[DavidSerig]

No problem but curious why? You think Monoprice is not good? That’s what Schiit Audio recommends and I find it just fine.

Well, it never hurts to be sure. Pink Floyd's doing it's second? annual? release of live material from the Dark Side tours, the sound isn't very good but good enough for Floyd Freaks!

 

[Timster]

MJ3 is rocking the LCD4s with some TOOL on a Saturday night!

That's no way to talk about yourself.

*Ohhhh, sorry ... you mean the band "TOOL". My bad

 

[landwatersky]

Use this cable:

Monoprice USB 2.0 Type-C to Type-B Cable - for Use with Printers & More, 480Mbps, 3.3 Feet, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GGH5YP...PD4CCS&peakEvent=5&dealEvent=1&language=en-US

Use this cable:

Monoprice USB 2.0 Type-C to Type-B Cable - for Use with Printers & More, 480Mbps, 3.3 Feet, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GGH5YP...PD4CCS&peakEvent=5&dealEvent=1&language=en-US

Thank you, Adias. Appreciate your input!

 

[landwatersky]

Monoprice? What if the man wants to listen to stereo?

Cable matters with a 5% coupon is the cable you are looking for.

Thanks for your input, too, David!

 

[R3DFIV3]

Thanks, it's the Audio Technica AT-LP7!

The look of this TT is just so appealing. For several years now, I have trudged along with an AT-LP60 and (with the release of Skoll) have been recently considering a serious TT purchase.

I have been reading mixed buying advice on $500 range gear vs. $1k range gear.
Some say a Fluance RT85 is the sweetspot, others mention that TT will limit cartridge purchases down the road. Which leads to recommendations for Pioneer PLX-1000 or TECHNICS SL1200 level of TT.

Also, one recommendation that caught my eye was to spend on Table, then cartridge, and finally on phono preamp.

Any thoughts or advice? How did you come to select that amazing looking TT you have?

 

[theeclone]

The look of this TT is just so appealing. For several years now, I have trudged along with an AT-LP60 and (with the release of Skoll) have been recently considering a serious TT purchase.

I have been reading mixed buying advice on $500 range gear vs. $1k range gear.
Some say a Fluance RT85 is the sweetspot, others mention that TT will limit cartridge purchases down the road. Which leads to recommendations for Pioneer PLX-1000 or TECHNICS SL1200 level of TT.

Also, one recommendation that caught my eye was to spend on Table, then cartridge, and finally on phono preamp.

Any thoughts or advice? How did you come to select that amazing looking TT you have?

I'm always looking for bang for the buck, and the AT-LP7 seemed to fit the bill! I also knew I wanted to go belt drive so that narrowed things down a bit as well. And I tend to prefer S and J shaped tonearms over straight ones; partly for aesthetic reasons but partly because I find them a bit easier to cue up. Another box it ticked was a detachable head shell, so I could experiment with different carts without having to realign. It sure didn't hurt that amazon has a zero percent payment plan for it.

It's been a reliable 'table but I've had to fight a bit to get certain carts to sound good on it. Maybe the tonearm effective mass is just in a weird zone. Couldn't get my grado to track well on it.

I have a Nagaoka on it now and while it still may be breaking in, it (like other carts I've tried) is a little lacking in bass. Now that I have the Lokius it's not as much of an issue. That eq sounds great! But I do wonder if there's something about the tonearm or some other aspect of the 'table's design that makes it hard to get the most bass out of certain carts. Pretty much all of the other aspects of the sound I'm getting from this 'table are wonderful, though; the staging, the tracking (with the right cart), the detailed mids, etc. And if you like MC carts the Hana EL actually plays pretty nice with the AT-LP7.

I myself am half tempted to get that Teac 'table that has balanced outs to feed the Skoll's balanced ins. But then if I wanted to run an MC cart I couldn't use my step-up transformer (SUT). And I'm not aware of any SUTs that are balanced, though they may exist.

 

[tafens]

"So I can run this fully passive, no gain stage at all?

Yes, no problem at all. Just don’t expect it to convert single-ended to balanced or anything like that. It is, after all, passive."

The question is, how is my setup working and sounding this good if it is not being converted to balanced, as the Aegirs need to run in mono? Second question is, if it is indeed passing a balanced signal to the Aegirs via XLR, is this being done actively or passively?
thank you

I have a similar thing I’m pondering, but the other way around. I feed the FreyaS balanced in from the DAC and connect an Aegir via single-ended RCA out. It works fine in passive and with the same volume level as buffered 1x gain. I didn’t expect that due to that FAQ, so I’m wondering why/how it seems to work in passive with balanced to single-ended but not the other way around.

 

[Balthazar B]

Any thoughts or advice? How did you come to select that amazing looking TT you have?

It was the 0-60 mph in 3.8 secs.

 

[Ripper2860]

And of course there are instances where power filters are required - I use them - because of other issues in the house. But that's not the topic. We are talking about power regeneration devices.

Serious question: Would a power regenerator not be the ultimate power filter?

 

[Ableza]

Serious question: Would a power regenerator not be the ultimate power filter?

It depends on how it's designed I suppose. A regeneration system is a voltage amplifier, but filtering could be built in. The only thing you might "gain" is a more regulated input to the system, but most system have the regulation they require built into them.

Like everything else in audio, if the user can afford it and it sounds good to them then they should use it, and since all setups are different - even those using the same equipment - nothing is universal and some setups may require things others don't. I'm just speaking from the general perspective of audio equipment design.

 

[jonathan c]

It was the 0-60 mph in 3.8 secs.

… not the 0 —> 85dB in 1.1 secs?

 

[White Noise]

The look of this TT is just so appealing. For several years now, I have trudged along with an AT-LP60 and (with the release of Skoll) have been recently considering a serious TT purchase.

I have been reading mixed buying advice on $500 range gear vs. $1k range gear.
Some say a Fluance RT85 is the sweetspot, others mention that TT will limit cartridge purchases down the road. Which leads to recommendations for Pioneer PLX-1000 or TECHNICS SL1200 level of TT.

Also, one recommendation that caught my eye was to spend on Table, then cartridge, and finally on phono preamp.

Any thoughts or advice? How did you come to select that amazing looking TT you have?

I've been out of the TT game for years (seriously, mine hasn't even been plugged in for two years and I didn't use it for two years before that). If the market has changed significantly, then ignore me. That said, I had good luck trawling ebay for a used technics. The SL-1200, before it was resurrected, was used by DJs for years, so there are tons of them out there and a pretty good parts market to maintain them. BUT, and here's the big but, there are a whole lot of SL-series turntables that do not have the "1200" after the SL, and a lot of them share parts. For instance, I have an SL-D3 which is like the hi-fi version of an SL-1200 with auto-cueing and auto stop(meaning I walk up, hit play, and do not have to interact with the player until it's time to switch sides). I got this around a decade ago for about $100, oiled the motor/platter, added some mass to the plastic plinth for better damping, made my own cork mat, and called it a day. It even already had a decent cart on it (and AT LP something or other) which I just upgraded the stylus from whatever orange meant to whatever purple meant. There's an SL-D2 like mine without auto cueing, there's SL-1100-1600 (or more, I don't remember how many models there were exactly). The world is your oyster. If there's a particular feature you want, there's probably an SL table that either already has it or can be modded to have it. Except for belt drive.

 

[Ripper2860]

Re: Power Regenerators and filters.

I found this on Audiogon. Gave me a bit more insight as to what each does and what gear should already be doing if designed properly. Of course we all know our Schiit is designed properly!

"A power regenerator is an electronic component which contains internally a 60Hz oscillator driving a high capacity power amplifier. Its 60Hz output is what powers the audio system, and the ac from the wall is only used to power the regenerator itself. So in principle the audio system will see ac power that is very pure, and essentially free of noise, harmonics, etc.

A power conditioner is essentially a filter, which passes the 60Hz ac from the wall to the audio system, while attenuating to some degree the noise and other spectral impurities that may be present. Some of them also provide outlets that are isolated from each other to some degree, so that noise from digital components can be prevented from coupling into analog components via their power connections."

 

[Jason Stoddard]

It depends on how it's designed I suppose. A regeneration system is a voltage amplifier, but filtering could be built in. The only thing you might "gain" is a more regulated input to the system, but most system have the regulation they require built into them.

Like everything else in audio, if the user can afford it and it sounds good to them then they should use it, and since all setups are different - even those using the same equipment - nothing is universal and some setups may require things others don't. I'm just speaking from the general perspective of audio equipment design.

Yeah, it depends.

Here's the thing: we do have customers that have issues with variable line voltage, crappy quality AC (more square than sine), DC on the line, etc. These are the kinds of problems that cause mechanical humming, buzzing, transformers running too hot, etc.

A regenerator would solve that 100%.

BUT.

If it's a regenerator using a conventional transformer and a linear supply, the hum and buzz caused by high line voltage or crappy AC quality simply moves to the transformer inside the regenerator. So you get a silent amp and a buzzy regenerator. Not ideal.

Or, if it's a regenerator using a switching supply, then the switching supply noise may be injected into the AC mains (or may not, depends really on the quality of the filtering.) So no hum/buzz anywhere, but maybe noisy AC. Not sure--we don't make these products and I haven't done any significant investigation into them.

What I do know is that everywhere we have high-frequency noise, like in our AC-powered DACs, we use an AC line filter. And the kind of noise the digital section of a DAC produces is orders of magnitude less than that produced by an off-line switcher.

And, it's important to note that a regenerator is much, much, much more crazy than an AC filter. A regenerator is literally a power amp that drives an AC power socket. It's almost exactly like making an audio power amp. It has some economies in that it can use slower/crappier output devices, and it doesn't have to perform except at a single low frequency, but it also has to swing a ton of volts (370V for 120VAC, about 3.5x the swing of a Vidar run single-ended, and multiply the swing by 2 for 240V). A power filter can be a simple and small thing like we have in our DACs, or the crazy 70-lb tuned LC resonant shunt filter that Dave makes.

Whether or not any of the above improves your system is, as usual, up to you.

So, as with everything, there are no easy answers.

 

[Ableza]

So, as with everything, there are no easy answers.

And no free lunch ... not even if it costs 5-figures to boot.