Inside High End Equipment

[STC]

And Carver TFM25 power amp 

 

[STC]

McIntosh MCD301 SACD/CD player 

 

 

[STC]

First encounter. OCM 200. Sounds nice too. 

 

[STC]

And the next high end unit ..... this shows how much people are attached to their HiFi. It is more than an equipment to reproduce music. 

 

[STC]

Why sometimes tweaking can sound different. 

 

 

 

and these were added to Manley 300B Amp. 

[loop7]

Parasound HCA-855 5 channel amp (home theater)

[STC]

Made in Norway, Electrocompaniet EMC1 CD player.

 

 

[STC]

 Mark Levinson No. 39 CD player with colorful Chicklets. 

 

 

[STC]

 Philips CDPro2 transport replacement for Reimyo CDT-777 Transport.

[STC]

Sonus Faber Electa Amator speakers . Tweeters are Dynaudio Esotar and woofers are Audio Technology. One of the speaker enclosures came with a ping pong ball inside.   

 

Crossover - simple 1st Order 6dB/octave. 

 

 

[mansr]

3 hours ago, STC said:

One of the speaker enclosures came with a ping pong ball inside.

Gives the sound that extra bounce.

[STC]

21 minutes ago, mansr said:

Gives the sound that extra bounce.

 

I thought he wanted the ping pong effect. 😉

 

 

Interestingly, the presence of the ball was a surprise. Owner probably would be having a hard talk with his children.

 

Wondering whether the speaker isolation cones and the high end speaker’s stands helped to minimize the ping pong ball effect.   

 

 

 

[STC]

Naim SNAXO 3-ch electronic crossover.

 

 

[STC]

McIntosh C2300 preamp

[STC]

5 units of Sonic Frontiers. 

 

 

[STC]

[Hugo9000]

Dual UltraAnalog D20400A DACs!  😲

[STC]

29 minutes ago, Hugo9000 said:

Dual UltraAnalog D20400A DACs!  😲

 

Rather unreliable and no longer available. Here the DAC module was replaced with one locally made. 

 

 

 

 

[Hugo9000]

I had no personal experience with them, I just remember them being praised in certain quarters back in the day.  And of course we now have a lot of people talking about ladder DACs as if they are the ultimate.

[STC]

PS Audio bought over Ultra analogue. Not sure what if the make the same module anymore. But don’t you think the two units can be good candidates for AB tests?  Wink wink. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

25 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Rather unreliable and no longer available. Here the DAC module was replaced with one locally made. 

 

 

 

 

Ah, the HDCD chip!

[bambadoo]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Ah, the HDCD chip!

HDCD:

Quote

High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) is a proprietary audio encode-decode process that claims to provide increased dynamic range over that of standard Red Book audio CDs, while retaining backward compatibility with existing compact disc players.

Quote

 

HDCD encodes the equivalent of 20 bits worth of data in a 16-bit digital audio signal by using custom dithering, audio filters, and some reversible amplitude and gain encoding: Peak Extend, which is a reversible soft limiter; and Low Level Range Extend, which is a reversible gain on low-level signals. There is thus a benefit at the expense of a very minor increase in noise.^[3]

The claim that the encoding process is compatible with ordinary CD players (without audible distortion) is disputed: not being able to decode the peak soft limiting, a normal CD player will output distorted peaks.^[4

 

^]

^{Hmm - Havent we heard about similar the last couple of years?}

[semente]

17 hours ago, STC said:

PS Audio bought over Ultra analogue. Not sure what if the make the same module anymore. But don’t you think the two units can be good candidates for AB tests?  Wink wink. 

 

The UA was designed by Dan Lavry:

 

http://www.lavryengineering.com/products.html

[STC]

Swiss made Orpheus Zero CD player 

 

 

[STC]

Martin 300B amp built by 85 years old Mrs Martin Wong.