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Post by ChrisB on Mar 19, 2016 17:03:38 GMT
The living room has been taken over! Three pairs of speakers in here just now. It's about to get worse because I have some changes to the rack arrangement to sort out and that will be a big job.
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Post by MartinT on Mar 19, 2016 17:27:03 GMT
Apart from the bass drivers, what else did you do to the LSTs, Chris? Are they up and running? Exciting!
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Post by ChrisB on Mar 19, 2016 21:56:38 GMT
The LSTs are on hold for the moment, still with only one bass driver done so far. I'll update on them later, but meanwhile, I've been sidetracked by the arrival of this new rack. We've been at it for 4 1/2 hours without a break and only halfway there with everything dismantled and only 3 items of equipment in their new places. There's kit and cables everywhere! Time for food and some wine! Back at it tomorrow - photos promised.
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Post by MartinT on Mar 19, 2016 23:21:28 GMT
Do tell when you're ready!
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Post by MikeMusic on Mar 20, 2016 8:22:11 GMT
Oh rack changes. Was thinking about giving mine a really good dusting. To get to everything cleaned properly means taking everything out. A big old job
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Post by ChrisB on Mar 22, 2016 9:07:17 GMT
A couple of hurried photos of the set up as it is at the moment. There's obviously some work to do on some of the cable runs! The new rack is an HNE granite and Beech job, bought to match some other HNE stuff I've had for years. Buying it thinking I would be able to reduce the number of racks in the living room from 3 to 2, we've actually ended up with 4! Oops.....never mind - it actually looks a lot better despite taking up more room. It's also allowed a repositioning of the speakers by just a few inches and this in itself has brought about a massive improvement. Here's another made up from two badly stitched together snaps.
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Post by MartinT on Mar 22, 2016 15:34:20 GMT
That looks like a lot of work was done!
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Post by ChrisB on Mar 22, 2016 20:06:37 GMT
A four hour round trip to pick up the new rack, ripping everything out of the old ones, cleaning and dusting it all, working out all the possible permutations of shelf heights in comparison to the requirements of each bit of kit, levelling the base, putting it all in, remembering how wide one of the power amps and the CD player are, having a rethink, ripping out half of it, sticking it back in......
Yes, all weekend, in fact!
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Post by MartinT on Mar 22, 2016 22:00:43 GMT
Too much kit!
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Post by ChrisB on Mar 22, 2016 22:07:02 GMT
Yes, perhaps. But no, because I use it all! I removed one unit from the system in all of this - I took the DAC that was fed from the TV/Freeview box/laptop out. Now, the TV is going into one of the inputs on the Accuphase.
Anyway, what do you mean "Too much kit"? Charlatan!
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Post by MartinT on Mar 22, 2016 22:08:31 GMT
Tee hee!
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Post by ChrisB on Dec 29, 2016 15:33:07 GMT
I'm playing the little modified Genexxa speakers with the main system at the moment. Something is up with one of them as there is a bit of distortion in the mid range. I wonder if a wire is touching the back of the cone or something. Apart from that, they sound a lot better now that they have been running at volume for forty minutes or so. Dreadful at first though! I keep thinking that even though the heating is on, it's a bit cold in here, but it's the blasts of air from those little reflex ports when the music picks up a bit!
I shall have to whip the baffle off that right hand speaker in a bit to see if I can track down that rattle.
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Post by ChrisB on Feb 18, 2017 18:15:27 GMT
I've spent the day playing CDs through the Accuphase via the Radford and into the Mirages today. What a great sound I'm getting! Currently using Spotify to spend a little time paddling around the backwaters of early-1970s obscuriana and I'm taking a rather perverse pleasure in using a little Raspberry Pi source with a 50+ year old power amp.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 19, 2017 10:21:11 GMT
It does feel wonderfully anachronistic!
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Post by ChrisB on May 29, 2017 21:20:40 GMT
I have been struggling with a rarely and infuriatingly interrmitant waffling effect in the right channel of my system for a couple of weeks. It culminated today with an amplified fart and everything in that side just ceasing to play at all. I have been carrying out the slow process of eliminating each part of the chain but today, things came to a head. I had already narrowed it down to the cd player, the preamp or the little box I use to split the preamp output for bi-amping the Levinsons or to a single tap leading to the Radford. After a lot of shuffling things around, plugging and unplugging alternative devices into the positions of the cd player and pre, it became obvious that it was either somewhere in the cabling on in that bloody box. It was the bloody box.
Whipped it out and went direct into the Radford. Oh what joy! The system now sounds better than it has for a very long time. It's obviously been drifting off slowly and imperceptibly for quite some time.
We had the closest thing I have ever heard to an actual house visit from Leonard Cohen this evening! Bloody hell, it's sounding good right now!!!
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2017 21:57:16 GMT
Nice, glad you've fixed it Chris. It's so annoying when there's something not right with your system.
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Post by ChrisB on May 29, 2017 22:06:03 GMT
I'll need to rip the cover off that little box and see what's come adrift. Why would anything come adrift anyway? It's not like it's been taken anywhere, or we've had earthquakes or anything! Thinking about how else I can accommodate my two differing amp set-ups.
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Post by John on May 30, 2017 3:54:29 GMT
glad you managed to sort it out
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Post by MartinT on May 30, 2017 5:10:03 GMT
I hate it when things go wrong, you have a sense of unease for a while afterwards.
Wouldn't you be better off with a 'Y' splitter cable, Chris, or good quality adapters, or are the power amps of different gain? Do they have gain controls?
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Post by ChrisB on May 30, 2017 6:18:27 GMT
No gain controls. The set up is either the two Levinsons in bi-amp mode - identical gain OR the Radford. I had a pair of cables coming from the preamp to my splitter box and I plugged in the appropriate cables for the power amp/s of choice. My thought was that this was better than any adapter I could find (I have several) as they are all pretty flakey. As it happens, the cable from the preamp is long enough to reach the Radford, so that is fine and it does away with the need for anything else. The problem is the ML amps, where the pre-output obviously needs splitting. Switching cables right back at the preamp end is not particularly easy, so I will need to connect something onto the end of the cable which otherwise runs to the Radford. The simplest thing in theory would be to common the cables at one end but they ain't gonna squeeze easily into a single RCA plug body. I dont really like adaptors at all but don't see how I can avoid using one or something like my old splitter box.
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