adventures in stupid
sucks2beme
Posts: 5,601
Or how to tear apart a system and start over.
The ARC is gone. The McCormack is in.
The wife's had the downstairs all torn up and contractors in and out,
so I've not had the time needed to get this set up right.
The McCormack is supposed to be on all the time, and it goes into
standby mode (reduced power) after 15 idle minutes.
The Symphonies tube amp after a tube swap was working pretty well
but I really didn't want to leave it running 24/7. The B&K pre plainly
didn't match well, so now what? I decided to go shunt style passive.
I whipped one up with parts on hand. Not too shabby. After fiddling
with IC cables, I find the passive output doesn't like the Kimbers too well.
The bass was very light. I swapped in the AQ King Cobra. Bass is now there.
What is missing is soundstage. I had swapped over to the Pico DAC as part
of the system changeout. The Pico is a pretty good USB powered DAC.
But it wasn't liking the lowered input impedance of the passive. So I put the
Audio-GD back in, and now I'm cooking. Downside, another plugged in
device and a bigger footprint. The good news is I can turn down the
passive pre volume, turn off the DAC, and the amp is fine. no hum, and
it goes into standby just fine. I also dumped the external hard drive, and
put my music on a 256GB thumb drive paid for with Best Buy reward
points. That's the only up side to the wife buying a SH|tLO@D of
new appliances. So right now I'm running Runeaudio running on a
Raspberry Pi II and controlling it with a tablet.
The goal here was to make the system smaller and simple, while
maintaining some audio quality. So far, so good.
Next steps including clearing Vintage stuff, spare cables, headphones,
preamps, USB cables, DAC, and whatever else I can think of.
Right about now I'm thinking I should have went over and checked out
Skip's Dayens integrated. I may yet go that route if this doesn't pan out.
The ARC is gone. The McCormack is in.
The wife's had the downstairs all torn up and contractors in and out,
so I've not had the time needed to get this set up right.
The McCormack is supposed to be on all the time, and it goes into
standby mode (reduced power) after 15 idle minutes.
The Symphonies tube amp after a tube swap was working pretty well
but I really didn't want to leave it running 24/7. The B&K pre plainly
didn't match well, so now what? I decided to go shunt style passive.
I whipped one up with parts on hand. Not too shabby. After fiddling
with IC cables, I find the passive output doesn't like the Kimbers too well.
The bass was very light. I swapped in the AQ King Cobra. Bass is now there.
What is missing is soundstage. I had swapped over to the Pico DAC as part
of the system changeout. The Pico is a pretty good USB powered DAC.
But it wasn't liking the lowered input impedance of the passive. So I put the
Audio-GD back in, and now I'm cooking. Downside, another plugged in
device and a bigger footprint. The good news is I can turn down the
passive pre volume, turn off the DAC, and the amp is fine. no hum, and
it goes into standby just fine. I also dumped the external hard drive, and
put my music on a 256GB thumb drive paid for with Best Buy reward
points. That's the only up side to the wife buying a SH|tLO@D of
new appliances. So right now I'm running Runeaudio running on a
Raspberry Pi II and controlling it with a tablet.
The goal here was to make the system smaller and simple, while
maintaining some audio quality. So far, so good.
Next steps including clearing Vintage stuff, spare cables, headphones,
preamps, USB cables, DAC, and whatever else I can think of.
Right about now I'm thinking I should have went over and checked out
Skip's Dayens integrated. I may yet go that route if this doesn't pan out.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson
Comments
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From the title I thought that you had stopped by my place but I didn't see you, however after reading your post again I see that you have gone insane. Pretty much like stopping by my place, welcome home son...
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afterburnt wrote: »From the title I thought that you had stopped by my place but I didn't see you,..
I thought he hung out with PFB...
The Gear... Carver "Statement" Mono-blocks, Mcintosh C2300 Arcam AVR20, Oppo UDP-203 4K Blu-ray player, Sony XBR70x850B 4k, Polk Audio Legend L800 with height modules, L400 Center Channel Polk audio AB800 "in-wall" surrounds. Marantz MM7025 stereo amp. Simaudio Moon 680d DSD
“When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.”— Thomas Jefferson -
sucks2beme wrote: »Next steps including clearing Vintage stuff, spare cables, headphones,
preamps, USB cables, DAC, and whatever else I can think of.
Call me intrigued.. pull back the curtain and let us know what you've got man
"....not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." William Bruce Cameron, Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking (1963) -
I'm still swapping stuff around. After the dust clears
I'll start dumping stuff. I think most of the spare stuff is
too mid-fi for you guys. On Vintage, my Marantz receiver is already gone,
the Sansui should be gone next week. The Marantz 1150
is the last holdout.
Skip, I don't know that I'm getting free time this weekend.
There's talk of installing a new kitchen sink and searching for a
new loveseat.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson -
Just a matter of finding the right synergy between pieces is all. Probably the most aggravating part of audio.
The King Cobra's aren't known for a stellar soundstage. With the passive pre in the mix, it's going to take some trial and error to get it right. I would try some MIT, Acoustic zens in there and see whats what.
Anyway, good luck to you on sorting it all out, the vultures are waiting for your list of things to sell.
HT SYSTEM-
Sony 850c 4k
Pioneer elite vhx 21
Sony 4k BRP
SVS SB-2000
Polk Sig. 20's
Polk FX500 surrounds
Cables-
Acoustic zen Satori speaker cables
Acoustic zen Matrix 2 IC's
Wireworld eclipse 7 ic's
Audio metallurgy ga-o digital cable
Kitchen
Sonos zp90
Grant Fidelity tube dac
B&k 1420
lsi 9's -
That downsizing is giving me Nightmares! Hope you don't eviscerate your tunes? What is it they say about "variety"? lolCurrently orbiting Bowie's Blackstar.!
Polk Lsi-7s, Def Tech 8" sub, HK 3490, HK HD 990 (CDP/DAC), AKG Q701s
[sig. changed on a monthly basis as I rotate in and out of my stash] -
Ok. Back to square one. I don't think I can live without tubes.
The AE Symphonies is back in as the preamp. Passive was ok, but
the tubes here rule. I'm just going to have to turn off the amp every night
along with the preamp. The only real contest now is which DAC stays."The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson
