What New Stuff Have You Bought? If You Care To Share Thead! :)

[Johnny2Bad]

Giggity!!!

I've been eyeballing that Neurochrome for a while now!
... (snip) ...

Are you going to do any type of measurements when you are done? FR, Av, Power, THD? I currently have a distortion analyzer that I borrowed from a friend.....but I don't have a low distortion oscillator to complete those types of measurements on my gear.

Sorry, I neglected to address this question in my reply, slipperybidness.

I will be doing some measurements, both during the build phase to insure I'm not blowing up my hard-earned-money-turned-electronic-parts, and to confirm performance as best I can.

I have a Tektronics 100 Mhz 'scope (and a full set of Genuine Tek cables), a good Fluke 87-5 Digital Voltage Meter (DVM), a good LCR meter, and a marginal Leader Function Generator., a Calibrated Microphone, and a good Phantom Power Supply + 24/192 USB DAC to go with it.

I also have a useful set of software to help out with acoustic measurement; a half dozen WindowsOS apps and FuzzMeasure for MacOS, and my laptop is above average power and feature wise.

For alternate power amps for comparisons, I have a couple of Tripath TA2020 based stereo amps that I have modded a bit (I was able to get the manufacturer to send me boards that were partly un-populated so I could build them out as I desired) and which to my ears sound quite good, plus the Anthem Amp1 (40wpc, EL34 vacuum state).

I also have another amp that I participated in designing (reality check: not nearly as much as some others who were part of an online collaboration, I'm not a trained Electrical Engineer, but we did have a couple of people who either design, manufacture and sell commercial amps or whom have been contracted to design commercial gear; they were extremely helpful with design, plus the manufacturer was able to get us high quality boards at a very reasonable price using his account with the PCB fab; in the end we made 4 runs of 100 boards at $40/ch, the boards are complete, including Power Supply, all the amp needs is a power tranformer to complete).

It has a unique topology (all FET) but it's not in an operational state right now due to some construction changes I'm making. Thankfully I'm aware of it's sound characteristics but would have loved to have it live to compare to; it's a very interesting solid state design that has almost no commercial counterparts. Maybe there will be an opportunity to do an update once I get it back in operation.

I would like a better FG and a nice Bench Power Supply, but you know how it goes ... maybe if I were able to "waste" less money on speaker cables I could afford one.

 

[fuzz092888]

Well it was a little touch and go for awhile, but it looks like I will actually be receiving my hyrbid valve headphone amplifier with DAC. Dunno when, but it should be shipping soon. Also I got the DAC upgrade and I believe he settled on Savioaudio SA9227 (32bit 384 kHz DAC)

 

[Adam]

Well it was a little touch and go for awhile, but it looks like I will actually be receiving my hyrbid valve headphone amplifier with DAC. Dunno when, but it should be shipping soon. Also I got the DAC upgrade and I believe he settled on Savioaudio SA9227 (32bit 384 kHz DAC)

My brother sent me an email this morning about this. They look nice. I hope it's worth the wait.

 

[afterlife2]

Well it was a little touch and go for awhile, but it looks like I will actually be receiving my hyrbid valve headphone amplifier with DAC. Dunno when, but it should be shipping soon. Also I got the DAC upgrade and I believe he settled on Savioaudio SA9227 (32bit 384 kHz DAC)

How much dare I ask?

 

[fuzz092888]

My brother sent me an email this morning about this. They look nice. I hope it's worth the wait.

He seems to have well documented everything including testing. He just released that he would have available the measurements between the two channels to show that they are within about 1% tolerances when fed a signal. That's for each individual unit. The tubes were matched to 1-2%, but because everything is amplified 5x it brought things to 5-10%, so he's going back over every unit before it leaves and adding resistors as needed to bring it back to 0-2%.

How much dare I ask?

Like $197 for the unit and $90 for the DAC upgrade. I backed the project almost a year ago and they missed their estimated delivery of July 2015 so it's been interesting to see if it would ever come to fruition. However, not too bad because there have been regular updates and he responds to messages very quickly.

 

[fuzz092888]

After months of delays and pushbacks, my new phone case has finally arrived.

 

[afterlife2]

Have not bought any new vinyl in awhile and got this for $14.50 new. Should be here next week:

 

[fuzz092888]

Read a little more about the Siliconedust HDHomeRun so I ordered one to compare to the Hauppauge unit that should be delivered tomorrow. The one that provides better functionality stays, the other gets returned. It'll be interesting to see which one stays. One is directly connected to the PC, the other is connected to the network.

 

[j_garcia]

RIP Glenn MAN, as I was ordering, I could actually see the copies of this selling out. Added to cart - 5 left, update, 4 left...by the time I placed my order, it said 1 left.

My copy got stolen so I had to pick another one up. I have the dts-CD of this, but it has different tracks and the dts is 1509K on the DVD.

 

[fuzz092888]

Small sale at Newegg, throught I'd try and squeeze a little more performance out of the desktop

 

[agarwalro]

About f'n time... some might say.

 

[3db]

I dont have any "Grand Funk" in my music collection so I wnet to the used vinyl store and picked up these two gem;

as well as better copy of this;

I will throw the other copy out as it really is beaten to death.

 

[1AGOFST]

Hey everyone, very excited to have just picked up a Yamaha RX-A3050 receiver. I haven't realized it's potential just yet as my sub all of a sudden started acting up. It replaced an RX-V1600 from 2005 so it was a huge upgrade. And the pure direct works which I realized didn't work on the old one! Hope to have an SVS PB-2000 ordered soon once my budget recovers.

 

[KenM10759]

That's the way it goes. Just as I spent a good chunk of money on my R500's and a sub, three days later I found out one of my two furnaces (two family house) won't make it through the winter. I never saw that coming as the one that went was the quieter running of the two forced hot air (by natural gas) units. Of course it made sense to replace both with 96+% efficient units and add central air, at the same time because they were the same age.

So much for upgrading the rest of my sound system to all higher-end components for another year.

I hope you have better luck going forward too.

 

[1AGOFST]

That's the way it goes. Just as I spent a good chunk of money on my R500's and a sub, three days later I found out one of my two furnaces (two family house) won't make it through the winter. I never saw that coming as the one that went was the quieter running of the two forced hot air (by natural gas) units. Of course it made sense to replace both with 96+% efficient units and add central air, at the same time because they were the same age.

So much for upgrading the rest of my sound system to all higher-end components for another year.

I hope you have better luck going forward too.

The luck I need is getting my wife on board with spending $700 to $1,000 on a component she doesn't see as necessary in our world of "first world problems".....LOL. The struggle is real

 

[fuzz092888]

Arrived and installed. 32GB of RAM

Small sale at Newegg, throught I'd try and squeeze a little more performance out of the desktop

 

[slipperybidness]

That's the way it goes. Just as I spent a good chunk of money on my R500's and a sub, three days later I found out one of my two furnaces (two family house) won't make it through the winter. I never saw that coming as the one that went was the quieter running of the two forced hot air (by natural gas) units. Of course it made sense to replace both with 96+% efficient units and add central air, at the same time because they were the same age.

So much for upgrading the rest of my sound system to all higher-end components for another year.

I hope you have better luck going forward too.

Yup, the joys of home ownership!

 

[KenM10759]

Those "joys" I could do without. Ah, it's worth it in the long run. I'll be collecting rental income if I ever buy a single family house because I'd likely never sell an otherwise "low maintenance" income generator. I'll be 6 feet under before these need replacing again.

 

[slipperybidness]

Those "joys" I could do without. Ah, it's worth it in the long run. I'll be collecting rental income if I ever buy a single family house because I'd likely never sell an otherwise "low maintenance" income generator. I'll be 6 feet under before these need replacing again.

Agreed. In general, I expect about 1 expensive home repair every year. Maybe get by for 2 or 3 years if u are lucky.

 

[KenM10759]

In the last month & a half I've replaced (and upgraded with A/C) both furnaces, both water heaters, one stove. I see a washer/dryer set on the horizon, and know I have to paint trim on the otherwise plastic covered house in the spring. Should be OK for a couple years after that. At least I get $7500 a year to help pay for it so I can save for better audio/video gear.