Miscellaneous

Henceforth known as IDAR. Or speaker room. I'm taking off most of next week and besides a lil' road trip up north, I'll have lots of time on my hands. So I'm finally going to make an attempt to convert the extra room into a dedicated 2 channel audio room. I think I'm going to start by just having my analog rig, 840A, and obviously the Quad 22Ls in there. The room is by no means perfect but I'm bound to get better bass performance then in the tiny office space I currently use my speakers in. Here are some before shots: Northwest: Northeast: Southwest: Southeast: Obviously this has acted as the "hey lets throw this shit in here" ro…

I am in the process of finalizing some wood choices for a custom ukulele to be built for me, and have settled on myrtle for the back and sides, and port orford cedar for the top. Both have excellent tonal and resonance properties, and both (at least on paper) offer the right combination of a heavier, denser hardwood for the back and sides, and something light but stiff for the top soundboard. Any guitar people out there can probably chime in, as well as any woodworkers. The builder has even sent me some pics of some wood choices he has available. I like the look of this particular one for its consistency and striping and overall lighter hue (see image2) Ho…

Their new amp, the Bosangwha, is beautiful (to these eyes.) However, it is a $4000 pair of monoblock chip amps. I like them because they make unique products, and because they have honest-to-goodness innovations like the gaincard. I dislike them because they fuse arrogant bullshit like tea ceremonies and heritage pottery with audio equipment, and are ridiculously priced. You can DIY a gaincard for about $150, and while I understand a premium going to the R&D, a 20x premium seems a little steep. They're free to charge whatever they like, but still... So my question is, does the wrong outweigh the right, here? Lots of companies make mediocre products that a…

Yep, that is right, toilets. We need a new one. I know some people have done some remodels lately and Steve seems to be the bathroom remodel king queen. So I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or models/brands to avoid.

Who has heard or owns them? Pretty premium price...I'm fairly eager to know how they sound...

Hi to all I am a regular over at HF and I recogise many of the posters here. I lurk here a bit, but only once previously had the inclination to post. My question relates to burn-in. As stated in the thread title, why does burn-in only ever improve gear? I have posted this over at the other place a few times, but of course it gets ignored. Now I'm not so sure about the whole burn-in thing personally. I've never really had a 'wow' experience. There is teh real chance that I'm just too deaf to hear any difference. I can understand why drivers might need some time to loosen up, but electronics? Anyway.... back to the real issue at hand here... Given the scenario w…

I'm setting up a listening room and need to run a dedicated power line to it. So I'm starting this thread to talk about how to do that. I assume I have to ohm out the lines going to my breaker box and then figure a way to separate some of the power lines going to that room. Then I have to install a new breaker for that circuit, and wire the ground differently for that breaker to a ground rod outside hammered into Mother Earth. Is that right?

So I've been a long time Norelco user and I have one that I've reasonably liked... but the blades are pretty dull and replacements aren't cheap and it's an old model. Thinking about jumping ship to Braun as most of my friends that go electric seem to prefer Braun. Looking at their top of the line with self cleaning et all.. it's ~220 on Amazon.com Any people have experience in the Braun/Norelco dealio? Yeah I know manual is superior and all that, but I'm not particularly hairy and even though I have to make a lot of motions I only shave 2x a week and it's still pretty speedy.

Hola I

So my old Sony 60" SXBR takes up to much space in my living room so it's time to upgrade. I plan on upgrading everything so any suggestions would help. I think I am going to pull the trigger on the Samsung PN58B860 plasma unless someone has a better suggestion. I plan on wall mounting it and getting wall mount speakers to keep everything from taking up a lot of room. Thoughts?

I currently have the Motorola H700. It is truly a piece of shit. I need to get a new headset, as I tend to be on a lot of calls during my commute. The #1 requirement is sound quality on my end and the listener's end. #2 is that it needs to be comfortable. Otherwise it doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles. I've read some decent things about the Jawbone 2, but it is expensive with some drawbacks, but if the sound and comfort are far superior to anything else then so be it. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Earlier this week, I was trying to order the Apex Peak/Volcano from Todd's website and I couldn't change any of my personal information (including password, address which happens to be incomplete for some reason). I just gave up and decided that it probably meant that I shouldn't get the P/V right now. Anyone have similar problems? Do certain browsers work or do I actually have to use the phone to make an order.

I just got the November Time Warner Cable bill, which had a brand new charge for "Modem Rental," which is new and apparently a backhanded price hike. Any other Time Warner customers around got their November bill? http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/time-warner-cable-modem-rental/

So I am thinking about replacing my roomate, but the main reason that I haven't is because the volume of my snoring is turned up to 11. I've been told not only can it be heard through the wall but through the floor as well to downstairs and that's a hard thing to see if a potential roomate can handle without doing a trial run which is really f'ing awkward to arrange. My snoring aside.. you can hear everything through the wall including talking normal volume on the phone. So I want to sound proof it up. What's the best way to do it? I'd prefer to only do it on my side if possible since I'm not sure I want to invest money into making it cosmetically appealing especia…

I'm tying to find reasons to buy the pico, but the limiting factor is that it only takes usb so is there some wierd thing that converts optical or coax spdif signals to usb? Probably not

I am not sure if I can post this, but here is the link to this article, which I found very interesting to read Stereophile: Tim de Paravicini: King of Tubes Now I am wonder what kind of balanced output configuration my Unico have, because of this: "Lots of people have made so-called valve CD players with a couple of token tubes. Most of them don't actually address the problem correctly, because a lot of them, if they're going to offer balanced outputs, actually go back into op-amps to do the balanced output configuration. So they've got this token tube doing not very much". Here is some article about Unico and how it works with output thing http://www.audioenz.co…

I was at the Verizon store, trying to undo a Verizon mess-up (what else is new?). It gave me a chance to scope out my next phone, upon which I will be placing a large emphasis on *good* camera performance, as I tire of carrying a real camera to various casual events. My prime candidate, the Samsung Galaxy Camera, was heavily disappointing. It was MUCH larger and heavier than any phone OR compact camera I've owned, not to mention the ugliest. It's like they literally took a phone and camera and fused them without weight or size savings. The 21x zoom lens was not bad even zoomed all the way out as far as IQ and focus speed, but it looked ludicrous when zoomed out. …

I live on the top floor of a poorly insulated building in Chicago with southern and western exposure. Even when it is not that hot out, it is hot in here. Does anyone have personal experience, or access to reviews, to suggest brands and/or models of window AC units that are quiet above all else?

Hey folks, I find myself in need of a couple of webcams now that my relationship will be long distance for the next 9 months (one for me, one for the gf). I simply don't know very much about webcams and am not looking for anything out of the ordinary but I was still hoping someone could share an experience or two just to give me an idea. The cams won't be used for anything beyond basic web chatting (gchat and skype probably). Need sound for both as well, but I assume that comes standard with most. Budget is probably no more than $50 per webcam. Here's one that intrigued me earlier today. Thanks much for any/all help.

ADS floorstanding speakers (have an 8" mid range driver and a tweeter) paired with some sub (didnt get a chance to get the name) Bang and Olfusen Beogram 5500 CDP (couldnt find the remote) Bang and Olfusen Cassette Player (forget the model # but it seemed like it was mated with the 5500 CDP) ADA PF 200 Power Amp (US built) Perreaux PMF 1150B Power Amp(New Zealand built) some kenwood cdp...looked like something from bestbuy. might be wrong on this though. some surround sound processor. didnt catch my eye. might be able to get all of the above. only brand ive heard of is B & O and i know brand name usually doesnt mean much in terms of quality. if anyone has…

My ideal power strip thing would be a Power Squid with individual switches for every socket leg. Does such a a thing exist? Also, any power strips/surge protectors of any type that you think are worthy of recommendation?

I have a 2 year old staying at the house this week and I am afraid she is going to want to put legos or some other toy in the front port of my Monitor Audio 6 (for some reason Tim wants to have her play right next to the speaker system). The speakers have front ports. Would it be ok to cover the front ports with some sort of light cloth for the week (while the system is on). This is the main tv setup so I can't put the speakers in a different room. I'm not so concerned about the sound but whether it could damage the amplifier. My guess is that is probably ok but will look like shit. I was thinking of using thin like a disposable dish cloth like this.

Can I do better than this for this price and height? Wood Technology 8 inch Furniture-Grade Hardwood Speaker Stands FGH-8

I was not sure whether to post this in the dedicated source or amp section. Finally decided to post on the amp section Been intrigued lately by something... I know many popular preamps and headphone amps invert phase. I have also noticed reading some specifications (and some dedicated source forums), that some sources have balanced terminals with inverted phase. (i.e. Accuphase, Burmester, and others), with different pin designation for signals. So my thoughts: So if a preamp, or a headamp that it is known to invert phase is used along with one of the afored mentioned sources (which inverts phase on the XLR outs,) would we finally achieve "the right phase?" My hes…

Or how I discovered that the right channel of my HT receiver is toast... So I finally had some time to myself tonight and figured that I would undertake the task of building and installing new speaker cables. Built the cables in about 45 minutes and was feeling pretty good about how things were going. Installed them in less than 10 minutes and I settled in to give the system a quick once over. Fired up the Outlaw 1050, ran the test, no right channel. Figure something must be wrong with the new cables, break out the DMM, nope continuity tests fine. Decide to try the cables in situ, cable tests fine with L channel. Decide to see if problem is limited to front Right, nope…