wmeugene
Well-Known Member
I'd second the blue jeans recommendation. Great quality cables and one stop shopping for all cable needs.
Equipment Recommendations - The Home For New System and Upgrade Advice
- Thread starter Joe Mac
- Start date
displayname
Well-Known Member
BJC on a lower budget. Zu is good at their auction prices, but their interconnects have impressed me more than their speaker cable. Wireworld is my favorite in the next step up, and if I was financially going above that I'm do more research. I kind of want to try Van Den Hul at some point because I know that my speakers use their cabling internally.
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Mr Moustache
Well-Known Member
There are basically 2 schools of thinking out there: people tend to divide their gear by %. The first is 20% for the source, 10% for phono pre, 20% for amplification and 50% speakers. The second is roughly 25% for each components. I tend toward the second. You seem to be tending toward the first. So you would spend $300-600 right? I guess the logical phono pre to match the studiodeck is the studiophono? Graham slee is good too, but overpriced on this side of the ocean, unless you by directly from the website and avoid taxes. The big plus with GS is the loaning program to try it out on your system. The Sutherland KC vibe is well regarded but maybe too expensive for your needs? And there’s always the Rega fono. I’ve read good things about the Lehmann Audio Black cube and Parks Audio Puffin. I guess everybody here will encourage you to select 3-4 of them and try them on your system, if you can... If I may ask, I guess you’re not thinking end game component at the moment right? You may want to upgrade later on? If so I would advise to stay in the $300-500 bracket, because if you want significant improvement later on, you’ll need to spend something like $1500-2000. Hope this helps a bit. I sure know making this kind of decision is not easy. As much as people here tend to criticize the SHF (and I understand them) I like to browse the equipment section from time to time to see what people recommend. I would take a look at some of the phono preamp thread there.
kvetcha
Well-Known Member
SHF is a valuable repository of knowledge, and knowledgeable people, but boy, the snobbery. You're not wrong, though.
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
Lurking SHF is approved
Jango
Active Member
One thing I would add is don’t overlook the secondhand market. Upgrade-itis is real and, once you know what you want, you can stretch your dollar there. Nearly my entire system is secondhand. It’s saved me literally thousands of dollars.
kvetcha
Well-Known Member
Ditto.
What are some recommended secondary market sources (besides here, of course).
Audiogon, eBay. US Audiomart, Canuckaudiomart
kvetcha
Well-Known Member
I've also bought pre-owned units from Echo Audio and HiFi Heaven.
Jango
Active Member
Echo Audio and The Music Room are the ones I check regularly.
Hifi Shark is a good aggregator. If you’re looking for something specific you can setup alerts, see historical pricing, etc.
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
New Years resolution, turn off all notifications from all these places, lol
Splunders
Well-Known Member
I've purchased from The Music Room a couple times. The have a limited warranty and return window as well. Upscale Audio also sells a limited selection of used stuff.
wenis
Active Member
Bought the Vincent Pho 8 for a song. Very excited to get it in about a week or so. Enough time to find a better furniture situation (or get it built).
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
Coming together nicely
i mean i am not going to use speakers (i exclusively use headphones) so i just needed a phono pre and a headphone amp toe complete the mofi and hana combo
Mr Moustache
Well-Known Member
I don’t think this makes a difference
So the Insight has been plugged in and played a while.
Insight to TubeBox DS: There is a difference for sure, it's not the huge jump the amps where from the original so far. It does have better and deeper bass vs. the DS. There is also more clarity and dimension. what is great is that everything became more natural. It sounds effortless for lack of words and more musical. (I'm expecting it to get even better here per comments) Where it shines so far is that my background noise was evaporated. That's saying something because I didn't think I had any background noise to speak of. You can put your ear to the speaker half up and nothing.
With the insight and the two amps (Stellar Strata and Arcam SA20): The differences here are the same but more apparent. I'd say Arcam has a better sound stage than the M2si but it's not in the same league with the Strata. Once the Sutherland was in the Strata felt like you were in the room with the music, and by comparison the Arcam sounded less like that afterward. The mix issues where better in some ways because everything was more defined so it wasn't missing as much, but this almost highlighted the issue more. You could hear everything and it was more obvious that some things were up front too much.
I do need some help as I was loading my Zu Audio's before to match the M2si. The last thing I did was run the speakers without the 25ohm resistors. It took a layer off the sound, but it was too much and the amp lost some meat. I'm thinking something in between no resistor and 25ohms might be the answer?
Thanks!
Insight to TubeBox DS: There is a difference for sure, it's not the huge jump the amps where from the original so far. It does have better and deeper bass vs. the DS. There is also more clarity and dimension. what is great is that everything became more natural. It sounds effortless for lack of words and more musical. (I'm expecting it to get even better here per comments) Where it shines so far is that my background noise was evaporated. That's saying something because I didn't think I had any background noise to speak of. You can put your ear to the speaker half up and nothing.
With the insight and the two amps (Stellar Strata and Arcam SA20): The differences here are the same but more apparent. I'd say Arcam has a better sound stage than the M2si but it's not in the same league with the Strata. Once the Sutherland was in the Strata felt like you were in the room with the music, and by comparison the Arcam sounded less like that afterward. The mix issues where better in some ways because everything was more defined so it wasn't missing as much, but this almost highlighted the issue more. You could hear everything and it was more obvious that some things were up front too much.
I do need some help as I was loading my Zu Audio's before to match the M2si. The last thing I did was run the speakers without the 25ohm resistors. It took a layer off the sound, but it was too much and the amp lost some meat. I'm thinking something in between no resistor and 25ohms might be the answer?
Thanks!
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apholden
Active Member
The resistors are wired across the speaker terminals, right? Larger resistors would have a lower effect. For your speakers, the overall impedance for different resistors is calculated by (12*r)/(r+12) where r is the value of the resistor you connect.
60Ω resistors should give you an impedance of 10Ω, about halfway between your current resistors and no resistors.
This chart on Zu's site is confusing to me. They seem to say the opposite. But, they also seem to change after the 50ohm total to greater or lesser values but still changes the impedance in the same direction?
