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Post by MartinT on Jan 16, 2024 5:31:59 GMT
It represents many years of reading, experimenting, taking wrong turns, correcting it and moving to the next area. Blame old age, if you like, but I'll own it. System is sounding pretty special right now, so I must be getting it more right than wrong  |
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Post by The Brookmeister on Jan 17, 2024 18:53:12 GMT
Glad you are enjoying your music so much. Now stop faffing about and enjoy it more. LOL
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Post by MartinT on Jan 17, 2024 21:13:27 GMT
Glad you are enjoying your music so much. Now stop faffing about and enjoy it more. LOL Yessir - it's all I've been doing apart from commuting and sleeping. |
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Post by MartinT on Jan 24, 2024 19:03:11 GMT
Listening tonight after the system has settled for a few weeks and it's clear that the two JS-2 power supplies to the clocks, the Sapphire DC cables and Tubulus clock cables are giving a little more yet.
Very difficult to put it into words, but there is even more dimension and shape to notes, incredible tightness in the bass and slam galore.
This is wonderful music making.
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Post by MartinT on Jan 25, 2024 5:32:32 GMT
I've found my set of Big Pad Plus amazing under the streamer, a noticeable uplift from the Big Pads.
They're so good I've ordered another set of 4 to go under the DAC.
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Post by Mr Whippy on Jan 25, 2024 7:11:26 GMT
Just for kicks, I thought I'd try a small CD player from AliExpress as a transport so that I can occasionally play CDs in my collection. It's never been a burning need as so few are now missing from streaming, but as you know, I like to play and experiment. So this small device costing peanuts (how do the Chinese do it?) arrived and I set to getting it to work. It needs 5V via USB-C so I used the charger for this tablet, just plugged into dirty mains. I found a decent 1m optical cable and connected it to the DAC. It sounds a bit rough compared with streaming but also it's not half bad. Musical memory is not to be trusted, but I would say it's around the performance of my old Ayre SACD player. Inferior transport meets much better DAC (but none of the benefits of cleaning the signal first). Treble a touch clunky but the midrange is fine and the bass not too light. For £60 inc. shipping and VAT, it was worth the discovery.  Nearly suggested that a while ago when I saw it. But thought maybe it wasn't really what you might be looking for. |
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Post by MartinT on Jan 25, 2024 8:54:58 GMT
Nearly suggested that a while ago when I saw it. But thought maybe it wasn't really what you might be looking for. It works fine but I don't really need it as I rip the very few CDs I have that are not on streaming and put them into Google Drive. That way I can play them exactly the same as streaming. Just a bit of fun sometimes to be able to play a CD (including guest CDs) on my system when required. |
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Post by MartinT on Jan 26, 2024 17:51:58 GMT
Listening tonight after the system has settled for a few weeks and it's clear that the two JS-2 power supplies to the clocks, the Sapphire DC cables and Tubulus clock cables are giving a little more yet. Very difficult to put it into words, but there is even more dimension and shape to notes, incredible tightness in the bass and slam galore. When I wrote this, I completely forgot to include the amazing contribution of those Black Ravioli Big Pad Pluses under the Rendu streamer. The cleanness during peaks and busy-ness is very noticeable and adds a lot to my general pleasure at the quality of the music making. |
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Post by MartinT on Jan 30, 2024 9:40:10 GMT
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Post by orange55 on Feb 3, 2024 15:14:13 GMT
I remember seeing a picture of the grounding box you have at the mains box / fuse box. Can you advise what you use or recommend for grounding at the mains box for my dedicated hifi circuit?
Thanks in advance.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 3, 2024 20:58:31 GMT
I remember seeing a picture of the grounding box you have at the mains box / fuse box. Can you advise what you use or recommend for grounding at the mains box for my dedicated hifi circuit? I moved my AliExpress Silent Point to mains duties as it's good at that job and is too big for proximity to any of my digital components. It gets the job done but my all-time favourite grounding boxes are the Quartz Acoustic Premier, if you can stretch to one. I have now replaced the green cotton covered grounding cable with an AliExpress one.  |
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Post by orange55 on Feb 4, 2024 8:33:18 GMT
Great. Thank you.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 6, 2024 21:59:10 GMT
I may have done a thing and gone off-piste with my 2024 plans. Still, it's only February  Also good news - 2nd set of Black Ravioli Big Pad Plus arriving shortly. I'll write more about them soon. |
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Post by MartinT on Feb 7, 2024 6:59:07 GMT
Here's a little corner of it...  |
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Post by mattspl on Feb 7, 2024 8:55:06 GMT
Here's a little corner of it... Ps Audio? |
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Post by petea on Feb 7, 2024 9:14:33 GMT
Black sticky backed plastic to improve the aesthetics?  |
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Post by MartinT on Feb 7, 2024 9:35:19 GMT
Blimey, there I was trying to make it as difficult as possible! Well done! Care to guess further...? |
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Post by mattspl on Feb 7, 2024 10:11:41 GMT
Blimey, there I was trying to make it as difficult as possible! Well done! Care to guess further...? I’m going to guess at another power plant |
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Post by MartinT on Feb 7, 2024 12:42:48 GMT
It's a PS Audio Power Plant P12. Here's how it came about: as you all know, I've worked hard to reduce all noise in my system as it is so deleterious to playback quality in a digital system. Clearly, the noise levels are at an all-time low as my sound quality has risen to an all-time high. So where else is there noise that I can do something about? Thinking about it over a few weeks, I have addressed many areas and circled back to the basics again. Thinking some more, I realised that my Power Plant P10 regenerator is now very old (2012 so 12 years old) and conforms to an earlier design incorporating a more rudimentary sinewave synthesiser. I had also added a P3 regenerator to deal with the sensitive streamer/DDC/DAC components, which incorporates a DSD sinewave synthesiser, and that had given me a sizeable uplift in sound quality. Since my P10 is also feeding the pre-stages in my streaming setup (router, EtherREGEN, clock), as well as the power amp, any improvement in noise here should really help. In my table below, the key improvement is the lower output impedance, helping to short any noise to ground. The actual distortion I get from my P10 is very low (0.1%), but there is no direct noise measurement in the specifications - lower output impedance is the indicator I'm using to justify lower noise, and the P3's lower output impedance provides supporting evidence. One casual enquiry with the good Mr Brook of MCRU (A PS Audio dealer), and 'an offer which I could not refuse' was made A shiny new Power Plant P12 is on its way to replace the old P10.  P10 status screen  |
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Post by The Brookmeister on Feb 7, 2024 12:53:57 GMT
You are a true enthusiast dude, where does it all end? pads under the P12 maybe? LOL
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