I have probably mentioned it in another thread, but I was extremely lucky finding some months ago a Sony 5 disc CD changer and it works flawlessly . And the cool thing is this, it looks like XxHennerXx´s dads Panasonic 5 disc CD changer. But anyway I am still extremely fond of my sound system
That old TV is NOTHING portable. Graciano1337 probably remembers helping me move it, I could hardly lift it by myself! It was a panasonic from the early 80s (it had composite, imagine that!. It as used as long as 2008 or 2009 for Xbox Lan Parties. lol. The JBL speakers in the photo have been retired (as has most of the equipment) to their original boxes and are used as makeshift table legs for LANs also. The funny thing is they're obviously very large, but the boxes say "JBL BOOKSHELF SPEAKERS". Books must have been HUGE back then! I just purchased a Technics SA-626 receiver (so I can put my Dad's back in the garage soon haha!) and I'm going to be picking up some Teac bookshelfs. Once they all come in I'll either run some Monster XP speaker wire or Audioquest Type 2 speaker wire (whichever I can get cheaper) and run Monitor out from my TV to the amp. :3 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...item=&sspagename=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_3271wt_1139 Here's the amp. I'm excite. ^_^
My amp these days is a Technics SA-TX50. A bit dated, no digital sound decoder onboard, but sounds really nice and those analogue meters are gorgeous to look at. Digital decoding is done by a Sherwood Newcastle DVD-756 player, you can use it as a standalone DD/DTS decoder, it has external inputs for this purpose. The whole video circuitry is shut down in this mode to lower the interference (this thing actually has 4 boards inside for all of its gizmos). My headphones have been replaced by a Beyerdynamic MMX-300 headset. Had the DT-770s before, but needed a mic now and then, and I got a good deal on a used MMX, so I bought them. The sound is just astounding. Much crisper than anything else I've used on a PC (then again, they are much more expensive than any headphone I used on a PC before them), just great value for money despite their price. The Qpad QH-1339 is the same headset btw, but retails for a bit less over here, recommended to get that one. Yes, I'm an audio enthusiast. Not a real audiophile, I don't care for hyper-thick cables and the likes, I'm too much of a science person to believe in Hi-Fi-Voodoo (blackening the edges of CDs to make the sound crisper p.ex. or demagnetizing your discs. Don't laught, there's a whole industry living off of this, Denon sells ordinary CAT5e-network-cables as Denon Link cables with fancy coating for several hundrer dollars / meter...)
For analogue cables better cabling can give better results (the $7000 cables are still daft, obviously), but expensive digital cables really are a fucking joke. I'm not surprised that companies make them, but when I see stuff like this: http://whathifi.com/Reviews/Accessories-Reviews/HDMI-and-video-cables-Reviews/ It actually makes me kind of angry. People who don't know better are being conned out of their hard-earned cash by the so-called "professionals" who write these disgustingly disingenuous reviews. HDMI is a digital signal, HDMI cables either carry the signal correctly or don't work properly at all. Anyone who's paid more than a fiver for a HDMI cable has been ripped off, plain and simple.
well, some of it is bullshit but some of it is legitimate. I've done blind tests using some cheap 'lamp cord' and a slight step above and another step above. there's a declining scale of how much your quality increases however. buying some cheap no name lamp cord will sound 2 times worse than using some bottom line Monster XP cable, but if you spend twice as much on cable as Monster XP it won't sound twice as good, and so on and so on. It's there, how audible it is to most people? Not by much. On two polar opposites I've using 99% perfect grade silver with a dialectic battery system in comparison to something SUPER cheap. It's THERE. Would I spend the 15,000 dollars on the super high end cable? no thanks, some good quality solid grain copper is fine for me lol. Some people I know will swear by higher end HDMI and it's almost always after buying a cheap HDMI cable and getting Snow effects, color bands, flickers, or green artifacts. All normal signs of digital distortion. So people get a cheap cable that wasn't perfect because of low quality control standards at the factory so they'll buy the high end cable, purly out of the higher standard the company has. With monster and Audioquest cables I've yet to have to replace one at work or find a dud, but with cheaper HDMI cables...yeah. lol. One thing to remember with any "high end" cable. It isn't intended to make it better, your shit might be topped out as is - it is there to make it suck less incase something was going on. Some set ups (like mine) when using a line conditioner I didn't get a hum (i have a lot of components hooked up, all my consoles and TV and laptop) but my Dad's set up - a line conditioner won't gain anything. There's an element of truth to everything these cable companies sell. Now as far as other audiophile voodoo (warming up a CD player lol) yeah...lot of it is wacky.
Yeah, that's understandable. Still, buy another cheap cable rather than spend £100 on something "better". Another factor is that expensive HDMI cables tend to be heavy and this can actually strain a HDMI port to breaking over time. The high-end HDMI cable market is a sham regardless of which way you look at it. I wonder how many £400 network cables Denon actually sell.
I've only used the cheapo HDMI cables from MonoPrice, and haven't had any trouble yet. Then again they've been sitting pretty damn stationary behind my brother and his roommate's TVs and not being transported. I could understand regular LAN parties causing them to fail (IE-break, but not degrade), so I can understand the need for a good cable. But, for pretty much everyone else out there...
Audioquest > Monster. They're nicer looking, MUCH better priced, and don't have SUPER oversized HDMI heads. they're nice normal sized. They're not bank breaking expensive and have a lifetime warranty.
No, those are exactly the kind of cables I'm talking about. They seem to start at £30 (and have others at the £400 mark) and there's just no point in paying that. You wouldn't pay £30 for a network cable, you wouldn't pay £30 for a USB cable, but somehow it's worth it for a digital video cable? It's completely irrational.
I paid £30 for a 30 metre cat5e network cable (complete with RJ45 ofc) before now I felt fine paying £1 per metre at the time. I wouldn't pay more comical prices for frequncies I'll never hear or apprciate though. I guess if you're an audiophile and have have the cash though you may as well get scammed? Also reel to reel ftw XxHennersXx! Liked the vid but forgot to post.
I'm trying to get into LP's at the moment but I've got a fairly new one which keeps skipping on my 1930/40's player, Any ideas?
LPs = 33 1/3 RPM. 1930s/1940s would have been 78 RPM. Not a lot of modern stuff does 78 RPM. And you can spend a LOT on a decent turntable. Rega, Clearaudio, Thownsend, Thorens etc. Expect to pay £200-500 for a decent entry-level turntable, and a top notch one will be in the region of £1,000-£2,000. However, they do go up to £25,000 or so. Mid way between the two is about £5,000.
Just get a 1210 with something like a Rega tonearm fitted. It won't dissapoint, I promise you :thumbsup:
I personally don't pay that much, but I was talking about how they aren't heavier and pull down the leads of HDMI ports. I agree with you fully about just using cheap digital cables , i use some 2 dollar hdmi 1.4 cable. However I use higher end ones for analog sources (even my NES). Even though fiber optic is digital also, I noticed a difference using a higher quality cable. The better the internals the less jitter there seems to be because because it sends the light source I figure more efficiently I believe.
Put it to a double blind test and I guarantee you won't be able to tell the difference. Either that or one of the cables is broken, but that should be more like "I can't listen to this" rather than "which sounds better?"
I've done plenty of blind tests with two identical set ups, with two of the same cables. And I'm not blinded by price - I paid the same for these two cables.
I have to agree on paying slightly more for good HDMI cables. I have 3 which all cost around 3000 to 5000 yen each depending on the length. I did once try really cheap 1000 yen cables but the image did have artefacts on it. The slightly more expensive cables are spot on though with use on my 360, laptop to TV and DVD player. Also a thicker audio optical cable will make a difference too. No need to spend big wads of cash though. For anything digital you DON'T need to break the bank when it comes to cables. Of course cheap crap is just that, crap. Spend a sensible amount and you'll be fine. no analogue is a whole different story but I still wouldn't pay crazy amounts on cable. Yakumo
I agree whole heartedly Yakumo. If I didn't get a fantastic price on the high end cables, I would settle for standard stuff (not cheap, just standard). Now don't get me wrong, if you were to swap my optical cable for my headphones back to my other one would I notice? Chances are unlikely. Doing a side by side test however? It's there, subtle - but there.
