4 ms·

You’re absolutely right about that. I didn’t even mention how all of the drywall was replaced strategically with acoustic wall board. The entirety of the living

by S_A_P 8y ago

You’re absolutely right about that. I didn’t even mention how all of the drywall was replaced strategically with acoustic wall board. The entirety of the living room was gutted and refurbished to be the ultimate listening room, complete with stadium seating. Another recollection I just had is that he had a separate electric circuit run to the house(as in a second set of wires coming off the utility pole) so he could properly condition the power feeding his audio gear. Every aspect of the room was built around the grand utopias and their placement. If you’re not familiar with them check them out here. https://www.focal.com/en/home-audio/high-fidelity-speakers/utopia-iii-evo/floorstanding-speakers/grande-utopia-em-evo https://www.focal.com/en/home-audio/high-fidelity-speakers/u... The subwoofer drivers are unique in that they use an electromagnet instead of the usual strontium or neodymium permanent magnet. I think what impressed me the most was that this guy was not annoying or in to the hand wavy audiophile hocus pocus. Just super passionate about getting everything done to get the absolute best sound even if the bang per buck was low. He had a wall of vinyl and was happy to let me pick several selections to play. From what I understand, this guy would open his home to anyone interested in a listening session. If anyone is in the DFW area and you can get plugged in to that community it seemed like a great group of folks.

egeozcan 8y ago
> Another recollection I just had is that he had a separate electric circuit run to the house(as in a second set of wires coming off the utility pole) so he could properly condition the power feeding his audio gear In my limited experience, "clean power" (I know nil about this so I'm just repeating what I hear) was the most important difference people would "hear". My uncle used to have a Hi-Fi shop and I helped him sometimes. People hearing distortions in their existing setup used to make up for 90% of his customers. In those cases the number one step was to make sure that the power that comes to the system is clean. Being a certified electrician, he used to do his thing and you would almost always hear the "aaah" from the customers the moment you hit play. To me also the difference was generally night and day.
- sjwright 8y ago
  And yet such impressions conflict with how power supply circuits work and how THD measurement works. Wall power is incredibly noisy and there’s nothing much an electrician can do to change that. If this noise had any meaningful effect on the sound—it doesn’t—you would be able to measure it as a variance in THD. (Now of course that might be less true for some poorly made vinyl/phono level equipment but if you actually cared about audible distortions you wouldn't be listening to the sound of a needle scratching its way across a fragile plastic groove in the first place...)
  - egeozcan 8y ago
    Maybe then it was because of the isolation that the audio cables got being away from all the chaos created by the random power cables. I don't know. Most of the time, it was a huge improvement. The next step was to fix/remove anything that caused distortions.
- airbreather 8y ago
  Would have been way better off with a bunch of car batteries, the internal resistance and cold cranking amps would have pissed on any utility supply regulation and power supply regardless of the capacitors he had.
pimeys 8y ago
I don't know can I judge him. I listen to music all the time. Every imaginable genre that I happen to like. I'm not putting hundreds of thousands to my setup, but a good pair of headphones and a good headphone amp is a must for me in every office I work. Put some cash for Beyerdynamic DT-1770 Pro and been having a handmade headphone amp for the last 15 years, still using it. The sound cards differ, but now I'm ok with a Dragonfly serving the system. If you spend most of your day wearing headphones, you might invest to them a bit.
- scns 8y ago
  Have you checked out the O2 headphone amp by nwavguy? It is mentioned in a toplevel comment in this thread.
  - pimeys 8y ago
    I have a Corda HA2 mk3 and it still gives everything I need: enough punch to drive 250ohm headphones and a crossfeed to prevent fatigue when using them hours every day. Maybe in 50 years when it breaks I'll get a new one :)

by S_A_P 8y ago

egeozcan 8y ago

> Another recollection I just had is that he had a separate electric circuit run to the house(as in a second set of wires coming off the utility pole) so he could properly condition the power feeding his audio gear In my limited experience, "clean power" (I know nil about this so I'm just repeating what I hear) was the most important difference people would "hear". My uncle used to have a Hi-Fi shop and I helped him sometimes. People hearing distortions in their existing setup used to make up for 90% of his customers. In those cases the number one step was to make sure that the power that comes to the system is clean. Being a certified electrician, he used to do his thing and you would almost always hear the "aaah" from the customers the moment you hit play. To me also the difference was generally night and day.

sjwright 8y ago
And yet such impressions conflict with how power supply circuits work and how THD measurement works. Wall power is incredibly noisy and there’s nothing much an electrician can do to change that. If this noise had any meaningful effect on the sound—it doesn’t—you would be able to measure it as a variance in THD. (Now of course that might be less true for some poorly made vinyl/phono level equipment but if you actually cared about audible distortions you wouldn't be listening to the sound of a needle scratching its way across a fragile plastic groove in the first place...)
- egeozcan 8y ago
  Maybe then it was because of the isolation that the audio cables got being away from all the chaos created by the random power cables. I don't know. Most of the time, it was a huge improvement. The next step was to fix/remove anything that caused distortions.
airbreather 8y ago
Would have been way better off with a bunch of car batteries, the internal resistance and cold cranking amps would have pissed on any utility supply regulation and power supply regardless of the capacitors he had.

pimeys 8y ago

I don't know can I judge him. I listen to music all the time. Every imaginable genre that I happen to like. I'm not putting hundreds of thousands to my setup, but a good pair of headphones and a good headphone amp is a must for me in every office I work. Put some cash for Beyerdynamic DT-1770 Pro and been having a handmade headphone amp for the last 15 years, still using it. The sound cards differ, but now I'm ok with a Dragonfly serving the system. If you spend most of your day wearing headphones, you might invest to them a bit.

scns 8y ago
Have you checked out the O2 headphone amp by nwavguy? It is mentioned in a toplevel comment in this thread.
- pimeys 8y ago
  I have a Corda HA2 mk3 and it still gives everything I need: enough punch to drive 250ohm headphones and a crossfeed to prevent fatigue when using them hours every day. Maybe in 50 years when it breaks I'll get a new one :)