Audio Accessories

GFs friend want to sell his Salamander Synergy S40 Six Shelf rack. Have read the reviews, but curious if anyone here has had any positive/negative experiences? Haven't seen it yet myself.

Allow me to rant a bit. I posted this message on headfi, but Ken quickly had the administrators delete it. Why? All I was doing was sharing my experiences there, what were two of the worst customer service experiences I've had in audio. In this post i will share one of them. I bought an HD800 cable, 8 foot, that cost me over $500. I tried to balance it but I messed up. I then tried to convert my balanced cable using its HD800 connectors but again I screwed up. So now I took all the ends off and decided to just send it to ALO to be repaired. I put a note in the package explaining the situation and saying I will pay for their time. Next thing I know, it is a few day…

I am waiting for my new source, which I am willing to use through balanced way, so which one would be the best choice for the money please. Budget no more than USD 100, for a pair of course. THX

Due to a change in the configuration of my system, I'm looking at getting a passive volume control/preamp for the odd occasions when I want to listen to my monitors rather than my headphones. Does anyone have any experience with the NHT ones? Or any thoughts on whether it's worth the extra tenner (and cable costs) to go balanced all the way through my system? (They go for far less than MSRP online. The Goldpoints look nice but are way too spendy.) The HP4 converts balanced input to SE, but the Quads have XLR ins and -- given it's a desktop system -- there's a lot of RF interference about. All cable lengths will be pretty short once it's properly set up.

As observant Head-Casers will note, I am a fan of I often end up taking 45 minutes or so during the process, and I like to listen to podcasts while doing so. My laptop sits on a shelf that's about 4' away from the sink where I shave. I have some really (really) crappy speakers right now that are USB powered and have a 1/8" audio cable. They have two modes "too quiet to hear" and "so distorted you can't make out speech." I'd like a USB powered speaker (singular or pair, it's irrelevant), ideally one that has a built in DAC so it's only connection to my laptop is via the USB cable. I've never particularly liked the analogue output on any Macintop that I've owned…

Picked up a "Snap 'N Stack" cookie & cupcake carrier at Costco this afternoon for $18.99 CAD here in Canada. It makes an excellent headphone storage carrier for all you Grado fanboys. Simply swap out the inner cupcake trays with the foam inserts from your Grado boxes. It's a perfect fit!

Curious if anyone had already recabled their HD800? As a rule, I had always heard that silver plated copper wire was to be avoided for analog signals. Tends to sound bright and irritating.

What do you people use? I use the blue suspension bridge over Hell's fiery lava sea.

ALO USB Cable Does it even comply with USB2.0specs? I guess I should start making cables too... 500 for this?

Hi All, I'm thinking about tweaking my setup but I'm not sure which option will make the biggest difference in increasing sound quality. I'm a newb so I'd appreciate any advice or comments from knowledgeable people that have made any of these changes. My current setup is MacBook Pro-> Pure Music->Optical-> DacMagic->Luminous Monarch II RCA->Schiit Lyr-> LCD2 I've heard a lot of people say that a good coaxial cable beats an optical cable in terms of SQ, which is why I'm considering the HiFace. However, I've also heard that the optical and coaxial inputs on the DacMagic sound pretty much the same. So, my question is whether or not it wou…

...assuming that cables are important, (I don't want to get arguments started) Is the quality of digital cables as important as the quality of analog cables? EDITed for clarification hahaa

Trying to get three sources (one optical only, two either opt or coax) into 1-2 opt/coax jacks (one of each). Been looking for TOSLINK switcher options including some cheapies like this, but then came across this. Admit having the coaxial option would be a plus too. Besides Googling, pretty unaware of the options. Don't care about the bling, just want 1s and 0s passed. And if the switcher would affect support (can't imagine it would if passive, but if active?), 88.2/96 is desired. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Anyone had good luck with anything? On a related note, that optical only source, a MacBook, may be used with a JHAudio 3a coming, so if I want to go 24-b…

(I am ashamed to admit this but) I have an old pair of Monster 1/8" -> RCA cables and they are directional. I was confused by this and looked up this on their website. It says: Why do the cables have directional arrows? This is done for shielding purposes only, a design where we do not solder the shield on the signal's destination. This ensures that any noise picked up by the shield will not be transmitted into your signal path. Can I assume that any other cable that I buy will not be directional? For example, I want to get the Blue Jeans Cable RCA-1/8" cable or similar and want to use it from my DAC or GS-1 line out to the Pico Slim. Also, I don't…

http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/processors/products/xsp1 Balanced preamp with phono stage

Hi xuys and gals, I'm thinking of getting some XLR splitters for my setup and this device looks good to me and avoids ground hum issues: Amazon.com: ROLLS MS20c MICROPHONE SPLITTER/COMBINER: Musical Instruments Am I breaking any rules if I use this for balanced audio instead of mic-level audio? Also are transformers essentially transparent to audio frequency signals? Thanks in advance

Would like to use the other optical input on my Parasounds, so wondering if anyone has ever seen a ST optical to TOSLINK adapter? Searches are coming up empty, so not hopeful.

Introduction Ok so everyone here knows me as a cable freak who is also obsessed with connector quality. Yes i am , so bear with me, i promise i am not going to go patrick82 here . anyway, as many of you guys know i am one of those who do not use a dedicated headphone amp, instead i use the ghetto trick of directly driving my senns directly from the two xlr outs of my apogee/lavry dac (pioneered by none other than the brilliant fotm starter iron dreamer ). because of that, the headphone cable has become the critical link between the dac and the headphones in my rig. To maximize the sound quality i need to get the best sennheiser headphone cable i can find. Over the …

So my headphone amps outnumber my sources so looking for a RCA switcher. One in and 3-4 out. Was eyeing the Luxman AS-44 Line Switch simply because it's pretty, can be found on eBay, and the matching P-1 would be involved, but can't find any photos of inside and open to other options as, after all, it's just a passive switcher. There's Goldpoint too. And yeah, I know the d-_-b solution would be to buy more DACs. Any thoughts?

Hey Guys, I came across a pair of Mullard EL84s from the good old days. I understand these tubes to be awesome and I think would be fun to listen to hooked up to my single driver crossover-less speakers. I'm looking for a EL84 based amp and was wondering if anyone has some nice recommendations? Since I have a pair of EL84's, it would be best to suggest amps that use just 2, and not 4 el84's (I am guessing those amps would work in a push pull configuration). Amps can be integrated OR plain jane amps. I see that the Almarro 205mkII is well regarded which sparked my interest. Any others that you guys like? Thanks!

I'm trying to run the sound from my set top box to my home theater receiver. I'd like to use the receiver's digital optical input so I get 5.1 (it's the only input my receiver has that will allow this. My set top box has an optical output, so it should be easy. I ordered a digital optical cable from Monoprice. Today I tried to connect them. The connectors go into the socket, but won't stay in place. I see no locking mechanism, which seems pretty strange to me. I must be doing something wrong as everybody would have thrown out optical digital a long time ago if the physical connections were this fragile. Can anybody tell me what the trick is to use connect this cab…

does it matter if I only use one ground wire for the speaker amp? It seems as if the xlr cable I bought combines the xlr ground I think. So I only have three wires total on a 4pin xlr

Anyone know what's going on here? In an ad over there and from the Take T group. Super-tweeter applied to face. Site, PDF "We call the sound that the ear is naturally drawned to the sound even if we are not looking for is 'entranced sound'." "Vocal of both the man and the woman becomes be sexy."

I recently became interested in transformer-based volume controls and want to learn about them. For example, what makes them different from regular passive pre-amps? And are there advantages to using one versus the other? For something concrete, I'm looking at ones offered by Promethus Audio for the sub-1k range, and the Sonic Euphoria models for sub-2k models.

I bought mogami gold RCAs a long time ago, and use them. I will need longer cables soon for new mono amps, and they need to be XLR. I found a 2 foot 'patch cable' from Mogami that I will use from source to preamp, but long runs are identified as 'microphone cable'. I want to be sure I'm not unwittingly running some crazy out-of-spec cords from my pinnacle to future power amps with microphone cable, as identified by Mogami. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002E1P30/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001LNN2EQ/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 this is the same shit, right?

I had more or less gotten out of the cable game the past few years, as it didn't seem to me to be a cost effective area to get into. I am using old interconnects... Audioquest Turquoise mainly, though I have a couple of pairs of AQ Ruby and 2 pairs of HGA Super Silvers (their first IC) which I am not currently using. I started toying with perhaps looking at something more modern... Grovers maybe? It could be DIY also... VH Audio Silver (but these appear to run ~$120 for a 1M pair, and up depending upon RCA chosen). If I went into this, it would have to be something inexpensive (<$100 per 1M pair preferred... I know that will elicit some ). I noticed a pair of G…