rko

THE BE ALL & END ALL OF PORTABLE AMPS?

Maybe, untill the introduction of V3.

What is a good Bass?

Warwick, Ibanez and Gibson makes some pretty good Basses.

Jokes aside.

I still say it depends on personal preferences. In an audiophile way there is no absolute "good/bad" bass. I enjoy my music when i turn on the bass booster, i also enjoy it when i turn off the bass booster.

If bass on music sense. I prefer the bass to be more pronounced. Not just in volume but in identity as well.

Actually not all studios use the generic cables like belden/mogami/canares etc. Hugo for one uses their own cables in the mastering and recording. More info on their site: www.hugodisc.com

 

The hifi interconnect can never recover lost data, though it may colour the music by truncating certain sections of the frequency response so that other parts of the spectrum stand out. An example is the Klotz GY107. Highs are rolled and low bass very lumpy thus in the process allowing the mid bass to stand out. This may add warmth to the music but then again, the listener is actually losing certain parts of the frequency range.

 

I have been trying out the Acrolink interconnects. To me, they allow the infomation to be transferred from the CDP to the Amp with minimal loss. I deduced this from the increase in the amount of details (texture, decay etc) and also that the volume knob is turned down from its usual level when listening via the Acrolink, even though the music is playing as loud.

 

The Acrolink interconnect allows the music to sound organic and natural compared to the Beldens/ Canares.

 

Certainly, revealing cables cause the flaws in your system to stick out like a sore thumb. The next stage of the game will be to use tweaks in the system. It is quite fun especially, with tweaks that allow the noise floor of the system to plunge- articulate music in a sea of pitch black background.

 

I use footers from TAOC and accessories like the RCA shorting pin from Acoustic Revive. They work for me. At the end of the day, it is the music that matters and every single component in the audio chain, including cables is important to achieve audio bliss.

You are right about Hugo there. To add on, TELARC used Monsters cables .

Ermm, how do you know if the Klotz "Highs are rolled and low bass very lumpy thus in the process allowing the mid bass to stand out"? Maybe this is the actual sound the engineer recorded since most studios uses the generic pro cables? Or perhaps this trait is inherent from other equipment? Whereas the Acrolink works in the opposite way thus giving a more pleasant sound?

As mentioned, the preference of sound is up to individual. Some find A better some find B better. In fact, i find that there are no cables that are better than another. Its just that they are different sounding, hence some ppl even prefer the hanger. Its like you sacrifice some and gain some.

You must be real lucky to find the cable for you , many ppl are still looking for thiers. But have you tried other cables in the belden/canares lineups? Perhaps one can be same sounding at a fraction of the

Acrolink?

Another reason why I'm using this service is because all the tags and album art will be in. If I were to rip them myself using EAC and accurate rip, coupled with my tagging process, each disc will take me 30mins. 200 CDs x 30mins = 100 hours, madness.

speaking of tagging, i assume all your disc are english albums? I'm actually in the midst of ripping my cds into flac too. So far, i get 90% cd/track indentification with Freedb, but only 10% with album art. For non-english cds, i only get 50% indentification via freedb.

With metaservice, i get 80% for non-english. For the rest of the 20%, either type myself or copy and paste from websites. And trust me, i spent an equal amount of time tagging and setting up foobar's UI to my liking.

seriously speaking, what does a hifi interconnect do? Recover lost frequency?

Studios uses the beldens/mogamis/canares. Why are we spending so much on interconnect when it all began with cheap stuffs.

Everyone agree that garbage in= garage out. And since at the beginning cheap cable are used, why are we spending so much on our hifi cables.

Ever tried ebay? some ebay shops selling pretty cheap for old cds in mint condition. I got some cs there for like only 10USD. Although the shipping hurts alot though. Its like 8usd for a cd and subsequent 20% off on shipping.

i suppose with accuraterip, the ripping should be fairly accurate when using cd-roms isnt it?

But the thing is, I'm picking up new songs are rediscovering musical enjoyment through my speakers as I talk..... Coz my speakers are connected and it takes little effort to flick on the two switchs on the 2 modules to get music pumping instead of reaching out into the dry box, opening up cases and taking out headphones and amps and plug convertors....And yeah, the cable running all over the floor....

i have that feeling too, just too lazy to take the phones out of the box and blah blah. much easier with speakers. On main switch, press button, put in cd and press button.

OT abit, u actually put ur phones into drybox?

perhaps this mght help some ppl, i somehow managed to find a way to tag chinese.

First rip through EAC. Make sure there is some sort of tagging regardless if its readable. After ripping into .flac, use MP3tag to look into freedb again. There is an option in mp3tag that can convert the tag into traditional or simplified chinese.

If freedb dosent have that cd in its database, then its either manual tagging or use winamp to rip. Still trying to find a way to use metaservice or gracnote on EAC. Freedb database on chinese sucks big time compared to gracenote or metaservice.

By the way, i found that alot of my cd have problems ripping through EAC. Apparently, the error seems to indicate that i have damaged cds. Very sad cause i love my cds very much, makes me wonder if i should get new cds again or something.

hi everyone,

Need help from u guys/gals. Recently decided to start building up a digital archive of my CDs in .flac. Partly due to my dying cdp and that i'm going back school after a 7 year hiatus(no more audio spending). Cant possibly bring the cdp to campus, can i?

Anywayz, i have majority chinese and japanese cds in my library and was trying to use EAC to convert them to .flac files. Problem arise - I cant get EAC to display chinese/japanese tags correctly. After getting information from freeDb, all i get are all those funny characters. Tried adjusting the Vista interface to diaplay chinese characters without luck. Tried with richwin and njstar without luck too.

Was wondering if any guys/gals know how to solve this? Also noticed that the trackid in win media player works like a dream. With album cover, track listing and even composer sometimes even for a 20 year old album. Possible to import tag?

thanks for any help!

The thing about audio is that u bascially do nothing much, just spend money.

Not much skill is needed, no practice needed, just pure enjoyment.

And it can be enjoyed 90% of the time. No preperation needed, no need check weather, no need find khaki, no need care what others think.

heheh, and i tought sarah brightman was not as bright as i liked her to be, not even on grados sr60. Perhaps i prefer the "shrills down my spine" kind of feeling.

I havent tried the alessandros before, but i remember they were suppossed to be an alternative for ppl who find the grados too bright. Since ur pair is new, perhaps they need some burn-in/condition period?

It makes sense to me if they cant get the payment cause the bank requires an image verfication. But they were already duly paid(my banker confirmed this) and refused to ship the goods. Or if the billing and shipping address is different( i could have use your credit card to pay and had the goods send to my place), i could have understand for the extra precaution.

The irony of it was they wanted an image to prevent fraud, but image sent via email? Although they only need the last 4 no. to be shown, i still dont like the idea especially they wanted both the front and rear side of the credit card. You guys probably knows what's on the rear side of the credit card.

To be frank, i'm not too upset about the sending of the image. Rather its that they took the money and not shipped the stuffs out. Cant blame them fully though, its my own fault i dint check my account earlier.

Anywayz, i cancelled my order and found the phones i wanted right here in Singapore, albeit second hand.

Hi guys, was wondering if anyone had ordered any stuffs before fom Audiocubes?

Had recently ordered a pair of cans from them as they seems reputable. A couple of days later, i received a mail saying i need to send an image of my I.C and Credit card(i can block out certain information leaving the only last 4 digits so my information will not be disclosed). Thinking that this might be a scam or something, i gave no attention to it. I contemplated sending info out via e-mail, we know how unsecure e-mail is.

When the cans never arrived, i thought the transaction failed and ordered cancelled -- my fault that i dint make sure. But when i received my credit card statement for the month, i noticed the transaction had gone through. I checked with my banker and he confiirmed the transaction cleared and payment done. However, my status is still under "need verification before shipping" while i logged into my account on Audiocube. After a few correspondances with the sales rep via email, i learnt that they need verfication cause "Singapore is a high fraud country".

I find this rather unacceptable. Payment done and u should send out the goods. I would have understand if the billing address and shipping address is different, but they are the same this time.

I am now thinking if i should cancel the order( they agree to this if i insist not sending the image)

Was wondering if anyone here collects CDs. I mean those that actually sees their value rise after a decade or so. Was pleasently surprise when i found that i have a few cd that was "highly sought after" in the 2nd hand market.

got it right on. the Sony cdp is the CDP-X5000, and i was pleasantly surprised that someone brought along another sony cdp that uses the same fixed-lens mechanism.

i still very much in love with j-pop these days. Watching too many animes while overseas working brought my j-pop passion back. My personal fav not in order(too difficult to order them)

1. Zard--sadly no more music from Zard,

2. Judy and Mary----yuki went solo last i heard

3. Mayo Okamoto------Dunno if she still around

4. SPEED---Does anyone still remembers them?

and last but not least, the one and only,

5. X-JAPAN

above are the ones from the 90s, though i really like the 80s j-pop too like Anzen Chitai, Southern All Stars and Chage & Aska.

So whats the diff between lousy rechargeables and the good ones?

As i mentioned before, different batteries have different characteristics as they are designed for different uses. Some models are design for hospital equipment, some for ur portable, some from hobby usuage. These batteries perform differently under different loads.(Hospital ones provide more consistence voltages while hobby ones usually can handle big and fluctuating loads). It isnt easy to identify which one is "best" for ur application unless u know how the batts perform and how u are going to load the batts. General speaking, reputated ones from sanyo, GP are pretty okay regardless what functions they are designed for. Also pair them up with a decent charger. One that does individual peak charging and hopefully help to cycle batts.

What this means is that if you recharge before the battery is completely discharged, then there will be memory effect, ie the battery holds less charge. But this can be "cured" by discharging the battery completely and then charging it until it reaches full capacity.

 

So effectively, NiMH battery do not have the memory effect.

For note, Nimh does not like to be totally discharge, in fact this kills the life span of the batt. Preferably discharge to to .6 or .9 volts/cell under low loads if i remember correctly. I believe the memory effect talked about means when u recharge the battery before it is depleted to .6/.9 volts.

Ah, that got me clear, thanks.

Oh wells, you still cant use it like Li-ion batteries though.

 

How about "lousy" branded rechargeable batteries? Anyone?

Imho, do not go for unbranded rechargeable. Different brands/models have different characteristic but i have seen exploded battery when they are not charged properly.

hi, although this may be out of topic. I have the W850i which i'm using now. Been using mp3 at 192kbps and the audio the phone produce is not that good. Especially when used with the etymotics iem, lots of background noise that makes the music totally not enjoyable. So suggest u should look for something that is not too revealing while musical sounding. cheers

旺福-青春舞曲

Always like the mixing/recording style of the band.

Happened to do this last month. Was actually eyeing for the zhaolu due to the rave reviews for an different sound to my current source. So, it happened that the first day i was there another guy was bringing his meridian dac for a comparison with the dac1. The 2 sounded very different on audio trio main setup. But i can roughly make out the type of sound the dac1 produced.

The next day, i took a couple of my fav cds over(mostly pop) and went audio trio again. First tested out the citypulse which alex said was a better one to zhaolu. listened to it for almost 3 hours. Resoulution was pretty good but it sounded a bit harsh. Imaging was okay. I believe the unit was not fully run in.

Was not throughly impressed with the citypulse, so asked alex to hook up the zhaolu unmodded. Damn, the unmodded zhaolu is much harsher and grainy than the citypulse. And the built quality of the zhaolu simply spells M.I.C. The zhaolu lasted less than 2 songs. Lastly the DAC1 came and went on to steal the show. It lasted 5 mins too. Cause thats how long it took for me to decide that the DAC1 is what i wanted.

Not going to write much about the DAC1 cause there is more than enough review on the web. But then again the DAC1 is in another league of its own, cant really compare something that cost about 1/10th of the DAC1. Think anyone can go for a audition over there, Alex is really friendly.

Selling LD2+. Seldom use and prolly had less than 50 hours on it. Selling cause thinking of getting a DAC with Headphone Output and i still prefer SS amps. Also looking for an Atacama Hi-Fi rack. i'm contactable at 98517622

LD2+ sold

Btw, RKO, is that Ryouko Hirosue in ur avatar? Looks abit like her if not its her...Btw, any one of you guys listen to older stuff like X-JAPAN, WANDS or Toshinobu Kubota? I know Sekaiju No Dare Yori Kitto by Nakayama Miho & WANDS is really nice...Also, LA LA LA LOVE SONG by Toshinobu Kubota is really nice. Love that song...

yup, its ryoko and hence my nick RKO. I'm a fan of her ever since her pictorial album days....but her popularity had really died down after news of her unwed pregnancy got to the public. old stuffs are great man, i had a look at my cds and found a few of them that i had really forgotten about. Stuffs from Spitz, Glay, Max and even Kinki Kids. Reminds me of the time when ever there is a long break between lessons, i will be at Tower or HMV in orchard listening through the CDs.

Blues--- I cant agree more that the taiwanese bootleg is horrible, though they were my main source from "Game Tokyo" while i was still schooling.(Those were the days when Game Tokyo had rows and rows of jap music.) Not saying that the jap presses are bad(i do have the Zard Best singles collection that i bought in 1999), just that they are not really that good. Its like u are paying 50+ dollars for a CD of course u expect good quality. Perhaps i'll have a closer listen again. Hmm, cocobean, where can u get the taiwanese presses these days? the ones at HMV are all jap presses and they cost like 70 each.