thats rubbish. It is the interactions within a room that are good or bad.
The app by the way is free on the play store and is called spectrum analyser. Give it a look. Its not going to be perfectly accurate but that's not the point. The point is to show you where to look
|
|
|
Post by ant on Feb 3, 2017 19:39:49 GMT
Ive never had anything that people would consider high end, and got fed up of constantly trying to upgrade to get 'better' sound. I buggered around so much with cables, racks, accessories, you name it that I completely lost sight of what I was aiming for in the first place I remember about 10 years ago going back to an old system that had been in various cupboards, wondering what id been playing at for so long, and ended up quite disillusioned with it all. I then went in a completly different direction and built my own stuff instead.
To me, part of 'high end' is aspiration. I would have loved to have saved up and bought something that was a couple of grand, ( i really really tried to save up for a wadia cd player at one point and never made it) that i would have been proud to have owned. I think there is a fine line between high end and expensive for the sake of it these days, I mean should the linn cd12 really have been twelve grand? But that is the aspirational aspect. The wadia was about 6 grand at the time and I cant see how the linn could have been 6 grand better.
High end is a package. Its the build quality, the materials, the price, the sound quality, although this is not necessarily the most important aspect. You could have the most beautiful piece of kit in the world stuffed full of the best bits money can buy, but if the designer wasnt up to snuff that might not matter. But the fact that it is stuffed full of choice bits, looks gorgeous and costs as much as a car may be justification enough to say its high end. Luckily, the firms building this kind of thing can attract the best minds
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 29, 2017 14:39:55 GMT
The feet I made had a shaft coming down from the top piece into a hole in the bottom and the 2 had repelling ring magnets rather than neodymium ones
Without the shaft the entire idea was unworkable as it slipped sideways too easily
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 29, 2017 14:34:53 GMT
I think you are right, personally i think that bearing noise is something that is not given enough thought in Tt design. Alot of decks ive looked at seem to have bearings that have been designed to be good enough. With the lp12 and its weedy standard motor less dynamic resistance from the bearing may mean that the platter inertia can have more of an effect on speed stability. It will lose less of its inertia through friction and the motor will be fighing less to get it going. A rather clever way to do it
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 29, 2017 14:19:04 GMT
Where is the 90% of the bearing noise going though? Is it just not being generated in the first place? Presumably a standard bearing generates noise which goes into the subchassis where the bearing sleeve is attached to it rather than staying in the platter assembly. If it generates 90% less noise in the first place then great,the less bearing noise to deal with the better. if it shifts it elsewhere by decoupling the platter assembly from the bearing then does it stay in the platter? The sides of the sub platter shaft will still be in contact with the bearing sleeve
An intriguing idea that they must have looked at for a long time to get right
I did look at a similar principle with some feet I made a few years ago, its alot more difficult to get right than it first appears so this product must have been looked at very carefully
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 28, 2017 19:05:13 GMT
Oh well, couldnt get a rack built today, rain stopped play. No way I was about to use a router in the house. She who must be obeyed would have had 'issues' with that.....
Had to fettle some cupboards so i could get some of the bits and pieces put away out of sight.
I found some bits that i cant remember buying.
A marantz tape deck, a philips cd104, a video recorder?! A Philips dvd player, some sort of nondescript belt drive turntable that has a rega carbon cart on it, and a valve amp chassis i made and didnt use that I thought had gone ages ago.
The cd160 playing through the pass f5 made this bearable
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 27, 2017 23:04:53 GMT
Going to build a rack for the rest of the kit tomorrow, there is the jbe direct drive and a tascam cd450 that has balanced outputs that I want to have connected up to a test rig Its like the back room of tandys here at the moment, theres bits of kit everywhere
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 27, 2017 18:17:23 GMT
Here you go Vulcan bomber on it for scale!
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 27, 2017 15:54:13 GMT
Just got a pass f5 that was built a couple of years ago by nick gorham to replace the img amp ive been using while the el34 amp is awaiting a rebuild. Its a full dual mono version, separate mains tx and psu per channel
Using it with a passive, the demo lenco I built and nuvistor phono stage, and the Philips cd 160 I picked up for peanuts.
Doesnt need an active pre in the house with my prototype metronome speakers, they are about 90db ish. If I wanted to take it to a meet somewhere it could probably do with one though. I might build something.
I havent had a 'proper' sand amp for about 15 years, put it this way, the el34 amp might be sat awaiting its rebuild for quite abit longer than planned.
Superb
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 17, 2017 12:37:04 GMT
There are other types of fuse to the standard ones you usually see in a plug such as a slow blow fuses that will allow a short duration curent spike, but blow if there is a current surge of a longer duration. Usually used for say speaker fuses. Perhaps the 90 quid fuses are a different type of fuse to the common or garden plug fuse? I dont know, but maybe theres a possibility that comparing them with a normal fuse isnt comparing the same thing.
|
|
|
Post by ant on Jan 17, 2017 11:35:37 GMT
|
|