Recent content by W9TR

I have both and love each in its own way. I own a few good pairs of headphones and they are a pleasure to listen to early in the morning and late at night when I don’t want to disturb the household. They have much lower distortion, better time coherence and a more dynamic presentation than...

CES has certainly evolved from its debut alongside the Adult Entertainment Expo. You can’t get a Linda Lovelace autograph anymore. Even the booth babes have morphed into amazingly ripped athletes demoing fitness gear. It was worth going to CES for high end audio when the Alexis Park venue was...

The written reviews, show reports, online reviews, recommended components, Best of Show and owner testimonials are all a form of entertainment. I pay attention to them all. I also look at objective performance measures and find those are a more accurate predictor of my ultimate satisfaction...

From that list I’ve owned DCM Time Windows, EPI 100’s, Large Advents, and Spica TC-50’s. The Spica’s and Time Windows were exemplary performers and stayed in my system for years. The Advents and EPi’s not so much . :)

There’s a lot going on in transports to get from pits on the disc to formatted S/PDIF into a DAC. My first experience with this was a Rega Planet CD player feeding a Benchmark DAC, and a Marantz CD- 54 (I think, it’s been a long time) feeding the same DAC. The two transports sounded different...

It might just be that their transconductance is at the low end of the spec range for a KT-88. How does a known good KT-88 test?

Wow, I thought Coda was out of business. Nice !

It’s been really interesting designing my theater. Home Cinema is a whole other country, where a system integrator’s end product is not a collection of equipment, it is an entertainment space designed to meet very specific technical requirements. They choose products based on technical...

This has been an interesting detour for a room optimization thread. In another thread here someone asked the evergreen question “what's most important? Speakers, source, etc ?” No one mentioned the room. Silence, crickets. Speakers always win these polls. Your room is the most important...

Sorry, here’s the secret decoder ring. CTA RP-22 and -23 are published standards for immersive video and audio systems aka Home Theaters. On the case of the RP 22 they characterize levels of performance from non-compliant to level 4. Level 4 is an open checkbook level, probably $2-5 Million...

I will be getting either Buckeye or a VTV amps. I looked at building my own but the cost was higher than buying completed units. If find them deficient I’ll build my own linear power supplies for them.

One of the nice things I’m looking forward to is the option, should I choose to use it, of augmenting the SF Amatis with stereo subs. I have never needed to eq them for stereo listening, and in my HT they are crossed over at 40 Hz. Using my preamp as a pass through I get the best of both...

I am going to put a toe in the Class D water. I think the Purifi Eignetakt Gen2 modules are a good place to start. I need 12 channels of amplification for my new theater. I'm going to start with one 3 channel amp to see how it compares to my McIntosh stuff.

Thanks for the references AJ. Very interesting and helpful. Since I am building a multipurpose room it has to work equally well for HT and 2 channel. 2 channel wins any arguments. In my current system the 2 channel setup does not use subs. The speakers I have go pretty low in-room, so I never...

If I keep it I'll check them out. But I'll probably sell it as I now have too many turntables.....