wbass

I had to do a quick check, I thought it might be something new. Yes, Alison is great!

Ah, no, not new. Just been on heavy rotation lately.

Still with the ModWright pre and R26. A very appealing pairing with the Sus. Nice bottom end, great clarity, staging, and layering. Slightly warm up top, with an ever so slightly cold presentation overall, though not so much I mind it. LCD-4 pretty good, too. Sus and LCD-4 really complementary in their presentations.

Thus far: 1) very quiet 2) warm and dark 3) strong bass maybe a bit one-note but bass lines surprisingly well-delineated 4) I've been missing that dreamy, mid-range thing tubes do. 5) Strange how higher power seems to push out the soundstage on planars. 6) Prolly not hearing more detail than my SS amps but certainly *different* detail.

No clue if I'll stay with this combo, but worth the set-up at the very least. Quiet enough for HD580! Maybe a bit too warm and dark for the LCD-4 but cool to hear the Susvara with more meat on the bone, if a little muted up top. Just a way different vibe than solid-state. Haven't messed with tubes in nearly 3 years!

The originals are sweet sounding, quiet amplifiers. Compared to other popular British amps (mostly EL84 based, like Leak) they are less brash and more polite. Very low input sensitivity, they need an active pre-amp. The Chinese re-issues are not really the same thing. Higher plate voltages on the driver stage and less NFB. They are chi-fi amps with a nice brand name attached. You may like them though

Got the Quad II's set up with ModWright 36.5 pre, running into a Hifiman HE-Adapter (easier than grabbing a custom cable) and listening through various HPs. Thus far: 1) very quiet 2) definitely warm and dark 3) strong bass maybe a bit one-note 4) I've been missing that dreamy, mid-range thing tubes do. 5) Strange how higher power seems to push out the soundstage on planars.

https://clearaudio.de/en/_archive/turntables-solution_master.php

Should be Final Solution

We listened to the Elac Debut floor standers, but they sounded very dull. Neither of us liked them. Carina's with the better tweeter much more lively, though still a little reserved. They are quite handsome towers however. Yamaha amp seems fine. Pro-Ject looks good and sounded speed stable. He has a challenging room with high ceilings and tall windows, but it didn't sound half bad set up.

While we were at the dealer, I snuck a little time to listen to their big Quad set-up. There was a ton of other stuff I wanted to hear, lots of mega-Euro equipment, but the Quads impressed me in a previous audition, and I wanted to try them again. They were good, but the showroom was a huge open diffuse and somewhat noisy space that any speakers would've struggled in. Why are so many hifi showrooms like that?!

Anything D'agostino is untastefully ORFAS in my opinion (tries too hard to look like retro audio gear or luxury watches):

https://www.dandagostino.com/

@ChaChaRealSmooth I actually kinda like the look of the device on the front page. Green + bronze, nice. (Not that I’d ever buy such a thing, though.)

The D'agostino is a bit better looking in person, to my eyes, but, yeah, the aesthetic isn't my thing. Seems very well made (or cased) anyway. I tend to like the utilitarian aesthetics of, say, Audio Research Corp.

I was trying to get away from tubes, also, and into class A. But, on the other hand, I tend to like a certain fatness or wetness or dimensionality that tubes bring to the table, and there's an argument for pairing a tube pre with a solid-state power amp, so maybe that's what I'll look into.

The LS 36.5 only uses three tubes, so it's not a huge investment in glass either. I was initially looking for an amp I could leave on all day, but maybe that's not really class A either. It's not like Class A isn't a bit of a lifestyle choice also.

Well i think the sound quality is worth any “inconvenience “. I switched away from tubes as well but luckily i’m still very happy with the preamp i have(phonitor x). Though a modwright… well well well.

I was on the Bakoon loaner and I wouldn't buy the Enleum based on my experience, but the most important thing in this hobby is enjoyment, so it doesn't matter what others think as long as you're enjoying your setup.

I hear a lot of stuff differently than SBAF does, and I’m totally fine with that.

There are some trusted ears that like the 23-R
I’m glad you are enjoying it!

Ask for pic with today's newspaper

The 2nd guy seems to have bought it from the 1st guy. You can tell as they left each other feedback on that item.

I passed in the end. I already have an HM-7 based SUT. I would've liked to have tried the HM-3, but, oh, well. The guy was legit, and no hard feelings, it seems.

I highly recommend DSHA-3F

I remember trying out the VC on my Bifost 2 OG / Midgard stack that I brought on Rosson's former place back in Jan 2024 meet and thought it was pretty good for a SS amp. The VC warmth really pairs well with the neutrality of Midgard

I like my Phonitor X combined with any ZMF, but only after disabling the crossfeed and using HQPlayer embedded.

Stuff for most of my other hobbies usually only goes on sale 1-2x a year with one being BF. Got a decent but not huge amount of miscellaneous things I had been holding off on for a while.

i bought 3 bags of salad. none were on sale.

Picked up a couple bottles of bourbon. Would have picked them up at full price but I didn’t know they even had them until I saw the ad.

I really should experiment more with the Neo Stream and HQPlayer. I'm just not in a place right now where I have the computer set-up to be able to run any of the better settings. Hopefully some time within the next few months. But I'm just finding the Neo DAC un-engaging right now. It's annoying that iFi doesn't tell you which DAC it uses.

RME arrived the other day. It's actually the older AK4490 chip, but I guess most reports say there's not terribly much daylight between it and the 4493. It's kind of hard to know what you're getting buying secondhand, as the serials are confusing. Top plate is a bit scratched, and the dude sent it the most ludicrously unpadded box.

But I got an okay price, and I'm not really in the mood to try a return, etc. And, well, having gotten it set up, it's immediately way better than the Neo Stream internal DAC. Now I have to work my way through the million options in the RME. Even volume settings aren't immediately obvious. Ha.

Totally agree. Listen to Warriors Dance by Prodigy. The LCD-4 takes you there like almost no other headphone!

Listened to mine the other night from the Mjolnir 3 and it was pure pleasure. I'm getting mine RD modded but there are moments like the other night when I remember that I like the stock one a great deal too.

I'd own one if each cup wasn't carrying 80 lbs of magnets. They aught to include vouchers for a chiropractor

And the Super 7 is... around the quality of a DNA Starlett? Below? Just different?

Different. S7 is better than Starlett if you have the right OPT (there were two versions) and mods.

Cool. Thanks for that. How do you tell which version has which transformers? And which are considered preferable?

I tried going back through the threads, but sort of lost track in all the talk of various mods.