What It Really Means To Be Real, i.e. What Gear Do We Actually Use

Yeah, yeah. I know how Honky is used traditionally. That's why I spelled it Honkie. We used the term ironically, knowing that it was the same as what niggers called you white trash people. Before anyone gets their panties in a huff, all this is coming from a slant-eyed chink.

 

Taiwan doesn't exist.

 

You're ignored, so ...

 

The Canadian geese.

 

Don’t get me started about those poop monsters! Their babies are all over my apartment!

 

My contribution to what I actually use is this:

Nelson's ACA Mini. I've cycled through a lot of amps at various price points and always been disappointed for some reason. The mini is the first amp that doesn't disappoint. If I were to nitpick, I miss the separation of the LAuX. I use two minis, both running directly off a DAC through passive 20K pots. One runs my cans, the other my desktop speakers. All my headphones (HD600, Elegia, Diana V2) sound awesome and I use various Schiit MB DACs from the Modi to the Yggdrasil.

$135 amp = endgame for me.

 

California has so many natural advantages compared to most states it’s hard to believe they’ve fucked things up as badly as they have.

 

I've got too much audio crap generally, and almost all of it is in storage right now.

So, what I'm actually using at the moment is, in order of most regular use:

Mobile:

--Apple Airpods Pro (walking around, transit, gym)
--Sony Linkbuds S (running)
--Bose Sound Sport wired (running, all-timer in terms of hours used, supplanted by LinkBuds now)

Home:

--Gustard R26 (as DAC and streamer) / Ferrum Oor + Hypsos / Susvara and Verité Closed
--KEF LS50 Wireless (sound great, but caused me all sorts of set-up woes)

 

My really real life thoughts are...

Recently took a pretty big hit (in most ways) to move back to UK, where I was born and partly grew up. I've been wanting to live in London since I was a kid, and Covid made me decide to just do it. Left my job at one of the world's great universities (where I was constantly reminded of my lowly place in the hierarchy) to get graduate teaching experience at one of the University of London colleges. A strategic move in many ways, as my ceiling was low at my old job. And in some ways it's paid off, as I was recently the runner-up for a very big job in my world. Unfortunately, runner-up means nothing in this case.

UK universities are a mess. Very badly run IMO. But, then, I came from an obscenely well-resourced school to one that scrapes by on state funding constantly eroded by the Tories. However, London lives up to its rep as one of the world's great cities. Green space everywhere. World-class, mostly free museums. Some of the best food in the world. (The old saw about British food being crap is totally irrelevant now. I've lived in NYC, LA, and Chicago, all top shelf for food, and London has everything you want variety-wise for similar prices. Mexican food here, however, is bad.) And, most important to me, transport links to tons of places in Europe. Brussels? Paris? Amsterdam? Two-hour train. Amazing.

It's expensive as hell, but the intra-city transit is so good that you can mitigate that by living further out. I actually think it might be cheaper than Brooklyn and most of LA now, in the places where I'd realistically live anyway.

The trouble is that salaries are all around way lower here, especially in the public sector. That's a huge issue, actually. I'm also partly starting over on a personal level, which has had some ups and downs, too. It's a new adventure, to be sure, and no idea how long it will last. Another year or ten or fifty. No clue.

Since all my shit is in storage, I'm taking a big break from my record collecting habit. Vintage and re-issue jazz. All-analog only. Much expanded during Covid, probably out of sheer boredom. Much curtailed now, probably for the better.

Otherwise, my running shoes and my bike get the most use. I've been looking to get into road cycling/touring for a while and have done a little around Essex and Epping Forest am currently planning a whiskey distillery tour in Scotland.

 

I am finding out that some are confused by my different "rigs", so hopefully this will clear things up.

Main HP Rig:


(pardon the dust)

Theta DS Pro Basic II fed by Metrum Baby Ambre
Onkyo T9090-II FM Tuner also used as source
Unbalanced outs directly fed to Quicksilver
Balanced outs fed to Freya N to -
Adcom ACD-535 II speaker amp
Monolith LP
Eddie Current BW
Dynalo DIY amp

Second Desktop Rig



This is hooked up to a second small computer

Modi MB2
Sys
Vali1
Nitsch Piety

2ch. setup:


SL-1200 M3D w/RB-250 tonearm and Ortofon 2M Blue and Darlington MP-7 phono pre (not shown)
Various inputs from Cassette, CD player, FM Tuner, Laserdisc, BlueRay, TV, etc.
Yggdrasil ver. 1 fed by Metrum Ambre via AES
Freya + preamp
Two QSC MPX1450's in vertical bi-amp config to feed JBL LSR35's (400W x 4 @ 4 ohms = 1600W (class H power with LPS))
Two JBL 550P 10" sealed subs in stereo config

Note: computer tower is main media storage server

The 2ch rig is across the room from my desk on the opposite wall. Basically my desk is behind the couch. I actually bought the Yggdrasil for my HP rig and was going to sell the Theta. However, once I hooked up the Yggdrasil to my speaker rig, there was no going back. And I actually don't miss it that much as the Theta is still amazing and 95% of what the Yggdrasil can do.

 

I am going to buck the trend and not post my gear since as I getting older these post your gear posts is coming too boring for me to the point that I don't give a f**k.

Gear at this point in my life is more a tool that helps me get more involved in the music. As I get older I stop giving a shit if something that sounded good was cheap. This is my only gear post in this post, but I enjoyed a lot using my Airpods Pro 2 with my iWhore Apple devices. Gives me 95% of my musical enjoyment when comparing stuff that cost me a lot more.

The biggest part of being real is not being a cheapass on other things in life. If you are cheap on food/shirts/furniture but have no problem blowing four figures on audio gear then I am sorry but you are a f'ing idiot and you deserve to be forever alone.

Making your whole life surrounding by a hobby is just as bad as working with no hobbies. After all, your life working around a hobby is just work in reverse.

 

I am reminded of Soap.

Confused? You will be...

 

Saw a video of a guy in a miniscule apartment surrounded by giant speakers and mega buck gear. Like the audio gear was larger than the kitchen space.

Extremely painful and depressing because you know no gear is worth your future, social connections, and happiness.

There's no definition but it's mental illness, or symptom thereof, like being a shopaholic.

 

Yeah, I think there's a few videos/articles about Japanese audio nuts that seem somewhere between admiring and pitying.

I do like the deep love in Japan for 50s-70s jazz. They kept the analog/tube/vintage Altec/Garrard/etc flag flying when the west all but forgot about that stuff. I think it's a cool aesthetic overall.

The thing that drives me nuts is the $$$$ Wilson/Rockport/Magico showroom where they'd just as soon as talk about Ferraris, don't let you demo with your own music, and put on Diana Krall instead. Or some crappy instrumental fusion thing that sounds like the intro track on those old CD player cleaning discs. That to me is the gear way before the music.

A lot of these lonely dudes Japan seem to be spinning music they actually deeply love. But healthy limits, and so on.

 

One "rule" that I've managed to stick with for a good long bit now: No single audio gear purchase can be greater than my mortgage+condo fees monthly payment. Luckily, I have a relatively cheap mortgage. So that significantly limits the audio gear under consideration. Wavedream? f**k that noise. I'm sure it's cool, but it breaks my rule. Utopia? Aside from incompatibilities with the sonics, hard pass. I can keep rambing off multi-kilobuck high markup audio tomfoolery and not be ashamed that it just doesn't interest me now, or likely ever. Cheap audio shit has gotten so much better over these last 5-10 years. I mean, Piety?? C'mon! 20 years ago if that amp was around we'd all have stopped there. Like, full stop.

 

I recently had the good fortune of acquiring JAR660S. It hits a really sweet spot where it is fairly lenient with upstream gear but I can still appreciate good masters. Riding off into the sunset with this one. Bravo Jupiter @ext1.

 

I had to go back and review my purchases to see if I've obeyed this (we'll call one month's rent the limit), and with audio it appears I have. I massively violate the rule with camera gear though, which has been a terrible money pit for two decades.

 

are those the ear pads that came with your 660S? they look plump.

 

Yes. Plump AF. I like to queue up some r’n’b slow jams and pretend I’m nuzzled into boobies. It’s my happy place.

 

My Stellaris sits on $20 of frankenstein'd Ikea parts

But only b/c easier than getting custom fit furniture...