desktopguy
Responses from desktopguy
| The Billy Joel Interview I never followed Billy Joel in any real way--never bought his recordings or saw him play live. But there's no mistaking the fact that he's one of the great song writers of his generation. Exactly the same words for Elton John. These guys crushed i... | |
| Oscar Peterson vs. Art Tatum Nobody -- not Oscar, not anyone -- can rival the virtuosity and harmonic genius of Art Tatum. But having said that, I find Art’s playing to often veer into exhaust-the-listener excess. Too much genius in a 3 minute tune can be exhausting. I’ve he... | |
| Maybe it IS all in the DAC chips I had a couple Audio GD (mid-level ChiFi) DACs that used the PCM1704s, but never managed to hear them in any other DACs. AGD having a distinctive voicing/house sound, I’m not sure whether I heard the chips or the implementation. Since then I went... | |
| Do clothes make the man? @abnerjack I’ve also heard that running a quality delta/sigma DAC like your Benchmark through a tubed pre w/ or w/o a tubed amp creates positive synergy. Never had occasion to test it, though. FWIW, I’m a bit of a DAC hoarder (an everything hoard... | |
| Do clothes make the man? Many years ago when I had big, wonderful tube amps and a tube preamp, I hadn’t yet learned about rolling tubes. In the last 10 years, however, in my two home office systems (one headphone only; the other headphones + speakers/sub), I’ve done fairl... | |
| 4K headphone + headphone amp/dac system recommendations please @no_regrets thank you for the nice words, Don! | |
| late to streaming, recommendations? I read through this thread pretty quickly and might have missed it--but I didn't seen one mention of Roon. And that's the part of this equation that I can't wrap my mind around. Does everyone here stream via individual providers' apps (ie, Qobuz o... | |
| Visited a Store and was shunned OP’s experience brings back bad (lame, actually) memories for me. It was the mid-to-late 1980s and I have a sales mgmt job that meant traveling to 39 states (which I did). I was flat-out ignored once in an audio salon in Chicago, and another in At... | |
| New to Class D / Purifi - thoughts before I purchase, details below @bartsw -- good point about preamp. Same applies to DAC and/or streamer. Those can and should be "voiced" in whatever way the user most appreciates, and that sound will carry through, to at least some extent, through the amp(s) to the speakers. A... | |
| New to Class D / Purifi - thoughts before I purchase, details below I’m a big fan of class D amps, having had great sonic success with amps using ICEPower or NCore modules (I have 3 such amps at this time). However, I have no personal experience with Purifi modules, so can't comment on that. It’s nice that you ha... | |
| Sonny Rollins has passed One of the greatest reed players anywhere, anytime. A titan. He outlived all his friends and loved ones and was a shut-in due to pulmonary issues; his life was not easy the past 4-5 years. I felt relief when I learned he passed (for his sake, I me... | |
| Does the Devore Fidelity Orangutan 0/96 speaker play rich and full bodied at 50 Decibels Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think anyone here mentioned the source component(s) upstream of the speakers & amp. Those matter a lot in getting satisfactory low volume performance. I’ve had any number of 2-way speakers on my nearfield/desktop... | |
| My thoughts on my first Class D amp I'm a broken record on this topic. If you want to hear class D that has meat on the bones and sounds like real music, try the Wyred 4 Sound ST-500. Used ones sometimes come up F.S. in the $550 - $650 range. It's a steal if you can find it. I've h... | |
| Noob! Please help me replace my old power amp, some candidates listed. Casey: I own the larger B&K amp (150 wpc . . . it’s >30 yrs old & working great) which, like the ST-140, uses mosfets for power. Though some criticize mosfets as less than ideally resolving (they harp on the "mosfet fog"), I beg to dif... | |
| PayPal just blocked my account for using F&F I’ve used Paypal for the last 10 years, many transactions, both as buyer and seller. This F&F vs G&S debate is a painful topic for me. A few relevant facts: 1 - It is lunacy for sellers of big ticket items to demand F&F from total str... |