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

panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
I've been busy I guess.

Got me a Vizio 70" E series 2018 for the living room since my kids are using my Panasonic 65" VT60 for watching cartoons and that's pretty much it. Not killing my best TV for that so it's getting a new home in my office. Be here tomorrow.



Office TV is moving to the master bedroom replacing a 42" Panasonic pz80. Not sure what I'll do with it. Game room maybe? Yamaha YAS-203 that gets here tomorrow will go under it once I wall mount it. Hope it doesn't suck.



Got me an officially branded Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole for whole network Ad blocking. Not cheap, but it helps the dev team so I'm wiling to pay. Great DNS software.

 
slipperybidness

slipperybidness

Audioholic Warlord
I've been busy I guess.

Got me a Vizio 70" E series 2018 for the living room since my kids are using my Panasonic 65" VT60 for watching cartoons and that's pretty much it. Not killing my best TV for that so it's getting a new home in my office. Be here tomorrow.



Office TV is moving to the master bedroom replacing a 42" Panasonic pz80. Not sure what I'll do with it. Game room maybe? Yamaha YAS-203 that gets here tomorrow will go under it once I wall mount it. Hope it doesn't suck.



Got me an officially branded Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole for whole network Ad blocking. Not cheap, but it helps the dev team so I'm wiling to pay. Great DNS software.

I'm real interested in feedback on the PiHole.

Did you buy that pre-configured, pretty much just plug and play?
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
I'm real interested in feedback on the PiHole.

Did you buy that pre-configured, pretty much just plug and play?
Yeah, saves me the effort of getting all the additional components. All I should have to do is plug it in and log into it once I find its IP.

I used it on a docker, but it started acting up so I figured I may as well make it its own appliance. If I have to take my server down I don't want to have no DNS server. Made sense to separate it.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
I'm real interested in feedback on the PiHole.

Did you buy that pre-configured, pretty much just plug and play?
I have pihole as well. It's easy to configure and run. I run it on Ubuntu server vm. Very lightweight. Just point your dhcp settings for dns to it as 1st entry, and second keep public dns server of your choice, like 1.1.1.1
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
Oh no! I bought headphones that only work with Apple devices...:rolleyes:

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So far I like them. Pretty comfortable, and I can't honestly say that about any set of in-ears I've ever had (they call came with phones/walkman (yup).

They dig nice and deep, but aren't bass heavy at all. Seem to be pretty balanced. Nice for $28. MSRP is apparently $150? That's too much.
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
LOL... Only work with iPhone. If that were the case mine would be tossed! I got to use mine for a 3 hour flight today. Very impressed.
 
A

andyblackcat

Audioholic General
In the post electrical HEAT assorted sizes shrink tubing and a HEAT gun to do pro like wiring from now on.

Neil McCauley: L.A.P.D. Gee, what, where the BLEEP did this heat come from?
h.JPG
 
Johnny2Bad

Johnny2Bad

Audioholic Chief
Just arrived late this afternoon from the Canpar man, a new set of cans to add to my collection (which I should whittle down by one pair at least, but I need to give these a good workout before I decide ... the obvious candidate is my AKG K172's as they are also closed back).

In any case I present the NAD VISO HP50's in ... wait for it ... Red. And I mean really RED. They are also available in Black (which I would have preferred) and white. The white was just too much for me, and since I will only be using them in the home, probably, and of course you can't see them when they are on your head, I'm OK with it.

The reason I couldn't get the black ones is I used my AirMiles to grab these. It's a Loyalty Program that isn't in the US but is in Canada. Basically each AirMile is worth a dime (that's what the retailer pays for one), you get them from shopping. As things turn out I can earn about 2000 miles a year just buying things I normally would. These cost me about that amount ... I think the MSRP was about $US 250 and they are selling on Amazon now for about $US 180, so at roughly $C 200 (in AirMiles) it was a good deal, according to the simple price metrics. About the sound, we'll see I guess.

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Johnny2Bad

Johnny2Bad

Audioholic Chief
** Mini-Review ** (You can skip this part if you want) **

I haven't had much time to listen but so far some impressions are already becoming clearer. They can play loud ... more than I would want to listen at just from the output of my MacBook Pro's headphone socket. They also don't get congested when you turn up the wick.

They are ruthlessly revealing of recording quality ... you can hear exactly what the engineer is doing on a song. The very bottom octaves are a little pronounced but not objectionably so. Vocals sound very natural with no hint of chestiness. That is a bit of a surprise because at first I though female vocals were a little tilted downward, but on further listening I find that's not the case; it's that "revealing" thing again, where you can hear it if the proximity effect was utilized in the recording, and it's absent if it's not there. Good so far.

Male vocals are even better. I don't think I've heard Michael Stipe (REM) sound properly before. There are nuances in his voice that are lost in lesser phones. You can easily hear each distinct vocal in choruses and harmonies. Words are enunciated extremely well ... I've already been able to "correct" lyrics where I had always thought the singer said something else. Moving right along ...

Instruments have the correct timbre and tone, whether it's acoustic guitar, Fender Rhodes, various organs, sax, horns ... well the list goes on.

Drums are punchy and things like pick bite comes through on electric guitars. You can easily follow bass notes even on songs that don't have much bass in the mix, like early Beatles tracks. Kick drums remind me of high-volume Klipsch La Scalas where if you stood a few feet from the bass horn your pant leg would flap with every kick drum beat. Of course that's not happening with 'phones, but the sound is there, and that's not a common thing with cans or speakers.

They do image, there is a soundstage that is shallow and seems to hover a bit above the ears, but of course anything panned hard right or left comes out as such. Drums seem to be back in the mix but not by much. I suppose it's asking a lot for stereo mixes to sound natural image-wise with headphones, but we try.

There is something in the tonal balance that is off a bit. They are not sensitive to placement, at least on my skull and the head shake test is a full pass with me at least. They are light on the ears and after about three hours of listening they are still comfortable. If you push on the earcaps the bottom end gets more pronounced so they aren't clamping as hard as they could, but I think that's a good thing, or at least potentially a double-edged sword.

But back to the balance, these have plenty of sparkle when it's in the mix but I wouldn't describe the highs as "sweet" the way some loudspeakers can pull it off ... say, some KEFs. It's a bit dryer than that, although maybe more accurate that way. But the very top end, I dunno around 10K or so and up, seems to be missing, or recessed maybe (I'll have to do more listening). Because they do the bottom so well it seems more pronounced than ideal. A lot of people prefer that tonal balance but I keep wishing I had my old Lab Reference Series Lux 5L15 so I could hit the Linear Equalizer by a db or so.*

Maybe they will sound a bit more natural after a few hours of exercise. Most transducers do. I might leave them playing overnight while I grab some zzz's and see if I feel the same way tomorrow.

It's early yet to come to any final conclusions. But at least so far I like them. I only have limited music on my laptop's SSD (it's 512GB but that isn't enough for my music collection, even if there was nothing else on there, and there is lots on there) so the choice of songs isn't as varied as I would like. Will hook up the external drive and see what some of my usual reference tracks say to me later.

MacBook Pro 10,1 15" Retina, Early 2013; 2.7 GHz Quad i7; 512 SSD; 16GB RAM > OSX 10.9x > Audirvana Plus v2.6.8 Hog Mode; on Battery Power [FLAC 16/44 > 24/96] > NAD VISO HP50

* Luxman often implemented what they referred to as the Linear Equalizer in preamps. It adjusted the balance from top to bottom in 0.5dB increments up to maybe +/- 2dB. So all to the right the bass would be +1dB and the treble would be -1dB; all to the left and the opposite "tilt" would be employed. QUAD did something similar in their 44 preamp although the range of adjustment was coarser and greater at the same time. It's a great feature as it swings linearly (that is, in a straight line on a graph) around 800 or 1KHz. depending on the unit in question.

[I posted the same image twice inthe previous post, but from experience I know that trying to fix it I'll have to re-do them all, so I'm leaving it as is. I massaged them down to 100 kb each so it shouldn't matter much to Gene's poor server.]
 
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Danzilla31

Audioholic Spartan
I just got a SWEEET deal on a Peachtree nova220SE amp. 220 watts per channel rms @ 8ohms 350 watts @ 4ohms. It retailed at $2,000 I got it for $680 at Bjorn's it was used and they were doing a clearance my sales rep is the MAN he gives me the scoop on all the good deals I love that guy. It's an amazing 2 channel amp for the PRICE I've been jamming it since yesterday and so far I'm really impressed. It's gonna be in my office room which also doubles as the room for my more serious 2 channel music listening. I'm really really impressed with this amp. I'll post a review down the road for you guys but this bad boy I plan to use quiet a bit I like too buy towers for 2 channel listening and either trade them in or flip them and enjoy something else for a year or two. This amp can drive just about any speaker I can throw at it and sounds great doing it. This is my first time with a Peachtree product and I'm extremely happy with it.
 
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Danzilla31

Audioholic Spartan
Oh and it has a killer killer headphone amp in it man it sounds incredible I was gonna buy a separate amp for my cans but now I don't need to so really I hit 2 birds with one stone!
 

TechHDS

Audioholic General
How about a Thread for what your getting ready to buy? That’ll be cool uhu?
For me, in 6 weeks RBH 55e towers, center and rears. Photos will be posted up just saying. Man I been wanting to upgrade my speakers for a few years now!

Mike
 

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