How much better do better speakers actually sound? Where's the breaking point of value/performance?

[Bucknekked]

Hey Buck! You know, I've thought about you a few times when I'm listening to those much more precision tuned subs I have.

How 'bout you? Any upgrades? New sub? Were you pricing amplifiers? I really loved your setup too. I knew you had a sub somewhere, but couldn't locate it. Your rig's nothing to sneeze at either.

I have replaced the sub you experienced. I got one of those Monolith/Monoprice THX certified ones. It truly puts my old Klipsch sub to shame. Shadyj I believe did a review and I was in the right place at the right time with a few dollars to burn so I made the leap. Its surpassed my expectations for what a sub can do in the little room.

I was just kibitzing on the amplifier thread. In my little world, I have all the power I need and then about 200 watts per channel to spare. I think about you often and wish you the very best.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Hey Buck! You know, I've thought about you a few times when I'm listening to those much more precision tuned subs I have.

How 'bout you? Any upgrades? New sub? Were you pricing amplifiers? I really loved your setup too. I knew you had a sub somewhere, but couldn't locate it. Your rig's nothing to sneeze at either.

Poooooooges!!!!!!!

 

[Pogre]

Poooooooges!!!!!!!

There you are! Anything exciting to report on the Lemmerhirt household?

 

[2channel lover]

There you are! Anything exciting to report on the Lemmerhirt household?

Hey man! Good to see you around. How are you?

Nothing new on this end...new music mostly, but maybe soon I'll start the new digital storage/streaming project. I keep hearing my old school spinning will give way to this if I invest in it, so that's it....no itch for anything audio at the moment.

 

[Pogre]

Hey man! Good to see you around. How are you?

Nothing new on this end...new music mostly, but maybe soon I'll start the new digital storage/streaming project. I keep hearing my old school spinning will give way to this if I invest in it, so that's it....no itch for anything audio at the moment.

I'm not surprised. You have some very nice speakers and equipment. That's where I've been. I don't have eough money to make any more meaningful upgrades! Learning how to use REW with a umik mic and dsp was the last big leap for me. I've had everything dialed in for a while now.

Seeing Buck again makes me wanna invite him over for another listen. He heard my system pre-DSP. I ironed out some low frequency issues I was having last time he was here. Plus I hear he has a new subwoofer...

It's good to see all of you guys again too! My audioholic family, lol.

 

[lovinthehd]

I'm not surprised. You have some very nice speakers and equipment. That's where I've been. I don't have eough money to make any more meaningful upgrades! Learning how to use REW with a umik mic and dsp was the last big leap for me. I've had everything dialed in for a while now.

Seeing Buck again makes me wanna invite him over for another listen. He heard my system pre-DSP. I ironed out some low frequency issues I was having last time he was here. Plus I hear he has a new subwoofer...

It's good to see all of you guys again too! My audioholic family, lol.

Indeed is nice having you back, Jason.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

There you are! Anything exciting to report on the Lemmerhirt household?

Hey man, same $hit different pile. Lmao. Finally finished my atmos install, sold my massive old surrounds to mr boat, so that’s cool. Been teaching my twins how to wakeboard. It’s been a weird spring(šhitty), so...
Did you ever launch? Was pulling for ya.

 

[MR.MAGOO]

I was having this conversation with a friend just the other day. There's definitely a sweet spot for cost/performance in the audio world. I think once you start getting into 5 digit numbers the gains become a lot more incremental.

Like is this $60,000 system that much better than a say, $58,000?

https://sonicscoop.com/2016/05/16/60000-headphones-what-aural-opulence-means-to-everyday-audio/

 

[2channel lover]

I'm not surprised. You have some very nice speakers and equipment. That's where I've been. I don't have eough money to make any more meaningful upgrades! Learning how to use REW with a umik mic and dsp was the last big leap for me. I've had everything dialed in for a while now.

Seeing Buck again makes me wanna invite him over for another listen. He heard my system pre-DSP. I ironed out some low frequency issues I was having last time he was here. Plus I hear he has a new subwoofer...

It's good to see all of you guys again too! My audioholic family, lol.

Good to hear...excuse me for not pardoning the pun...

Yeah, getting a new operation off the ground, you shouldn't have a whole lot of discretionary funds laying around.

I know we talked about near field subs...I haven't budged off the original audio purchases yet either. But still bleeding cash it seems. Actually spending a little money on landscaping projects that have been lingering for years.

 

[Pogre]

Indeed is nice having you back, Jason.

Hey HD! Glad to see you're still roaming these here parts!

I might as well let y'all know that my home inspection venture flopped. My partner... well, he didn't get me for too much. I started noticing a lot of inconsistencies and unearthed some flat out lies pretty early in and gtfo. Come to find out he's a raging alcoholic who was very adept at hiding it. If he's still operating, and I'd be shocked if he was, I don't want my name attached to it in any way.

I've just been doing some stuff on the side and getting by alright. We've been in the same house for over 20 years, kid's out on his own now and we don't have a lot of debt, so there's not a lot urgency to get back into my old line of work.

So, we've just been taking things day to day and have been pretty happy. I'm pretty set with the system I have now, so my expensive hobby has been a lot cheaper in the last year or so (my wife thought I was never gonna stop, lol). I'm gonna have some more free time again now tho, so I'll probably be poking my head in here more often.

I haven't booted up REW in a while. I might find an excuse to blow the dust off the ol' mic again too...

 

[lovinthehd]

Hey HD! Glad to see you're still roaming these here parts!

I might as well let y'all know that my home inspection venture flopped. My partner... well, he didn't get me for too much. I started noticing a lot of inconsistencies and unearthed some flat out lies pretty early in and gtfo. Come to find out he's a raging alcoholic who was very adept at hiding it. If he's still operating, and I'd be shocked if he was, I don't want my name attached to it in any way.

I've just been doing some stuff on the side and getting by alright. We've been in the same house for over 20 years, kid's out on his own now and we don't have a lot of debt, so there's not a lot urgency to get back into my old line of work.

So, we've just been taking things day to day and have been pretty happy. I'm pretty set with the system I have now, so my expensive hobby has been a lot cheaper in the last year or so (my wife thought I was never gonna stop, lol). I'm gonna have some more free time again now tho, so I'll probably be poking my head in here more often.

I haven't booted up REW in a while. I might find an excuse to blow the dust off the ol' mic again too...

Business partners' worth over the long run can be hard to judge up front sometimes. At least you got out earlier than later. Good luck on what you decide to do....

 

[2channel lover]

Hey HD! Glad to see you're still roaming these here parts!

I might as well let y'all know that my home inspection venture flopped. My partner... well, he didn't get me for too much. I started noticing a lot of inconsistencies and unearthed some flat out lies pretty early in and gtfo. Come to find out he's a raging alcoholic who was very adept at hiding it. If he's still operating, and I'd be shocked if he was, I don't want my name attached to it in any way.

I've just been doing some stuff on the side and getting by alright. We've been in the same house for over 20 years, kid's out on his own now and we don't have a lot of debt, so there's not a lot urgency to get back into my old line of work.

So, we've just been taking things day to day and have been pretty happy. I'm pretty set with the system I have now, so my expensive hobby has been a lot cheaper in the last year or so (my wife thought I was never gonna stop, lol). I'm gonna have some more free time again now tho, so I'll probably be poking my head in here more often.

I haven't booted up REW in a while. I might find an excuse to blow the dust off the ol' mic again too...

It happens...as you say, good you didn't get in too deep with him...cut your losses early and moved on.

I had a business partner back some 25+ yrs ago in a failed venture...he was a great sales guy, in fact we were having a great 1st qtr...until the guy's wife found out he had quit his job and was in biz for himself. Hard to believe he would do that w/o even telling his wife...she put the brakes on that pretty quickly. He came in one morning, said he was sorry but he had to get another job and was starting the next day....oh well, next chapter.

On this hobby...as much as I enjoy talking audio etc, my passion is really the music. Once I got the system completed, I haven't really seriously thought much about upgrading or adding to it. Now I'm re-thinking the digital storage and streaming parts of it...if I do anything in the next 12 mos that will be it.

 

[Bucknekked]

On this hobby...as much as I enjoy talking audio etc, my passion is really the music. Once I got the system completed, I haven't really seriously thought much about upgrading or adding to it. Now I'm re-thinking the digital storage and streaming parts of it...if I do anything in the next 12 mos that will be it.

2channel
I hear you. Since I've gotten the system that I listen to most of the time tuned up and in place, I haven't thought about upgrades or tinkering since. Its a peach as it is. However, I am looking at a re-engineer of my digital library and how it streams. I haven't acted on that yet, but, if there's any action on upgrades, that's where the money and effort will go.

Its not that I am unhappy with what I have now. Its that the hardware it is sitting on is aging (some of it is pretty old) and its on spinning disks which are also getting pretty long in the tooth. I have raid units where I have never lost any data, but I have replaced the drives multiple times. Apple in its wisdom has decided to kill off iTunes. All by itself that dictates taking a hard look at "what's next?" . The combination of aging hardware and a change in my primary music management software means I probably want to rethink the whole thing.

Have you any preliminary ideas on what you might do? The only thoughts I have had so far are SSDs instead of spinning disk and figuring out what to put it all on for a management system. Something like a Synology setup maybe.

 

[2channel lover]

2channel
I hear you. Since I've gotten the system that I listen to most of the time tuned up and in place, I haven't thought about upgrades or tinkering since. Its a peach as it is. However, I am looking at a re-engineer of my digital library and how it streams. I haven't acted on that yet, but, if there's any action on upgrades, that's where the money and effort will go.

Its not that I am unhappy with what I have now. Its that the hardware it is sitting on is aging (some of it is pretty old) and its on spinning disks which are also getting pretty long in the tooth. I have raid units where I have never lost any data, but I have replaced the drives multiple times. Apple in its wisdom has decided to kill off iTunes. All by itself that dictates taking a hard look at "what's next?" . The combination of aging hardware and a change in my primary music management software means I probably want to rethink the whole thing.

Have you any preliminary ideas on what you might do? The only thoughts I have had so far are SSDs instead of spinning disk and figuring out what to put it all on for a management system. Something like a Synology setup maybe.

The only part about this system that I'm not happy with is the streaming aspect. I'm still quite content to spin my music for critical listening, but I'd much rather stream when we have gatherings.

I bought a 5T external drive to pair with my laptop and I've used it more than a few times for large gatherings when I want music and it's just not stable...I get drop outs due to wifi, drops outs due to laptop going to sleep. I've got a wifi extender up there now, and it still happens...I've adjusted the laptop and still get dropouts, in fact the last time it happened I was not able to reconnect via wifi so I hardwired the laptop to the Oppo and was able to finish the evening with music.

So...to answer your question, most of my research has led me to a few different devices and right now Salk's streamer is probably the leader in the clubhouse right now, but I'm not ready to pull the trigger. These are the 3 that have my attention right now.

Cambridge Audio (CXN)
Roon Nucleus and Nucleus +
Salk Streamplayer, 3 models

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Just to expand on this a bit, for digital audio, I tend to use a few sources. One, I get the CD's used from Amazon/Ebay or other sources and I then rip them to lossless FLAC or WAV. I also get digital copies of music directly from Bandcamp (direct from artist) and HDtracks (high resolution lossless).

For playback, a laptop is totally fine. If you set the power settings (Windows for example) so that the disc is always spinning and never spins down (to save power),and the laptop never goes to sleep or hibernate, etc, you will not experience hiccups with playback. From a desktop, the same power settings can be used. You don't need a SSD or anything. The key is to just turn off the power saving feature that has the hard disc platter spin down after a period of time and to turn off the power saving feature of sleep/hibernate/suspend when idle. Then you can stream remotely or directly from that computer no problem however you wish through your equipment, even if serving it from a NAS or server or from the same device being used.

Also regarding wireless, there are power saving options to stop wifi from being powered down when its not active to also prevent drop outs, etc. Again, the key is to go through the power saving options in a laptop or desktop and turn that stuff off and manually set everything to be always on, full throttle, no powering down, etc, and 99% of your issues will be solved.

I use NAS grade large capacity hard drives, the WD Reds NAS grade and/or Seagate IronWorlf NAS grade are good for 4Tb~8Tb options for cheap for this purpose and set them to never spin down or suspend and you're set for endless streaming of any media content at this level. High res music is not heavy on local level data throughput at all, no need for fast SSD or even 7200+ rpm hard drives, the throughput is measured in Megabytes over time at best with top high resolution container music and video, so any old slow hard drive will actually do this fine, for the past 20+ years. The key is to just make sure it's set to never spin down.

Also thanks for any suggestions for more speaker makes and branding, more to look into!

Very best,

 

[2channel lover]

Heya,

Just to expand on this a bit, for digital audio, I tend to use a few sources. One, I get the CD's used from Amazon/Ebay or other sources and I then rip them to lossless FLAC or WAV. I also get digital copies of music directly from Bandcamp (direct from artist) and HDtracks (high resolution lossless).

For playback, a laptop is totally fine. If you set the power settings (Windows for example) so that the disc is always spinning and never spins down (to save power),and the laptop never goes to sleep or hibernate, etc, you will not experience hiccups with playback. From a desktop, the same power settings can be used. You don't need a SSD or anything. The key is to just turn off the power saving feature that has the hard disc platter spin down after a period of time and to turn off the power saving feature of sleep/hibernate/suspend when idle. Then you can stream remotely or directly from that computer no problem however you wish through your equipment, even if serving it from a NAS or server or from the same device being used.

Also regarding wireless, there are power saving options to stop wifi from being powered down when its not active to also prevent drop outs, etc. Again, the key is to go through the power saving options in a laptop or desktop and turn that stuff off and manually set everything to be always on, full throttle, no powering down, etc, and 99% of your issues will be solved.

I use NAS grade large capacity hard drives, the WD Reds NAS grade and/or Seagate IronWorlf NAS grade are good for 4Tb~8Tb options for cheap for this purpose and set them to never spin down or suspend and you're set for endless streaming of any media content at this level. High res music is not heavy on local level data throughput at all, no need for fast SSD or even 7200+ rpm hard drives, the throughput is measured in Megabytes over time at best with top high resolution container music and video, so any old slow hard drive will actually do this fine, for the past 20+ years. The key is to just make sure it's set to never spin down.

Also thanks for any suggestions for more speaker makes and branding, more to look into!

Very best,

Good points except they didn't work for me.....I'm not entirely sure why, but my laptop continues to go into power saving sleep mode even after changing the settings to "never".

 

[MalVeauX]

Good points except they didn't work for me.....I'm not entirely sure why, but my laptop continues to go into power saving sleep mode even after changing the settings to "never".

If you have everything set to never, and save the power profile, and after a reboot it's still set that way, you should be set. But if you have some other software that dabbles in this it could be resetting your power profile.

Under Power Options, did you go through the "Change advanced power settings" and set things manually?

Very best,

 

[baronvonellis]

Heya,

Just to expand on this a bit, for digital audio, I tend to use a few sources. One, I get the CD's used from Amazon/Ebay or other sources and I then rip them to lossless FLAC or WAV. I also get digital copies of music directly from Bandcamp (direct from artist) and HDtracks (high resolution lossless).

Does HDtracks have music in multichannel? I can't tell from their page. I want to get Moody Blues Days of Future Passed. It says it's in 96/24 but is that the 5.1 mix or stereo?

 

[MalVeauX]

Does HDtracks have music in multichannel? I can't tell from their page. I want to get Moody Blues Days of Future Passed. It says it's in 96/24 but is that the 5.1 mix or stereo?

I don't think they have multi-channel remaster mixes on everything, I would expect it to be stereo. I don't have multi-channel audio with respect to music, so unfortunately I don't have a good source for that.

Very best,

 

[lovinthehd]

I've not found HDTracks to have any multi-ch when I've looked in the past. You looking for download or a disc?