[Ripper2860]

And before you think I'm completely nuts, I bought the BlueHeaven used at half its precovid price. 500 is the brand new price and there is no way I'm spending that on a cable

Whew. That's a relief. Seems you're only 1/2 crazy.

 

[classfolkphile]

Perhaps. You are forever responsible for that which you tame, and I try to be a decent owner. We had to have our dog put down about a month ago and that has always been more difficult for me. Another cat we own but Morgan is my wife’s pet.

Condolences.

Our nearly 13 year old Old English Sheepdog is experiencing his second episode of vestibular disease in the last several months. Not sure if it's benign or not (an MRI is extremely expensive: $4-5K; and the treatment options and prognosis for any of the possible non-benign conditions are limited, at best, given his age). I'm sad, but my wife is falling apart: I dread the day he leaves us.

 

[adias]

Had to pump the brakes on the pi5. Not interested in a new PSU and all the trimmings.

Now to drop a grenade on the conversation.

On a lark I put my Nordost Blue Heaven Interconnect on my Modi Multibit 2. It sounded amazing especially coming from my emotiva interconnects. Sould was quite dull and boring with the Emotiva. Not so much with the blue heaven.

I'm not really advocating for a $500 IC with the MM2, but just saying it sounds darn good.

I don't think the Emotiva is broken. Although I'll not make the mistake of combining them again.

And before you think I'm completely nuts, I bought the BlueHeaven used at half its precovid price. 500 is the brand new price and there is no way I'm spending that on a cable.

Here’s an experiment: use a good contact cleaner to clean the connectors of you previous cables. Try them again and check what you hear.

Note: DeOxit is a good cleaner you may want to try.
Hosa D5S-6 CAIG DeoxIT 5% Spray Contact Cleaner, 5 oz. https://a.co/d/2FDX2w1

 

[Daniel Johnston]

I'm baffled by the Syn doing anything on mono recordings, unless they are kinda-sorta not mono. Also, through headphones there is some frequency shaping, which could confound things a bit.

Truly mono recordings. It's the Szell/Cleveland Orchestra box set mentioned in this thread off of Amazon. Shanling ET3 transport via toslink. I used the Focal Utopia and DCA Aeon Noire 2. Both are directly out of the Syn.

The width control goes from pinpoint, distant soundstage full to the right. Then as you go to the left, the pinpoint becomes more like a small oval. It's not massive, but it's obvious. The presence acts like the color saturation on a TV, everything becomes more.

 

[quimbo]

All Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Neville Marriner recordings of 20th classics for $9.25! https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7996044--marriner-the-academy-20th-century-classics

I found this killer deal looking for their recording of Bartók's Music for strings, percussion, and celesta and Divertimento, which I have in an unfortunately too-scratched vinyl, and always really liked. The digital remaster of those originals came together with 9 discs (Stravinsky, Prokofieff, Hindemith, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Webern, ...) in a big Zip file. Happy Christmas listening!

Purchased this after reading this post, have not had a chance until today to listen, wonderful background music all day while taking down the tree, putting the decoration's away and deep cleaning each room for the winter, Thanks for the link

 

[Daniel Johnston]

Placebo effect.

It's one hell of a placebo then. It's pretty easy to hear the change in presentation as you fiddle with knobs.

 

[Bowmoreman]

Very nice, and pleased to virtually meet you! This makes at least 4 Schiity astronomers on the forum. Nice to hear that you do public outreach events. There's nothing like a person's first-ever view of Saturn or detailed lunar craters. I've had seniors get emotional and seen many young child's eyes go saucer-wide on their first view through a 'scope. Nothing beats that.

Yay… Me too. LOVED outreach for ages 5 to 85 (seriously). I’m now in Temple, NH. Had my observatory (Wilder Skies) in Bolton MA for many years before a 4 year detour to/from Texas (life, long story). Back now. Observatory had parallel mounted (at varying times), C11 with Hyperstar to Mallincam for EAA and outreach, mix over years of Tak FSQ106ED, Tak TOA130NFB, and then ultimately the AP130GTX. For outreach I’d usually do a parallel of “here’s what you can see visually in a 10” dob - I had Zambuto mirrored mine), and then same thing in the refractor on the tracking mount, and then on the color monitor from the C11. Did it for the kids school science classes in 7th and 8th grades for years. They’d come with parents and even grandparents. Amazing the comments of people SEEING Saturn or Jupiter for the first time in the REAL WORLD.

If I think (over much) about it, that amazement and wonder is very similar to when I get that rare auditory experience of great music, great recording, and great system/room synergy. Emotion overload.

Alas, with now having no observatory, and no funds for same in near future, and now developing rheumatoid arthritis on the hands… all the stuff is mostly still packed away (I keep the 10” on the back 4 season porch, and the AP is on a portable (ha) discmount DM6 for occasionally planetary. Have hard choices, as I’ve a LOT of very valuable gear (dedicated cooled CCD with full filter sets, auto/robotic focusers, and huge tracking mount, etc. etc. etc…. (Aside for those not simultaneously afflicted with Astro AND Audio hobbies: there is even more, and far MORE expensive lust-worthy gear in Astro; but otherwise it’s similar in scary ways)

I’m still playing with how to set up something cheap and permanent and run it all remote (remote tech wasn’t a thing when built my first one). I’ve a HUGE 4 acre yard with great east to/thrugh south and southwest to west skies. My immediate neighbor is a beef farmer. There are NO traffic lights in my entire town. Closes streetlight is 4 miles away. It’s dark. So, I’d be insane to sell any of the gear off. Just like I wasn’t insane to NOT sell off any of my high-end audio gear during life’s 4+ year “adventure”…

Where are the rest of y’all located? (Imagines a combo-burrito Astro/audio FEST). A Star and Sound party, as it were)

 

[Ripper2860]

It's one hell of a placebo then. It's pretty easy to hear the change in presentation as you fiddle with knobs.

I was just kidding. Or was I?

 

[Daniel Johnston]

Had to pump the brakes on the pi5. Not interested in a new PSU and all the trimmings.

Now to drop a grenade on the conversation.

On a lark I put my Nordost Blue Heaven Interconnect on my Modi Multibit 2. It sounded amazing especially coming from my emotiva interconnects. Sould was quite dull and boring with the Emotiva. Not so much with the blue heaven.

I'm not really advocating for a $500 IC with the MM2, but just saying it sounds darn good.

I don't think the Emotiva is broken. Although I'll not make the mistake of combining them again.

And before you think I'm completely nuts, I bought the BlueHeaven used at half its precovid price. 500 is the brand new price and there is no way I'm spending that on a cable.

I like the blue heaven. Heard a Nordost demo where they switched from cheap USB to their crazy expensive USB. The difference was pretty obvious. I'm pretty confident there was some trickery involved.

I switched from Kimber Hero IC to the white lighting for my TT setup. Sound difference was obvious. However, the Nordost was shielded and the Kimber was not.

 

[Bowmoreman]

You are absolutely correct. It is a moment of discovery. Never forgotten.

I was the only Astronomy Club member with a DayStar hydrogen alpha solar filter so public viewing at the Science Center was an all day affair.

As exciting as large looping solar prominences were to see during the day or The Great Red Spot on Jupiter at night, Saturn won the show hands down. And when there was a nice tilt to the rings it was in overdrive......there would always be a lot of "holy schiit"s!

But my favorite memory after interacting probably with thousands of the public of all ages was one little girl. After she and her dad looked through my scope she spied a good sized Dobsonian and she said excitedly "Daddy, can I ride that one next?"

Holy Schiit! Seriously, there’s like 4 of us here, and another one also does HA Solar??? Money got tight recently, and I told my wife I was considering selling my Lunt 60 double stack with FT focuser and B1200BF… She thought back to the 2017 eclipse tour, and the pending 2024 April Totality, and was like “don’t do that”.

In my experience, outreach-wise Saturn as you point out always wins. Though one time, I was doing a simultaneous outreach with my immediate neighbor (100 yards walk) who had a full dome, with a Takahashi Mewlon 300 on an AP1200 permanently mounted. He did double Star research and planetary. We all saw perfectly defined visual transits of Jupiter’s moons and their shadows across it VISUALLY. Everyone, yeah including me was like; HOLY SCHIIT.

But yeah, NOBODY ever forgets their first real visual of Saturn. I got “that’s not REAL” and I’d have to block the sight path to prove itwasn’t a picture. LOL

 

[LobalWarming]

That's why professional studio sound mixers never use it. Oh, wait, most of today's mixing consoles and all Pc-based recording is digital... oops.

Although... most modern DAWs use 64bit floating point math for any digital level changes/internal muckery/mixing. Then can employ a cornucopia of exotic dithering processes after being screwed up/around in the mastering stage.

However, bit-crusher plugins are also available for most DAWs. Bitcrushing reduces sample rate/bit depth to create artifacts, aliasing and other annoying imperfections. Often only used on single tracks. But... can run the full mix through a hard clipper plugin for MAXIMUM LOUDNESS and HIDEOUSNESS CLIPPING. Scrunch those 64 bits into a 1 bit output. Hip to be square waves. How cool is that.

 

[ScubaMan2017]

Spoiler: grammar police, click at your peril

REVELATIONS = HERE ON THE NORTH BRUCE PENINSULA

... Okay, the shouting has stopped. One of the unintended consequences of this QUIET neighbourhood is that I can hear all the weird clicks, hums and buzzing noises from my headphones. In particular, headphones that are driven by tubes. My Valhalla 2? My beloved Vali2? Hell, my Lyr2(with a Slovakian tube)...? Occassionallly, I hear faint interference. Whirrrr. Bzzzzzz. Boing. Boing. Ping! etc.

My Asgard 2? The outdated headphone amplifier that I've poo pooed on this channel? Dead *** silent. With my LCD3. With my EtherC. And using a nice long extension cable to boot.

My point: friends... enjoy your all-transistor kit. I understand why @Jason Stoddard mused in his last Schiitr Video-Talk about liking solid-state. I won't be sellin off my tube gear -- it has THAT sound. And I like the pretty incandescent glow.

 

[Ripper2860]

Spoiler: grammar police, click at your peril

REVELATIONS = HERE ON THE NORTH BRUCE PENINSULA

... Okay, the shouting has stopped. One of the unintended consequences of this QUIET neighbourhood is that I can hear all the weird clicks, hums and buzzing noises from my headphones. In particular, headphones that are driven by tubes. My Valhalla 2? My beloved Vali2? Hell, my Lyr2(with a Slovakian tube)...? Occassionallly, I hear faint interference. Whirrrr. Bzzzzzz. Boing. Boing. Ping! etc.

My Asgard 2? The outdated headphone amplifier that I've poo pooed on this channel? Dead *** silent. With my LCD3. With my EtherC. And using a nice long extension cable to boot.

My point: friends... enjoy your all-transistor kit. I understand why @Jason Stoddard mused in his last Schiitr Video-Talk about liking solid-state. I won't be sellin off my tube gear -- it has THAT sound. And I like the pretty incandescent glow.

Just in case...

If you have your cell phone or router near your gear, move it away. I was cursed by intermittent noise with my VH2 and LYR 3. Turns out it was my phone. Tubes seem to be much more sensitive to EMI/RFI interference from phones, wifi routers, etc.

 

[bcowen]

Have I mentioned recently how much I love the 2x GHorn monoblock, Tekton Lore Reference speakers, Freya+ N, and Yggdrasil+ GS2 combo!

I wish everyone a great and music filled Saturday! (Or Sunday where applicable.)

Even better than tubes?

I suppose the fact that the GHorn's actually work does make a difference.

 

[wout31]

Had to pump the brakes on the pi5. Not interested in a new PSU and all the trimmings.

Now to drop a grenade on the conversation.

On a lark I put my Nordost Blue Heaven Interconnect on my Modi Multibit 2. It sounded amazing especially coming from my emotiva interconnects. Sould was quite dull and boring with the Emotiva. Not so much with the blue heaven.

I'm not really advocating for a $500 IC with the MM2, but just saying it sounds darn good.

I don't think the Emotiva is broken. Although I'll not make the mistake of combining them again.

And before you think I'm completely nuts, I bought the BlueHeaven used at half its precovid price. 500 is the brand new price and there is no way I'm spending that on a cable.

How sure are you that you bought the real thing?