Hello Steve, not sure how I get over passionate, I did with the girl with the mini skirt it must have been about forty years or more ago, I dread to think what she must look like now!
You did not mention if you had got any Lamingtons.
I use a Cambridge Audio DVD player for playing Cd's, one of my own designed and built valve amps and preamp and as for cables gold plated phono plugs and bog standard figure of 8 screened lead wired up by yours truly, for speakers heavy duty figure of 8 speaker cable, my speakers are Tannoy Monitor gold 15inch in large home made cabinets about 30 years old and I have another pair in the spare room, I was given the second pair when I was installing one of my disco systems and the club owner said I have got a couple of old cabinets I was going to put them in the skip but you can have them, I looked and saw they were Tannoy cabinets I thought there would be some rubbish speakers in them but it was worth a try, so I jokingly say I got one under each arm and in the back of the car, when I got them back home they were 15inch monitor golds in perfect condition and I wont sell any of my Tannoys I just like the sound they produce. Nothing esoteric and they sounds fantastic to my ears, sorry nothing costing a lot the CD player was just over £100 the amp must have cost about £6-8 hundred pounds as the transformer are very high grade the cable and plugs must have cost about £8 and the speakers around £250 that is 30 year old prices. I am waiting for a friend to give me a Technics direct drive turntable and will set up vynel, though I like the silence of Cds but have to be able to test with sound my amps before they are shipped to the customer.
Well regards for now mate off to have some stew even though it is summer and hot just fancy some home made with chicken and cheap though to make it taste good I may put some oak cones under the soup bowel and use some expensive cables to support the place mat. Regards for now Gerald.
Gerald, you say you use a Cambridge dvd player to play cd's on, do you use a seperate dac to improve things, or are you happy enough with it the way it is? I ask because most people I know into hifi, believe that using a stand alone dvd player, without a seperate dac, is not really doing the cd's justice.
Perhaps that is why you cannot hear differences in cables, your dvd player is not allowing the full message through...................
I'm in a similar boat to Gerald - using the dvd player as a Universal player- in that I dump the Digital Out by RF coax into an HC processor (mainly for reasons of rendering 5.1 when required) and let the Yamaha's DAC do the business. Never really done any comparison between the Sony internal DAC and the Yamaha though.....
Despite my apparent lack of activity on the cable-comparsion front, from my own experiences I do recognise/sympathise with the observations of those who have extensively compared I/Cs....
Don't know if you've read back through the history of any of the longer running Cable Threads but we've covered everything except the kitchen sink...
Possibly the most damaging arguments against perception are the Placebo Effect and the James Randi Effect....
I'm not convinced by either of these. James Randi in particular is too much of a manipulator to be taken seriously (although many would argue that the Cable Companies are the true manipulators), especially given the outcome of AVR's own Blind Test (....but it would be nice to see someone over there call James Randi's bluff just to prove the point....)
I'm told that in the US, people are too scared to voice their cable comparison beliefs now, but if you look on the US Forums I'd say it has had little effect....
This is the stuff dreams are made of......Tannoy 15" monitors and a valve amp to drive them with....
When I were a lad I almost bought a pair.....I was looking at Tannoy Ardens and Berkeleys at the time.....
You've never heard Dark Side of the Moon until you've heard it pumped out through a pair of very large seriously air-shifting Tannoys....and, due to their exceptional efficiency....any decent valve amp will show them off perfectly.
Today, my tastes have changed a bit and I've gone from "bass-head" to controlled bass. Nowadays speed, and the ability to keep up with the other drivers is top priority. This gives a bit more analysis of the bass and keeps sounds in perspective, not just in terms of instrumental character but the relative size of the instruments as they are presented on the soundstage. Another useful indicator is to compare the scale of the left and right hand of the piano...
Yours sounds like a great system though and there is a much to enjoy....I wouldn't mind having a second system like this...
I did notice your comment about buying a direct drive t/t ? Being a Linn LP12 user (although not for much longer) you would normally expect someone of my persuasions to suggest a second hand Linn but not me.....(despite using a Linn that hasn't been serviced for 19 yrs and whose cartridge is on it's last legs - also 19 yrs old - the musical result is so unbelievably good that I'm scared to buy anything else in case I lose the music ! But I've already lined up the replacement....)
Meantime, have a look at this as a possible short term answer to your Turntable problems....
I've heard a lot of good things about the Lenco and people still swear by them today. Trouble is they are very popular and a lot of existing enthusiasts may well bid on them - even just for spares...
Failing that there are a lot of good belt driven suspended sub-chassis turntables which will give great results (Dave Mellor recently snapped up a Dunlop Systemdek) e.g. Thorens TD160 etc, or if you feel like trying the mass-damped route there are some worth trying.....
The only good thing about Direct Drives was their speed stability....everything else was bad and I would avoid these if you can. Some of the big heavy "battleship steel" direct drives such as the Trio L-07D had their fans but I'm doubtful that this is the true route to musical satisfaction.....
The analogy for Direct Drive is "like putting a vibrator on a camera tripod then trying to get a non-blurred image". A belt or thread, plus flywheel inertia, isolates the motor quite effectively and is still the most preferred method.
Hello Bill, just a short reply at this moment in time. Glad you like the Tannoy sound yes they do move a lot of air that is for sure. Also they don't take much to drive them, I have always said that you can have the most rubbish amplifier but a realy good speaker will make it sound good, lets face it the microphone and speaker are the important parts of the chain as they convert air movements to and from electrical signals.
Re the direct drive turntable I am being given one free it is a Technics SL1400 the last model they made. I think that is the number I purchased one about 27 years ago before I got CD and it sounded great I used an SME 3009 mk 2 with a sure V15 3 but when my house in London was destroyed by fire it amongst most every thing else went, but a business partner has a nearly now one deck. I still have the SME arm and cartridge but the arm need restoring and SME no longer support that model and the Shure is getting a bit old so will have to get a new cart, maybe moving coil. I just have to go over to south London to pick it up. I used to cut records when I had a recording studio in SOHO and that like all other disk cutting lathes was direct drive and I feel that if it is good enough to cut the records it must be good enough to play them. I have a Thorens TD 125 Mk 2 but have never used it and must get round to putting it on eBay. I have never been a fan of belt drive so I think I am too old to change.
I hope no one takes offense to the use of the word Vibrator in you reference to cameras I assume you mean the same sort that I think you do, does it matter is it is a normal one or does it have to have extras fitted!!!!!!
I have a couple of Olympus OM2 cameras and lots of lenses and just got a motor drive off eBay so I am going to start taking photographs using film again with the motor drive, I always wanted one but they were too expensive when they were current. Luckily all my camera gear had their own cases and it was packed away in strong cases so it survived.
I must seem like a silly old fart using things from the past but it makes an old man happy as they say nudge nudge wink wink!!!!!
Well well well, I think Gerald has got his medication right at long last, an 'in depth' discussion, some history and some future, well done. Back in the bedsit days I had a Thorens TD125, it was considered one of the best available, Wien bridge oscillator to drive the motor, variable pitch that did not rely on the mains frequency, weighed a ton, I think I blew a months salary on that. You may like to know that at the time I had Tannoy Lancasters and very good they were, at that time, and a Radford valve amp.
But that time was 35 years ago and I would certainly not swap what I have now with that system, the massive Magnats move air like anything I have ever heard and 'Dark Side Of The Moon', that I then had on vinyl does sound far more impressive, awesome comes to mind and all from that minuscule 7+7 Watt battery powered amplifier. (the one in the picture)
I see you guys have a lot more in common than you thought
Both been down the TD125/valve amp/Tannoy route
Gerald if you ever need any camera advice you should have a word with Dave Mellor as what he doesn't know about cameras isn't worth knowing When you get the SL1400 it might be worth doing an A-B to see which one you prefer before you commit. The Thorens have a great pedigree and it would be a shame to lose it
John....I thought you were planning to supersede the Magnats sometime soon..?
Yes Bill, am still pondering on the Podiums, but with a flat full of floor-standers and no income the idea of spending £6000 on yet another pair of massive speakers is daunting.
Maybe I should organise an auction, get some cash back, and some space. Must admit the Magnats have grown on me - is that 'burn in' -, no the big change came with sorting the room acoustics, curtains down one complete side, full height, Skyline diffusers on the back wall and some more furniture. The room is now practically anechoic, one can hear the silence on entering, I'm sure this is a greater change than can be achieved though cables alone!
Have read David Mellor's posts here and he is undoubtedly a true professional.
A few years ago I actually gave away a very respectable Nikon with several lenses and motor drive, I prefer the immediacy of digital, take the pictures, tidy up in say Photoshop, print it out. Have since found a company that will print A2 size on canvas for a tenner, that makes it difficult to compare, and the results are outstanding.
To be honest though my interest was not born out of artistic creation, more a reason to chat up a lonely lady walking in the park, make her feel good and get talking, I was often accused of not even having film in the camera. Now was I that transparent??
John...
New hobby as of yesterday, getting out of parking fines, after a few calls and some 'in depth' discussion on the morality of such fines they eventually resinded yet another, it pays to talk.
Lets look at the 'air moving' capabilities of large speakers, a good standard speaker of the 60s would be 12 inch, largely because it was considered 'professionial' and therefore did not attract 'purchase tax'. But in air moving terms how well did it do, well my Magnats have two bass drivers of nominal 7 inch diameter, with an effective piston diameter of 6 inches, so air moving area is radius squared times Pie = 6/2 * 6/2 * 3.14 = 28.3 but we have two so 56.6 square inches.
Now the much loved 12 inch professional speaker from the 60s, true piston area say 9 inches so 9/2 * 9/2 * 3.14 = 63.6 square inches, not massively different, but a whole lot more mass for the 12 inch unit, far more difficult to start and stop, that is one reason that I believe modern designs to be better, in fact if a 3 inch speaker could be designed with a low funamental resonance then put sixteen in a cabinet and a new speaker would be born, so dynamic and fast that all would crave for it, maybe even a contender for full range electrostatics, sorry Bill.
Hello John, there is a company called Bandor who make speakers A friend and myself went to the house of Dorothy Jordan one of the partners and listened to some of their speakers, she also gave us some horrible tasting rice cakes and a cup of good tea, the speakers were better than the cakes though not much better.
She said she used to work for Goodman's speakers and said the was really into Vibrators, we could not stop laughing she obviously meant industrial ones to vibrate cars and large bits of machinery, but being P**s takers we had to laugh.
When my friend tried the speakers he go from them they were worse than a cheap transistor radio, not a patch on my Tannoys.
I saw in a program on TV someone mention that one of the characters used to drink 17 tins of Speciel brew a night, is this possible John, as I believe you are considered to be an expert in this technology. Regards Gerald.
I have an old AR turntable which i might sell. I also have B&W 330i from the late 80's with 2 dual 8 inch drivers (rewired and upgraded crossover - braced etc.I love my old B&W speakers, compared them to the new B&W, I preffered mine, more natural and open sounding however the new ones had a little more clarity in the top end. I have the old Marantz cd63se ( I still prefer it over the cheaper marantz players) and a new consonance cd120 linear player with a valve pre and rotel and Nad power amps. I also have surround sound as we;; 6.1 (Marantz) I plug the power amps into it use it mainly for movies and sometimes music as well.
just to prove the point....)
