hearditontheX
New Member
Not built in, but SOTA offers the Roadrunner tachometer that also tracks accumulated playing time, https://sotaturntables.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/roadrunner-manual-small.pdf.
Equipment Recommendations - The Home For New System and Upgrade Advice
- Thread starter Joe Mac
- Start date
displayname
Well-Known Member
This is a bit left field, and it’s not REALLY equipment, but I figured this was the best place for it.
Work on your set up BEFORE diving into room treatments. This weekend I had a friend over who has put in some serious time and training on set up methods. His plan is offer both a set up guide kit, and offer his time/services for a fee to clients. He asked if he could come over and try this in my room as he knew I’d dealt with some specific challenges and he wasn’t as familiar with all my gear.
The full process took about 3.5 hours, and involved a somewhat counterintuitive combination of spikes and spike cups. As you can see in one of the photos below, my floor slopes on the right side of the room, by over 1/2 an inch. This required is actually using the spike cups under the right speaker to raise it up enough to sit truly level. This timing alignment has finally fixed my imaging falling off to the left. Micro adjustments also resolved higher pitched notes from drifting upwards. But most importantly of all, we got the best bass response when we removed my bass traps from the room. It was nice to have them to satisfy my curiosity, but it’s also nice to know that proper placement can resolve the issue they were attempting to resolve as well.
Now I’m not saying all room treatments are bad. But I’m saying if you are going to consider spending on room treatments, look into having a professional set up your room first. Or at the very least, purchase a guide and some tools to DIY it the best of your ability. You might be surprised what can changed and achieved without treatments.
And if you’re in the DFW area OR considering some new speakers, give Skip at AudioThesis a call.
Work on your set up BEFORE diving into room treatments. This weekend I had a friend over who has put in some serious time and training on set up methods. His plan is offer both a set up guide kit, and offer his time/services for a fee to clients. He asked if he could come over and try this in my room as he knew I’d dealt with some specific challenges and he wasn’t as familiar with all my gear.
The full process took about 3.5 hours, and involved a somewhat counterintuitive combination of spikes and spike cups. As you can see in one of the photos below, my floor slopes on the right side of the room, by over 1/2 an inch. This required is actually using the spike cups under the right speaker to raise it up enough to sit truly level. This timing alignment has finally fixed my imaging falling off to the left. Micro adjustments also resolved higher pitched notes from drifting upwards. But most importantly of all, we got the best bass response when we removed my bass traps from the room. It was nice to have them to satisfy my curiosity, but it’s also nice to know that proper placement can resolve the issue they were attempting to resolve as well.
Now I’m not saying all room treatments are bad. But I’m saying if you are going to consider spending on room treatments, look into having a professional set up your room first. Or at the very least, purchase a guide and some tools to DIY it the best of your ability. You might be surprised what can changed and achieved without treatments.
And if you’re in the DFW area OR considering some new speakers, give Skip at AudioThesis a call.
folsom_lives
Well-Known Member
Alcohol should work. Which turntable are you putting in on?
folsom_lives
Well-Known Member
The new one. I never got around to getting one on the older Orbit.
There was some discussion on what alignment tool to use. I have a Geodisc and one of those Hudson Hifi mirrored gauges.
dansomeone
Well-Known Member
The sub-$1k preamp of choice around here is a used Sutherland Insight
LG&M
Member
I didn't know that it was possible to find a used insight at that price, but I'm also not sure its the best use of the space I have -- I've been allocated real estate for a turntable and two full-sized components (one of which has to be an AVR), so I thought that a nice stereo amp + a smaller photo stage would be the way to go. Which leads to me to my next question(s)...
This room is going to double as a movie room and the family wants an avr (I’ve tried to sell them on a 2-channel setup with a phantom center and they are not fans). My understanding has always been that the front channel amps in an AVR aren't going to compare what a dedicated stereo amp can provide, so I’ve been looking at ways to combine the functionality of an AVR with a nice 2 channel amp. If I were to get a pretty basic AVR that had pre-outs for the two front channels, could I connect my turntable preamp and external streamer to the AVR, and then connect the AVR to a power amp (say, e.g., an NAD 298)? Or should I be connecting the AVR to an integrated amp with home theater bypass (say, e.g., an NAD 388) and then also connect the external streamer and turntable preamp to the integrated? I expect that my family would prefer having everything connected to the AVR for simplicity sake, but do I sacrifice analog signal quality by passing the turntable preamp signal through the AVR before it gets to the power amp? Also, would connecting everything through the AVR allow the 2 channel music to benefit from the AVR’s room correction software, or is that a terrible idea?
Apologies if these questions are best served up in a different thread, this is my first equipment upgrade in about a decade so I'm pretty fired up about it.
The key if you go for AVR only is to get one that has a good power amp section that’s well reviewed for audio and a “Source Direct” or “Pure Signal” button that allows you to bypass the surround sound processing for your analogue signals.
Don’t know if this will fly but, if it’s in budget could you sell them on a surround sound system using a sonos arc/beam and two ones/ikea speaker or lamp as the wireless rears? Means the tele and music are two different systems and the sonos really nicely integrates with the tele to the point that it’s controlled using all your tv & box remotes. That was way I decided to go in the end.
Everyone is going to have a lot of different opinions regarding running through an AVR but I think it just comes down to how much you're willing to spend on an AVR. You can definitely spend a lot less on a two channel amp than you would need to spend on similar quality sound via an AVR but that's not to say that an AVR can't do an incredible job with analog audio. I run an Arcam 550 using Dirac room correction and it sounds fantastic and the room correction does an incredible job of smoothing out some of the traditional issues with non dedicated rooms.
As @Joe Mac said, pure direct can be useful but that will bypass the room correction and in a lot of cases with a good AVR and solid quality room correction, it's going to sound worse to bypass it. I just have my AVR set to 2 channel stereo output via the AVR, so it will only give me stereo when I use it and avoids the surround speakers.
Yeah totally wouldn’t be using it with the class of AVR you have but with an AVR that’s under €1000 and having to amplify 7+ channels I’d definitely be wanting to mash that button for music.
Oh I get it, but you can still get two channel output with the room correction for music and I'm still willing to bet that unless you're running speakers, TT, and a phono stage that are like VASTLY better quality than the AVR, that it's still likely going to sound better with properly aligned room correction on, vs just going Pure Direct. But in a perfect world yeah, you go two channel dedicated for music. This was the whole internal argument I had when I was building my room. I still want a dedicated 2 channel somewhere, but that may have to wait for a second house.
Yeah I suppose the curse of living alone is also a blessing for these purposes. It meant that I could prioritise the music and the whole sonos thing is actually really very good when using a tv and not wanting either a second amplifier or trailing wires to the rears. If you’re in a house that you have to share with someone else there really needs to be a whole space dedicated to music to get away with that.
Yeah I mean with my place it's just a matter of the dang basement having a giant effing wall of like 2 tonnes of solid rock on it. No chance I could make a two channel system work down there without some serious room correction going on.
LG&M
Member
I hadn't looked at a separate Sonos as an option, mainly to try to keep the setup simple for the family. The quality of the surround system isn't really all that important, they really just want the center channel to better hear dialogue and some super simple rears so the kids can get excited about the effects. But I have a friend who has a Sonos and it sound great, I'll do some digging and price it out, thx...
Yeah it’s actually much more simple on the tv side because with newer one it connects the tv by HDMI from the eARC port and once you have it all set up the tv then controls the volume and sources and stuff.
The ikea symonfisk speaker lamps and speakers are a cheaper way than the sonos one to add the rears and look really good if you have the right decor to go with them.
LG&M
Member
I feel like I went down a similar line of thought, I looked at the NAD and Arcam AV receivers thinking that they could just be an all-in-one solution, but the new units seems to run in the $2-3k range and I felt like I was paying for a features that I don't expect to use (7+ channels, different speaker heights, etc.) so maybe I could get better "bang for the buck" by tacking a simple AVR onto a nice stereo amp. I'll go digging for some used options and see how that compares to what I've been pricing out.
I've never really considered room correct as a key feature, but I'll also be doing all this in a basement so maybe I should reconsider. It sounds like your Dirac adjustments made a big difference?
I mean YMMV but for me it's night and day between having room correction on and off using my TT. Everything tightens up and becomes much more punchy and detailed when I have correction running. But now this is using a $4400 Arcam with Dirac. When I try the same thing through a less expensive AVR running Audessey it's not even close. So yeah it's definitely dependant on quality at that point. But if you had the option for getting a really killer 2 channel amp I would definitely go that route over a low to middle of the road AVR.
folsom_lives
Well-Known Member
Well the isopropyl did a tiny bit to the tarnished pins. How shiny do these things need to be?
kvetcha
Well-Known Member
They’re probably just fine.