What's the most recent piece of audio equipment you have purchased and when?

[JackD201]

Hi Steve, yes that's what it does. It does Asynchronous. The reason I went with the Halide is that it is reasonably priced and being an all in one product, I don't need another little box or usb and digital cables ie: more stuff to obsess about. It's just simple and easy. I'm trying to take my time with this Hi-Rez thing and the Halide seemed the perfect thing for me to get my feet wet with as little cost and hassle as possible. It doesn't do anything more than 24/96 I believe but for now that's okay with me since I don't have any software higher than that.

 

[flez007]

I posted this somewhere else, I bought a Symphonic Line RG14 Edition integrated amp to pair my Avalon Ascent speakers, a great match I must say, this happened last week at RMAF.

 

[egidius]

Hi Steve, yes that's what it does. It does Asynchronous. The reason I went with the Halide is that it is reasonably priced and being an all in one product, I don't need another little box or usb and digital cables ie: more stuff to obsess about. It's just simple and easy. I'm trying to take my time with this Hi-Rez thing and the Halide seemed the perfect thing for me to get my feet wet with as little cost and hassle as possible. It doesn't do anything more than 24/96 I believe but for now that's okay with me since I don't have any software higher than that.

24/96 is what my wadia s7i does. Sounds. (great ;-)
E

 

[SoundQcar]

Just took delivery of a Meitner MA-1 last Thursday. Still running it in, but as of now with only redbook playback, it sounds fantastic.

 

[Old Listener]

two purchases in a dead heat

My timing estimates were a bit off.

>
> And when and what do you think the next piece will be?

A USB/Coax SPDIF/Optical SPDIF DAC with remote volume control for my main system. I'm waiting to see reviews of some of the recent under $ 500 products and of the $ 1800 Grace m903 DAC. 1-6 months.

I decided to limit my DAC purchase to $ 500 or less. The Emotiva XPA-1 DAC had what I wanted at an attractive price of $ 300. The USB input is limited to 16/48 but I expected to use the coax or optical SPDIF inputs for my application. It arrived today. Sounds good from optical and coax inputs.

>
First, I'll probably replace my 4-5 year old Win XP personal PC with a Intel Sandy Bridge CPU based Win 7 PC ...

The rise in hard drive prices got me off the dime to get a new personal PC. Some parts arrived today and I expect more deliveries tomorrow and Wednesday. In the end, I opted for flexibility and functionality over a very compact form factor.

I gave serious consideration to a Mac Mini but it was just too compromised in terms of flexibility and hard drive space. A Mac may be Miss Congeniality for some people but Macs are never Miss America for me.

>
or

Active monitors for my home office system - 4 months to a year.

A house remodel we're starting may push this purchase back a ways.

Bill

 

[naturephoto1]

I purchased an "upgraded" Onkyo 5508 Pre/Pro to replace my damaged in shipment "upgraded" Onkyo 885 Pre/Pro, an upgraded hybrid studio Ampex 440C/B R2R tape deck and quite a few TimePortal Power Cords and ICs. These were all purchased and/or arrived in the last 2 an 1/2 months.

Rich

 

[DaveyF]

A REL T5 Subwoofer....apparently back ordered So, about 3 weeks out according to my dealer.

 

[MylesBAstor]

A REL T5 Subwoofer....apparently back ordered So, about 3 weeks out according to my dealer.

And the REL is truly a subwoofer

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Well the T5 doesn't go all that deep, but for a music subwoofer, it is a pretty remarkable achievement in such an elegant little box.

Tim

 

[audioguy]

TimePortal Power Cords as ICs.

Rich

In my next life, I want to be in charge of naming high end audio products! "TimePortal" ??????

 

[MylesBAstor]

Well the T5 doesn't go all that deep, but for a music subwoofer, it is a pretty remarkable achievement in such an elegant little box.

Tim

I consider anything that goes below 40 Hz a subwoofer. It has flat in room response to 32 Hz but will go below that. Although it states 35, in the equipment specs, the speaker goes lower. They're decently fast and many tried to mate the bigger REL subwoofer with CLS xing over in the 30s.

Regardless of their size, many stereo or home theater loudspeaker systems tend to emphasize the mid-bass - this is the range from 50 to 90 Hz. REL engineers believe all loudspeaker systems need to be supplemented in the lower frequencies for the true full-range experience. The REL T-5 is a true Sub-Bass System, meaning it can reproduce very low frequencies (below 30 Hz) that are felt rather than heard. This is because music is full-range, as are sound effects on movies, and that we design our products to reproduce all of these frequencies. The T-5 is equipped to take full advantage of AC3, Dolby Digital, DTS, MPEG 2 and any other digital sound formats that include a dedicated Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel. The dedicated LFE input meets the tough specification laid down for digital 3/2.1 channels, usually known as 5.1. The output is nominally flat from 35 Hz 90 Hz.

 

[fas42]

Interesting the "obsession" about how low the woofer end of a speaker goes; when you look at the reality of where the energy is in the frequency spectrum of musical instruments, anything below 40 Hz is quite irrelevant. And the number of times the note of a pipe organ or harp, yes, harp!!, in the recording in that area, actually being used in a piece is probably once or twice, overall, in 50 recordings. That terribly impressive kettle drum has absolutely nothing in that region. Synthesizers are about the only "real" instruments that do genuine stuff there.

Of course, what's really happening is that the manufacturer, trying to get his spec's to look very impressive in going low is forced to make sure that the subwoofer actually works properly where it counts, in the much higher bass notes ...

Frank

 

[MylesBAstor]

Interesting the "obsession" about how low the woofer end of a speaker goes; when you look at the reality of where the energy is in the frequency spectrum of musical instruments, anything below 40 Hz is quite irrelevant. And the number of times the note of a pipe organ or harp, yes, harp!!, in the recording in that area, actually being used in a piece is probably once or twice, overall, in 50 recordings. That terribly impressive kettle drum has absolutely nothing in that region. Synthesizers are about the only "real" instruments that do genuine stuff there.

Of course, what's really happening is that the manufacturer, trying to get his spec's to look very impressive in going low is forced to make sure that the subwoofer actually works properly where it counts, in the much higher bass notes ...

Frank

Suggest you listen first to something like the IRSV and then tell me the only thing the lows are good for are organ notes (actually a Bosendorfer is good for 28 Hz). If you don't hear how it contributes to sense of space, then I'll be a monkey's uncle.

 

[fas42]

Suggest you listen first to something like the IRSV and then tell me the only thing the lows are good for are organ notes (actually a Bosendorfer is good for 28 Hz). If you don't hear how it contributes to sense of space, then I'll be a monkey's uncle.

Which validates exactly what I'm saying: in such a speaker you have a very large cone area doing the low stuff, each transducer is loafing, barely out of first gear most of the time, so the whole bass range is handled with great ease. On the other hand, a small bookshelf unit, with an 8" mid bass; the poor transducer is being thrashed to an inch of its life trying to get the excursion to reproduce the notes. Again, it's about the engineering of the unit to do the overall job, not the fact that some magic figure like 15, 20, or 25Hz is being hit ...

Frank

 

[JackD201]

Frank my old buddy, time to start studying more than just distortionless tweeters. It is a scientifically proven fact that the long reverberation times in the recording as well as those in in-room response are auditory cues for the sense of space in psychoacoustics. The phenomena is exploited in practically all motion pictures since the late 70's.

 

[fas42]

So the consensus is that there is a fair bit of sub 40Hz room rumbling in a lot of recordings? Any experiments done where all such material is sliced off the recording, and playback compared using before and after versions, with mega subwoofers. I'm not talking about movie soundtracks with a whole of artificial grumbling and gurgling going on: I heard the latest Tron with all this nonsense happening in someone's home, and you get sick of it mighty quickly ...

Frank

 

[JackD201]

Low level as a component of room tone Frank. It doesn't have to "rumble". It just has to be distributed evenly. As a rule of thumb, if you hear the sub(s), you've set it/them too high.

Look at the chart of instrument frequency ranges and you'll see a whole bunch with information below 40Hz. Same way a drum won't be convincing if the higher frequency components are screwed up, the same goes for the low end. I'd rather like to think that a lot of people compromise when it comes to lower octave reproduction for the reasons that good low frequency extension is difficult to do, is the most expensive thing to do, and takes up a lot of space. If it weren't I think we'd see a lot more folks doing full range.

 

[audioguy]

This is an easy one to test and I have. I use a TacT for room correction and x-over management. There is not a lot of low stuff but much music gets very whimpy if you are not producing the low end.

I set the crossover to 40hz, used a VERY steep crossover (144db/oct) and turned off the mains. The subs are working --- certainly not on every piece of music but more than you might think.

 

[RBFC]

Every room has a fundamental resonant frequency that describes its volume. This cue lies in the bass, and also in the reverb times. I've heard many comments that adding a subwoofer has provided a sense of realism to recordings that was previously undiscovered.

Lee

 

[egidius]

Suggest you listen first to something like the IRSV and then tell me the only thing the lows are good for are organ notes (actually a Bosendorfer is good for 28 Hz). If you don't hear how it contributes to sense of space, then I'll be a monkey's uncle.

Indeed I second that: I own an incredible Stella Novus "bass managment" speaker, what it adds to the Stella Opus beside pure bass is an amazing space, and of course it does go down to 10, even traces until 6 Hz, I mean amazing in its flexibility
e