Speakers

There's a pair turned up just down the road from me, in full working order but the woofers have had the original carbon composite cones replaced with polypropylene. Price good and less than the going rate for a pair of the midrange drivers or tweeters inside them. Internet opinion seems positive all-over. It will be the first piece of audio gear in 2010 I'll buy which will cost more than 3 pints of lager and a packet of peanuts. I need someone here to tell me to do it. So I can diffuse my self-indulgent guilt.

Title pretty much says it all...aside from also wanting to be able to listen to the Frozen soundtrack for the billionth time. They will need to be bookshelf with a footprint no larger than 12" w x 14" d. I am open to suggestions... going back in time to prevent Frozen from ever happening would be most preferable. But, a decent alternative might be some Ascend Sierra 2's. Does Beats make speakers yet?

I'm looking at getting a pair of bookshelf speakers or monitors for my bedroom. My budget is around $400 for the speakers and an amp. Two possibilities I'm considering are: Yamaha HS50M AV123 XLS with something like a Super T-amp Also, something like a 3-in 2-out input/output selector would be nice, but I have no idea where to start looking for one

I am currently going over ideas on beefing up my speaker rig. I've got my power amp pretty much solidified, but I need ideas for a cheap preamp that can suffice until I replace it with a more high end headphone/preamp combo. B&K PRO 10 Don't know much about that pre, but $329 for a FET discrete pre with MM/MC phono stage and balanced output doesn't sound too shabby. Any ideas or thoughts you can share would be great. Again cheaper the better, ideally not a long term solution.

Anyone have any opinions on this vintage receiver as both a headphone amp and a speaker amp? Seems extremely popular even today and people say it mates well with some ESLs like Quads. Problem is it needs an assload of tubes and the p2p rat's nest wiring scares me.

I have the occasional mono vinyl, and they invariably sound like crap on stereo headphones or speakers. You get a wonderful stereo image of all the noise crud on the record's surface, while the music is a lifeless dead-center image. There also may be some sort of smearing from two speakers (that can never be exactly the same) trying to reproduce the same signal. Not long ago I heard a local fellow's pure mono setup, the speaker was a gigantic 50's or 60's Bozak cabinet with multiple drivers. The sound was very surprising, and extremely enjoyable. I'm not sure if you need the same kind of speakers to capture most of the magic, but since then I've been looking at my unu…

I got back one of my C-22 preamps and my MC-75 monoblock from the repair shop yesterday. I've had these things for a decade, and I'm just now getting around to dealing with them properly. I haven't plugged the MC-75 into anything but the AC outlet so far, but I did just spend half an hour futzing around taking pictures of it: The case could use a good cleaning, but I'm not sure what cleaning product one uses on vintage tube amps. The repair tech tested all the tubes and said they did quite well. I understand the power tubes used the MC-75 are quite spendy to replace. I don't have any pitures of the C-22 preamp yet. I'm going to try to integrate it as a phon…

Hello all, It's been a while and I hope all of you are doing fine I am looking for some advice. The speaker amp broke down again and it's time for something more decent. The problem is we want to have a minimum of 2 (preferably) digital inputs to attach our sources to. It seems quite hard to find. Does anyone have an idea on where to look? Thanx in advance!

So Ori is selling this old Silvertone receiver/amp that he restored. FS: restored vintage Silvertone tube amp/receiver - $175 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio It

I decided to get some decent set of nearfield speakers to have on the desk next to the wall and I was thinking in something like the Audio engine A5 or Adam A5x. Don't know if I can get better for the money, what do you guys suggest?

Look what I found on craigslist recently. A few days ago, this system was up for sale and the asking price was $200. And then, yesterday night, I search for "turntable" and find that the listing was changed from $200 to FREE. I immediately sent email saying I'd take it, and a couple of minutes later, I receive a reply asking me to call that night. I talked to a lady for about half an hour. Apparently, the system was bought for her partner's mother around the mid-80s who has since passed away. The system has sat virtually unused for years, and she wants it out of the house. She said that someone else had responded and was willing to rip some vinyl as a trade f…

Which is better in a bang-for-buck sense? Actives really appeal to me, but the inner-"audiophool" contests that passive will always be better quality. Thoughts?

The midrange driver on one of my B&W 802 stop moving. i listed it at ebay but decided to pull it out and make it a project to fix it. Madisound suggest replacing the capacitor which i did and to my surprise, it did work and it sounds damn good. now i am in a process of replacing all the capacitors since they are about 30+ y/o (the bad speaker first to compare the sound between original and modified). i am installing different brands of capacitor (mostly poly cap some electrolitic) to match the value and fit the tight space. I bought some Mundorf Supreme and Clarity Cap for the tweeter and midrange section and will install them soon. The base is a little l…

I am reserving this space for impressions about Paradigm's new Special Edition speakers. I'll try to audition them in the next month or so...

Could be a decent Audioengine A5 alternative, but I'm really not sure about those finish options! Purple lilac?

PS Audio Elite Integrated stereo amplifier -- $free Polk Audio Monitor Series 2 speakers and sub -- $50 finding out the PS Audio only has stereo outputs, with no sub output -- $d'oh needing a cheap (CHEAP dammit) solution -- $ask head-case Use the PS Audio to drive the sub and get a t-amp for the speakers?

Alrighty boys. All I've done in HC was bullshit around since I've been here and I figure now's a better time than ever to get serious. Here's my audio history, it kind of sucks, but it's better than nothing. I've always been a fan of high quality sound, and it all stated with my Sony walkman back in the mid 90's. I found the stock earbuds to be horrible and I bought the Sony Fontopia earbuds (~$115 and I was 12 years old) and found them to satisfy me. Fast forward 10 years, I'm in college and bought a pair of cheap headphones from Circuit City (Panasonic blah blah blah ~$30) and they were perfectly fine through college. In 2006 when I graduated and moved home, I realiz…

I admit it -- though primarily a headphone guy I enjoy drooling over pictures of beautiful speakers. For the artistry, for the engineering, for the lulz. I would enjoy seeing particularly striking examples you may happen to come across. These really struck me today. New Vienna Acoustics Klimt series. Concentric midrange/tweeter units adjustable for tilt and toe-in. Murata supertweeters. Eton spider-cone woofers. 22Hz - 100kHz. The black one makes me think of Barad-d

These are getting incredible reviews. Designed by the legendary Andrew Jones, they remind me of a downsized Tannoy, and are priced pretty damned well. Kind of dig their retro vibe too.

Listened to these speakers last week at a local dealer. Impressions below written from saved notes. Source Component: Rotel RCD-1072 Amplifiers: Rotel RC-1070 pre-amp & RMB-1075 power amp Impressions: I started off by going straight into the 684, as it's the cheaper model. However, I immediately realized that my listening would be futile without a comparison of some kind, and there were a bunch of other B&W speakers in the room that could be switched between at will, so I ABX'd the 684 against the next-higher-up model, the 683, for all of my listening. Reference CD tracks included: - Alison Krauss & Union Station - New Favorite - "Let Me Touch Yo…

[This post is too long.] As you may know, one of my Quad 12L actives died. RIP. I have a pair of Audioengine A5 actives to use for now and maybe they will be good enough (I don't use speakers very much - usually headphones) for my limited desktop use. I was thinking that I wanted to get a pair of Adam A3X and I think this is probably what I might get if I went the studio monitor route. Then I remembered how much I liked the Ascend CMT-340 when I owned them (which I only sold because they were way too big and loud for nearfield listening). So I was thinking of going Parasound Zamp + Ascend CBM-170SE instead. (The Parasound ZDAC, Zamp and GS-1 would make a nic…

Just plugged it in today. Wow, fantastic bass, in fact too much, had to pull out my horns from the corners a bit. May need to play around with stuffing or even loading the outputs with some resistance to get some extra dampening. Crystal clear, focused sound, beautiful soundstage and great tone. Nelson Pass knows his stuff. Currently being driven by the headphone output of my moth with EML 45 tubes using a 1/4 inch to RCA adapter with monster cables, lol. I can't wait to get my real headphone/preamp when it's done. Pictures probably tomorrow or the weekend.

So a friend I know from work has a spare (I think) pair of these, and his wife is wanting less clutter in their place. (I get that.) He knows I'm into gear and audio and whatnot, and we've been talking for years about stuff. He asked me if I'd be interested in this pair, and we talked about trading something, perhaps. I think he'd be willing to take my pair of Senn 580/600 grill/650 cable for this pair of speakers. I've read some mostly-positive reviews, but, well, "internet reviewers" and all. It seems these were out at least around the turn of the century. I was looking at just getting some stands for the Wharfedale Diamond II bookshelf speakers I got at a thrift shop…

Thought I'd start a thread to discuss these fine (and other solid state) amps. I'm interested in some 100 watt or greater amps. I love reading the Pass DIY forums and seeing all the cool stuff Nelson comes up with. Unfortunately I have a love affair with pain in the butt to drive speakers so I am left with mostly their commercial offerings. My first question is what would be the big difference between an Aleph 2 and XA100.5 as far as sound goes? And about the XS150, has anyone heard them or have insights into their design? Do you think any of the Aleph or XA.5 amps can provide adequate voltage for V hungry electrostatic speakers, especially on very dynamic music?…

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/hifi-components/amps/a-s801/?mode=model USB DAC Supports DSD 100Wx2 ESS Technology 32-bit DAC (ES9010K2M) other shit awesome looks $999 ballin' on a budget, i dig it. I've always liked the way these Yamaha integrateds have looked the past few years.