[grinch]

hp-1's are big with midrange? heh yeah right.

since somebody's being super cheap with the hosting, here's a mirror of the photos. link to your heart's content.

http://www.fitterhappier.com/headfi/seattle-082103/

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by grinch hp-1's are big with midrange? heh yeah right. since somebody's being super cheap with the hosting, here's a mirror of the photos. link to your heart's content. http://www.fitterhappier.com/headfi/seattle-082103/

I just don't want to get a note from my ISP... this forum gets hundreds/thousands of hits, and neither would I want to see the ability to link outside of the site "go away" one day because of this.

As far as the Grados... could have been the sources I listened to, of course. I didn't listen to them all that much (total of about 10-15 minutes), and usually I like to take about a week with a set of cans, amp or other components (maybe longer) before really forming an opinion. Obviously, there's a context to be considered here...

P.S. to Wilson -- There was something about your turntable I wanted to mention. If you recall, someone mentioned hearing a certain phasiness, and I noticed it too. I'm not familiar with the arm on your table, but I did notice that it wobbles somewhat while records are playing (knife-edge bearings?)... enough so that the changing azimuth could be shifting the soundstage left/right and creating undesirable side effects. Probably you're aware of it, just thought I'd mention it anyway... as the saying goes, I don't know if it's a bug or a feature.

 

[Wilson M.]

I did not hear the comment on phasiness. Please elaborate. Was it heard during speaker listening or headphone listening? What kind of record/music was being played?

The arm does not wobble if there aren't people walking around the table. Once there are people making enough vibration, some will reach the arm.

The arm is a unipivot and all unipivots will exhibit that behaviour in reaction to vibration reaching it from the outside world. That's the unfortunately nature of highly sprung floors.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Wilson M. I did not hear the comment on phasiness. Please elaborate. Was it heard during speaker listening or headphone listening? What kind of record/music was being played? The arm does not wobble if there aren't people walking around the table. Once there are people making enough vibration, some will reach the arm. The arm is a unipivot and all unipivots will exhibit that behaviour in reaction to vibration reaching it from the outside world. That's the unfortunately nature of highly sprung floors.

Ahh, that explains it... I believe binary_digit mentioned it while listening with headphones. Not sure what record was spinning at the time.

I can certainly relate to vibration issues, owning a "sprung" table and very similar flooring here (which reminds me that I'm gonna have to tune the suspension on my table sometime in the next few months, that nice "vertical bounce" seems more like a bowl of jello these days).

 

[ppl]

People Unaccustomed to Listening To Vinyl over headphones are surprised at first to find the warp range of the Arm/Pickup somewhat shocking at first. Every vibration is acoustically amplified by this Resonance it is more apparent on wideband Systems that the Bass is not rolled off. The IEC purposed an alternate RIAA EQ scheme that rolled Phono response off below 30 Hz. Thankfully most Phono Preamp makers did not implement this Roll off. Myself i would rather put up with the noises and be careful than roll off the low frequency response.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by ppl People Unaccustomed to Listening To Vinyl over headphones are surprised at first to find the warp range of the Arm/Pickup somewhat shocking at first. Every vibration is acoustically amplified by this Resonance it is more apparent on wideband Systems that the Bass is not rolled off. The IEC purposed an alternate RIAA EQ scheme that rolled Phono response off below 30 Hz. Thankfully most Phono Preamp makers did not implement this Roll off. Myself i would rather put up with the noises and be careful than roll off the low frequency response.

Yes, me too. My ca. 1979 SS preamp has a subsonic filter, but I rarely use it.

One nice thing about listening to vinyl with headphones is that it keeps you on your toes as far as maintenance. I consider it a plus in that I had to pay extra attention to cartridge alignment, eliminating sources of RFI/EMI, adjusting azimuth and VTA correctly, etc -- the result is (I think) better than average analog sound.

Hey, drop me an Email sometime if you ever feel like discussing vinyl/turntable subjects... I never get tired of talking about it (except when listening

).

 

[ppl]

In 1979 my technics Pro series Preamp had a EQ subsonic for phone and at time an Audio technica AT-155 LC in a cool locking gold plated cast metal case. but at 8 grams in a Technics tonearm the resonence was at 5 Hz and i used the EQ subsonic alot on Loudspeakers. On headphones i just put up with the Presureazation inside my ears ad the Headphone drivers were flaping in the Breez just as Wilsons Woofers were. Later on when I used a Thiele 5 th order Bass Reflex Loudspeaker of my own design this warp range was removed by a dedicated High pass Filter adjusted to vent resonence of the Loudspeaker to eliminate this unwanted cone movement and since on a bass reflex Loudspeaker the Woofer in unloaded from the enclosure below vent resonence and usefull Frequency response is way down below vent res. filtering dose not degrade the Bass of the loudspeakers it in fact improves it and allows tunning for an extention of 1/2 octave vs conventional porting. However with headphones this filtor also reduced the low frequency performance of the headphones that went lower than the speakers so i did not use this for Phones only a Direct DC coupled path from my phono pickup to the Headphones. real Nice reproduction.

Now days i am Lazy I burn CD's into Wav files on my hard drive and listen using winamp with the mad plugin and load up a long playlist and listen while doing somthing like writing this post. I do not miss tweeking turntables and tonearms. i do like the imaging of Vinyl and with a good Amp and can's this soundscape can indeed be a motivation to spend half of your listening time cleening and adjusting.

See eric 343's post below to see what i spent most of my time listening to.

 

[eric343]

Here's the image, since the link is messed up:

 

[zzz]

Well, here I am, bumping dead threads.

The speakers were fairly nice. At lower to medium volumes they were near-perfect from midrange up. However, the bass was uneven and seemed to disappear at around 40hz. During the `Elmo` test the sound became congested and the soundstage literally collapsed. I'm kinda interested in hearing the F30's now though, which, at least from their specs, should extend about as low as the Omegas.

Putting my Cary in place of Wilson's Meridian improved (at least subjectively) the bottom end extension and brought back the texture that 507 stripped from the sound. But even it couldn't do much about room resonances and -5db @ 40hz roll off of the Revels.

(uh yeah, I care about bass a lot)

The only other setups I listened to at the meet were the two PPAs and Ray Samuel's HR-2.

HR-2 (OPA627'ed) with HP-1/2 performed at about the level of Headroom Total Airhead which I guess is not too shabby after all. High-end extension was eh, but I personally can somewhat tolerate that. The show-stopper for me was in the mids. They felt veiled, and midrange detail extraction was horrid to a degree that could not be explained by the masking effect of the outside noise. Bass was rather anemic, but that could be attributed to the Meridian that HR-2 was hooked up to.

PPA was okay, and I certainly did like it better than the HR-2. Too bad I forgot to hook it up to my Cary. Anyway, midrange detail was again sub-par compared to what I'm used to, but overall sound was more enjoyable and coherent. Bass-boost switch was kinda fun to play with, but it stripped the bass of all the texture and added too much bloom to be useful. I spent some time just listening to momo with that amp, and it was nice.

Too bad my amp decided to die right when Tim from Experience Audio was going to listen to it. Oh well. The total damage is about $15 since I've got all the components here already + a few hours of very annoying resoldering work, but I'm actually not going to do that. I've been toying with some ideas for a while now and this looks like the perfect time to try them out, so the amp board is going to be totally rebuilt. I'm going to leave the power supplies as is for now though 'cause changing anything there would call for much more money than I am willing to spend on audio at the moment.

It was funny hearing people at the meet complain about not having enough gain on the [deceased] amp. I set it up so that the volume where I do most of my listening is in the 2db-step range of DACT to make the volume control at least partially useful. As far as I'm concerned, the amp still goes to earsplitting levels, it's just that you kids all listen way too loud. It is true though that some of the most impressive virtues of the electrostats can only be heard in complete silence (which we had none of).

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by zzz It was funny hearing people at the meet complain about not having enough gain on the [deceased] amp. I set it up so that the volume where I do most of my listening is in the 2db-step range of DACT to make the volume control at least partially useful. As far as I'm concerned, the amp still goes to earsplitting levels, it's just that you kids all listen way too loud. It is true though that some of the most impressive virtues of the electrostats can only be heard in complete silence (which we had none of).

Definitely true, background levels couldn't exactly be called ideal. Could have been that the music I heard was mastered at a pretty low level too, I don't recall exactly what it was except it was something classical. I would have liked to have heard something symphonic (perhaps Scheherazade/Bernstein/ Corigliano/1959/ NY Philharmonic - pure drama!) to really get a taste of the amp/headphone duo's dynamic range and ability to convey emotion.

 

[SteeleBlayde]

Quote:

Originally posted by zzz HR-2 (OPA627'ed) with HP-1/2 performed at about the level of Headroom Total Airhead which I guess is not too shabby after all. High-end extension was eh, but I personally can somewhat tolerate that. The show-stopper for me was in the mids. They felt veiled, and midrange detail extraction was horrid to a degree that could not be explained by the masking effect of the outside noise. Bass was rather anemic, but that could be attributed to the Meridian that HR-2 was hooked up to. PPA was okay, and I certainly did like it better than the HR-2.

........

This cant be good news.

You've just shattered my dream expectations for this amp until I actually hear it when Wilson gets it back.

 

[zzz]

Quote:

Originally posted by SteeleBlayde You've just shattered my dream expectations for this amp until I actually hear it when Wilson gets it back.

yes, I do that a lot.

you could still end up liking that amp if you haven't heard anything better though. heh, that was a pretty stupid thing for me to say.

xo-xo.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by zzz yes, I do that a lot. you could still end up liking that amp if you haven't heard anything better though. heh, that was a pretty stupid thing for me to say. xo-xo.

Huh... are you talking about the HR-2 or the PPA?

 

[zzz]

Quote:

Originally posted by fewtch Huh... are you talking about the HR-2 or the PPA?

I was talking about hr-2 which is what I believe steely was talking about.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally posted by ppl I do not miss tweeking turntables and tonearms.

Quote:

i do like the imaging of Vinyl and with a good Amp and can's this soundscape can indeed be a motivation to spend half of your listening time cleening and adjusting.

For me it's more than that... stuff that never got released on CD (there's a ton of it), 35 cents for 'near mint' 40 minutes of music, the enjoyment of the hunt, etc. Anyway, it's not quite that bad... more like 33.3% of the time cleaning and adjusting.