Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

I’ve dated worse.

You must have been desperate or drunk 

I think he was implying that he dated a Cougar. I'll bet she made his toes curl and taught him a thing or two. 

Meow.....

[Ice-Tea]

been subjecting my small audio server to a whole lot of grief.

Can you not find what you need in spotify? Sorry for the stupid question, it is more curiosity driven.. yes I am a cat.

Can't speak for Saskia, but I wouldn't touch spotify or similar with a barge-pole. Not for sound quality, money or similar reason, but for freedom reason. Any music I have on my own server (and devices) I'm free to listen to when or where I want to, and nobody knows when or what I listen to. Digitizing ones CD collection is a way to make it more convenient to access it.

I have well over 400CDs. Since I got spotify, they're all in boxes in the attic.

[Specmaster]

Incidentally she was my age now 20 years ago 

Oh, that might explain it then, desperately learning from an older far more experienced woman, although my mind struggles to imagine just how she become that experienced woman in the first instance, she must have been a right old cougar looking for young boys under the influence of alcohol with loads of rising sap and no outlet in sight 

[bd139]

Incidentally she was my age now 20 years ago 

she must have been a right old cougar looking for young boys under the influence of alcohol with loads of rising sap and no outlet in sight 

Nailed it 

[BU508A]

Honestly, if I have to choose between something like Med's wet dreams and electronics, I'll stick anytime with electronics. 

[med6753]

Honestly, if I have to choose between something like Med's wet dreams and electronics, I'll stick anytime with electronics. 

Ditto. 

I don't even think I could have a nightmare that frightening. 

[Cubdriver]

been subjecting my small audio server to a whole lot of grief.

Can you not find what you need in spotify? Sorry for the stupid question, it is more curiosity driven.. yes I am a cat.

Can't speak for Saskia, but I wouldn't touch spotify or similar with a barge-pole. Not for sound quality, money or similar reason, but for freedom reason. Any music I have on my own server (and devices) I'm free to listen to when or where I want to, and nobody knows when or what I listen to. Digitizing ones CD collection is a way to make it more convenient to access it.

I've ripped mine, too.  And yes, I kept the CDs, and still buy them when I want new music.  I don't want to bother with streaming services and the like.  I thought the satellite radio in my Jeep was great when I first got it - choose stations by genre and hear 'new' (or, as I later realized, 'different') music than the regular FM stations, who all seem to have very limited and repetitive playlists.  By the time I'd finished driving home from Florida with it I'd already started to notice repetition on the satellite stations, too, it was just a different set of songs.  I quickly tired of it and never renewed (and they seem finally to have realized that I'm not planning to and stopped sending weekly offers of deals to sign up again).  Do they have more variety than my iPod?  I'm not certain that they do, and even if I have less, what I have on the iPod is more to my liking, so less chaff and more wheat.

The music player at home now has just north of 1000 CDs on its hard drive, and I'm still occasionally adding more.  It's nice having the whole library in a little box that's smaller than an original full height 5-1/4" disk drive was.

-Pat

[med6753]

Incidentally she was my age now 20 years ago 

she must have been a right old cougar looking for young boys under the influence of alcohol with loads of rising sap and no outlet in sight 

Nailed it 

Sort of like this.....

[Specmaster]

Sort of like this.....

Exactly that, I've been there myself but with a far more attractive cougar 

[Ice-Tea]

Incidentally she was my age now 20 years ago 

she must have been a right old cougar looking for young boys under the influence of alcohol with loads of rising sap and no outlet in sight 

Nailed it 

Sort of like this.....

Dang. Beat me to it.

[bd139]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

[BU508A]

been subjecting my small audio server to a whole lot of grief.

Can you not find what you need in spotify? Sorry for the stupid question, it is more curiosity driven.. yes I am a cat.

Can't speak for Saskia, but I wouldn't touch spotify or similar with a barge-pole. Not for sound quality, money or similar reason, but for freedom reason. Any music I have on my own server (and devices) I'm free to listen to when or where I want to, and nobody knows when or what I listen to. Digitizing ones CD collection is a way to make it more convenient to access it.

I've ripped mine, too.  And yes, I kept the CDs, and still buy them when I want new music.  I don't want to bother with streaming services and the like.  I thought the satellite radio in my Jeep was great when I first got it - choose stations by genre and hear 'new' (or, as I later realized, 'different') music than the regular FM stations, who all seem to have very limited and repetitive playlists.  By the time I'd finished driving home from Florida with it I'd already started to notice repetition on the satellite stations, too, it was just a different set of songs.  I quickly tired of it and never renewed (and they seem finally to have realized that I'm not planning to and stopped sending weekly offers of deals to sign up again).  Do they have more variety than my iPod?  I'm not certain that they do, and even if I have less, what I have on the iPod is more to my liking, so less chaff and more wheat.

The music player at home now has just north of 1000 CDs on its hard drive, and I'm still occasionally adding more.  It's nice having the whole library in a little box that's smaller than an original full height 5-1/4" disk drive was.

-Pat

I'd like to listen to this station:

https://101.ru/

They have a really good rotation list and sometimes I'll find some nice new music unknown to me.

[BU508A]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

[Saskia]

I don't use Spotify or any streaming service.
Once I find something I like, I buy the CD which comes without DRM and similar crap.

My streaming server is built with  the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.

After a crappy childhood without any music (except for the church songs plus the abuse afterwards) I got my own stereo set when I was earning my first own money.
And I decided I wanted a good stereo set, so after a couple of years collecting the stuff I wanted I had:

Quadral Titan Mk 3 speakers
Sony TA-E88 preamp
Nakamichi PA-7E power amp
2 EAR 519 Tube amps
Audio Geometry FDN3S active crossover
Sony CDP557 ESD CD player (the only one that had a net weight of 18 kg (!!)
2 Nakamichi 680zx tape decks
and a custom make turntable with a denon studio direct drive thingie, an SME3012 and an Ortofon SPU GM

this was absolutely over the top, and I had to move, so I could not really lug around half a metric ton of stereo equipment.

But. Sound reproduction was fantastic. When playing symphonies, you felt as if you were sitting right in the concert hall.
I fiddledidummed a bit over the years and now am back to having something that I would call pretty decent.

Which translates to:
Quadral Vulkan Mk 3 (those are transmission line speakers that can be driven in a 2 or 3 way active configuration)
Sony TA-E 86B (similar to the 88, but lacking one Tape hookup plus a slightly downsized phono section)
Threshold T200 power amp
2 EAR 519 mono tube amps (not yet hooked up)
FDN3S active crossover (not yet hooked up)
Nakamichi RX505
Denon DP47 turntable
Nakamichi OMS 7 Mk2

Even though the weight of this stuff only approaches a quarter of a metric ton, the music reproduction quality is as good as you can wish for if your funds are somewhat limited (it's still bloody expensive ...)
Since I do not have a tuner and I am getting old and lazy I plus inspired by a friend of mine who had technical problems getting his high end audio streamer to function properly I decided to build a prototype of the next gen audio server for him. Easy to set up (use a web browser or a tablet), high capacity (currently 1 TB SSD) low heat dissipation, high end output (124db s/n, 192khz, Burr Brown DACs). And I have the prototype here, and decided to keep it (or a build-alike) for myself.

Which I did.
Can it play internet radio ? well, several hundred stations in as high a quality as they care to provide. Can it do automatic CD repository management ? you bet.
Is the sound quality sufficient: we (my high end dealer and myself) were quite impressed with the output which is as good as can reasonably be expected.

Should we bother with Spotify ?
nope. We have a music collection which is big enough. Should we run out of space: the server is easily expandable, even with a NAS.

Do we like modern boom boxes ?
well, about as much as surstromming.

Hope that answers the question.

Yes, Zucca, you may call me an audiophool ... I don't care. But I won't slaughter nice test instruments to steal the tubes. The ones I need are readily available.

[tautech]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

First lesson; always question authority and they'll go far. 

[bd139]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

Hahaha

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

First lesson; always question authority and they'll go far. 

So cat herding

[Zucca]

Yes, Zucca, you may call me an audiophool ... I don't care.

Don't tell anyone I burned about 2K5€ for a (even new) Ayre QB-9 only to find out my speakers are as good as RIFA caps...
(PS: The day I opened it up I wanted to cry... BOM was about 400USD max!!!!)
Don't tell anyone I still have one RCA Audio cable with directional signal with some magic oxigen copper...
Yes I was a stupid audiophool, please guys insult me as well.

Saskia, respect it looks like you are a smart audiophool. I enjoyed every letter of your post. I can imagine you with an Amarone glass listening to Mozart Ave Verum. 

[Cerebus]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

[Saskia]

@Zucca I burnt 100€ for a Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100 to see what others were doing.
Then decided to issue a bolo for an over the top soundcard which had all I needed on board and came with a PCI-Express interface.
I found it, did the integration, and it's working fine. BOM is about 1000€ - 1200€ for the hardware.  which includes a standard hifi size extruded aluminum case with integrated heat sinks and heat pipes.

The only thing left for me to do is to try and lower the temperature within the case. Yesterday after ripping about 100 CDs it was at 48 degrees which I consider too high.
So I'll see if I cannot get a proper notebook CPU for it to bring TDP way down ...
And no, mounting a fan is not an option.

[Saskia]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

Easier than convincing controllers about technical requirements (or even worse) staffing requirements.

[BU508A]

Yes, Zucca, you may call me an audiophool ... I don't care.

Don't tell anyone I burned about 2K5€ for a (even new) Ayre QB-9 only to find out my speakers are as good as RIFA caps...
(PS: The day I opened it up I wanted to cry... BOM was about 400USD max!!!!)
Don't tell anyone I still have one RCA Audio cable with directional signal with some magic oxigen copper...
Yes I was an audiophool, please guys insult me as well.

Sakia, respect. I enjoyed every letter of your post. I can imagine you with an Amarone glass listening to Mozart Ave Verum. 

We are all humans, we all have our weak points.
And for this I'd like to quote Obelix, a very wise Gaule warrior. 



Translation:
Asterix: "I think this time they got it."

Miraculix (Panoramix): "Oh, they are loudmouths, cream puffs and smart people propeller heads smart alecs, but you just have to love them ... they are so human."

Obelix: "The crazy ones, the human ones."

[bd139]

That's about right 

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

Actually these guys are already the purple ones. 

On a positive note I’ve designed a headphone amplifier (well a power opamp) from scratch in LTspice. Single rail 12v supply, very low theoretical distortion, fully discrete standard parts, flat 5Hz to 30KHz gain, 500mW output. £1 a channel approx BOM cost or £5 if you want to use a discrete transistor array.  Going to build two of them and see if it sounds like ass this week.

[Cerebus]

Anybody want to start a sweepstake on what frequency BD's new headphone oscillator will start up at? 

[mansaxel]

Today's project: turn minions into engineers. Kill me.

[bd139]

Anybody want to start a sweepstake on what frequency BD's new headphone oscillator will start up at? 

Will be very interesting to see what the deal is. Without any compensation it meets Barkhausen criteria at 70KHz. On paper. Much fun ahead.