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Fas42’s Stereo ‘Magic’


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9 hours ago, Confused said:

 

I does happen.  I visited a show a couple of years ago, Cyrus were demonstrating their latest kit, and happened to be using the Blade 2.

 

I did not like this system at all, it was a terrible sound to my ears.  It didn't sound like poo though, more mid range and treble than you get with poo.

 

I am not sure what you are referring to by "at that show".  Out of interest, where there any speakers you liked there?

 

It was poo in the sense that you would have had to pay me money to get me to listen to them for an extended time, in that state - as a listening experience it was below what I get from a normal car radio.

 

The last proper Sydney audio show, some years ago - I've mentioned this quite a few times. I never separate the components - I either like the system, or not; if it's below par, the only thing that's interesting is understanding what the cause of that is. The highlight was a combo of Bryston and Dynaudio, capable of PA SPLs with complete integrity; this was standing 2 feet away from a drum kit exploding with sound, the transients and punch pummeled your body, "just like the real thing" 😉. Overall, there were about a half dozen setups that delivered pretty decent SQ, that showed great promise.

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9 hours ago, ray-dude said:

With traditional HiFi rigs, the analogy I use is moving from looking at a photo of a forest to an even better photo of a forest to a full 100" 4k HDR OLED photo of a forest, where you start to get an inkling of what it is like to look through a window at a forest.  If you work hard enough, the "through a window" feeling becomes more and more prevalent and the window gets more clear and larger and you start to get the barest hint of being in a forest with no window at all.

 

I compare that to walking through a forest, where even with scratched up sunglasses that cast a yellowish tint, I am unambiguously IN A FOREST, and all my senses have shifted to a completely different of experience and engagement and feeling of being alive.

 

Very nifty analogy, Ray ... I doffs my hat 🙂.

 

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That difference is not due to fidelity of the image.  It is the amalgam of sensory inputs that cause my brain (which has been trained by Darwin and 53 years of hard knocks) to switch to "this is real, pay attention" mode.  It takes precious little to break that sense of reality and go back to trying to get a better and better photo, then a better and better window.


The last several years for me have been about starting all over, and trying to get that sense of reality from the ground up.  It has been devastaingly humbling, but incredibly rewarding.  So much that I put on the first tier "this can never be compromised" I've realized just doesn't matter once my brain kicks into "this is real" mode.  Back to my earlier analogy, given a choice between listening to Carly Simon live in a noisy coffee shop with the crappiest acoustics and listening to Moonlight Serenade on a $1M PinnacleFi system, find me in the coffee shop, completely engaged and over the moon delighted for the experience, leaving afterwards inspired and elevated by the artistry.

 

I listen to the mega Wilson and YT setups and I'm blown away by how incredible they are (truly...after decades of tweaking and tuning I know intimately what an incredible achievement and performance level they are delivering), but it is now a intellectual interest rather than a passion.  I'll happily give up 90% of what they deliver, to get that sense of reality (the walking in the forest experience) that they struggle to deliver (at least for my brain).

 

You're an illusion maker yourself, Ray 😉 .. very nicely put.

 

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All that being said, the reaction of people when they hear my rig is decidedly bimodal: there are those that have a proverbial red pill moment and want more and more of that reality rush, and others that are scratching their heads going "I thought you had a nice stereo system...what's up with this?"  The former group has had their brain click in on that sense of reality, the later is focused on what I was willing to give up to get that sense of reality.  The sharp divide I've seen in my living room really highlights how differently our brains get triggered, and the different response we all seek in music.

 

 

This is the really interesting bit ... the people who "get it", and those that don't - the audiophile crowd are definitely the worst of the "not getting it" side of things ... they have a need to tick a long list of checkboxes, and if something is not there, for them, they lose interest, fast.

 

What I am curious about, is what you feel you had to give up, that is lacking, now, compared to conventional audiophile sound ... ?

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2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Again. What’s to sort out? You buy decent equipment, you connect it together using the cables of your choice keeping power and signal cables apart, and you play music through the equipment. Short of going into the components themselves and changing the circuit topology, what else is there to “sort”?

 

Which is the thinking of most audio enthusiasts ... consider needing a surgeon, in a hospital; you have the choice of the bright young thing, full of bounce, recently out of medical school, "who knows it all!!" - and the weary veteran, who has had years of dealing with every subtle combination and variation of "what can go wrong"; there are years of instinctive knowledge tucked away there ... who are you going to choose? For that "straightforward medical procedure"?

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2 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

That is why I don't take Frank @fas42 seriously.

 

Unfortunately, Teresa, you can't seem to separate the cost of the equipment, from a dealer; with the capability of the setup to do its job - reproduce what's on the recording ... I left that place 30 years ago - the retail value of the bits of metal and wood in front of me mean close to zero in terms of being subjectively transparent to the content of the recording.

 

If some people want audio to be a hobby where the highest cost wins, every time - that's fine ... but that shouldn't condemn others to suffer inferior SQ, just because it suits the thinking of the former lot.

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27 minutes ago, fas42 said:

What I am curious about, is what you feel you had to give up, that is lacking, now, compared to conventional audiophile sound ... ?

 

Key to my new world order has been the high efficiency single driver speakers, driven directly by my DAC.  It has allowed me to eliminate the cross over in the speaker (devastating to my sense of reality) and the amplifier (ditto, but less so with the right amp)

 

My speaker drivers are 104dB sensitivity, so they are remarkably light and fast, and they are point source so I can have perfect phase alignment and no dispersion between drivers.  My DAC (Chord DAVE) has remarkably low noise floor and remarkably fast dynamics, with only a couple of elements on out the output (the 2W "amp" is intrinsic to the analog output stage, so the analog signal goes through remarkably few components)

 

It is the speaker that is the biggest compromise for "traditional" high fi for me.  I came from B&W 802d3's and adore the B&W sound.  These were life time dream speakers.  As soon as I heard a modest $1400/pair set of Omega Super Alnico Monitors (single drivers), it was a revelation, and I knew I needed to leave the B&W dream behind.  I struggled mightily for a long time to get that sense of reality from the B&Ws, but I just couldn't

 

With the single drivers, the biggest things I give up are tonal balance, and the sense of "power" (not loudness...plenty loud even with 2W).  Interestingly, I found that within a couple days my brain fully adjusts to tonal imbalances and doesn't notice them, but it NEVER adjusts to the sense of reality being gone.  With the sense of "power", one never gets that with a live singer or piano player or horn player, one instead gets a compelling sense of space from the power of their voice/playing/etc.  The single drivers have an amazing sense of space.  I am transplanted into the physical space where the recording was made but I have given up the "blow your hair back power cord" feeling,

 

Before this life pivot, tonal balance and physicality were key for me, with a sense of space being a nice occasional bonus.  That has completely inverted.  I appreciate deeply a MegaFi setup that delivers perfect tonal balance and tangible physicality, but I infinitely prefer to be in the studio with Coltrane.

ATT Fiber -> EdgeRouter X SFP -> Taiko Audio Extreme -> Vinnie Rossi L2i-SE w/ Level 2 DAC -> Voxativ 9.87 speakers w/ 4D drivers

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10 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Comparing yourself to either is a gross injustice to the medical profession.

 

I consider you to be more like this guy:

 

 

Fortunately the folks here aren't as gullible as his poor patients...

 

 

It appears you don't understand the concept of an analogy - if I use an analogy where planes are concerned, does that imply I think I'm a Boeing aircraft - or an aeronautical engineer?

 

 

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9 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

 

It is the speaker that is the biggest compromise for "traditional" high fi for me.  I came from B&W 802d3's and adore the B&W sound.  These were life time dream speakers.  As soon as I heard a modest $1400/pair set of Omega Super Alnico Monitors (single drivers), it was a revelation, and I knew I needed to leave the B&W dream behind.  I struggled mightily for a long time to get that sense of reality from the B&Ws, but I just couldn't

 

Okay, got it. You don't have to leave the B&W dream behind - it is possible to "have it all" ... the Bryston and Dynaudio setup showed that the stuff is out there to make it happen, right now.

 

9 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

 

With the single drivers, the biggest things I give up are tonal balance, and the sense of "power" (not loudness...plenty loud even with 2W).  Interestingly, I found that within a couple days my brain fully adjusts to tonal imbalances and doesn't notice them, but it NEVER adjusts to the sense of reality being gone.  With the sense of "power", one never gets that with a live single or piano player or horn player, one instead gets a compelling sense of space from the power of their voice/playing/etc.  The single drivers have an amazing sense of space.  I am transplanted into the physical space where the recording was made but I have given up the "blow your hair back power cord" feeling,

 

A good orchestral workout will tell if the potential is there. Start with a plaintive, single instrument in a lonely emptiness, and have it build to a  massive onslaught of sound where every instrument unleashes, and it rolls over your being like a many metres high wave of intensity .. effortlessly - this indeed does work. How can it? Because it's just sound, in the end - the real world has no trouble doing this ... why should there be some mysterious bottleneck with audio stopping it happening?

 

9 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

Before this life pivot, tonal balance and physicality were key for me, with a sense of space being a nice occasional bonus.  That has completely inverted.  I appreciate deeply a MegaFi setup that delivers perfect tonal balance and tangible physicality, but I infinitely prefer to be in the studio with Coltrane.

 

Perfect tonal balance doesn't interest me - bass lines still impart their magic even if the lowest notes are not there in the room. But getting both the sense of being in the space where the recording happened, and experiencing the visceral qualities of the sounds that would have been there, is most certainly possible.

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39 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

I think what folks struggle with (what I struggle with) is the vagueness of both your targets and your outcomes. 
 

 

The target is a sense of realism, that @ray-dude very poetically portrays; the outcomes are how close I get with various combos of gear.

 

The "how I do it" disturbs many, because I have the mindset that I'm fixing a faulty system; and in turn I know I have indeed fixed it - because it delivers an acceptable level of realism.

 

What's even more disturbing to some is that I use low cost gear- which is mainly because I'm practical; if I happen to wreck it, no great sobbing session ... 🙂.

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38 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Now before I proceed, let me get this out of the way. This goal very much plays into the hands of Frank who waxes lyrically on the topic. Frank does this as a ploy to justify, by association, his non-existent "method". Not needing to spend huge amounts of money is also, for example, a ploy that Frank uses to recruit people to his audio cult. Tweaking gear is another theme which can suck people in to Frank's fantasy web. They are basically deflections and have nothing to do with the fact that Frank uses circular reasoning to support bizarre unsubstantiated claims - his method must be used to get good sound and his method is that which achieves good sound. He can do this with his favourite ghetto blaster. Given that, if memory serves and you are using very expensive and high-end gear such as the extreme server, Frank cannot reconcile his position with yours but he will strongly align himself with aspects of what you are saying and then "correct" you on how to achieve it.

 

Note how it serves the people who wish to disagree with me to serve up a 'perfect' example of a straw man fallacy, i.e., my "favourite ghetto blaster",

 

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... occurs when someone takes another person's argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making

 

Much easier to use this, then to refer to the original setup that delivered what I'm interested in, composed of audiophile approved brands - lazy debating techniques are the tools of the, er, ... 😉.

 

38 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

In my opinion, it has only been in the last decade or so that very high-end gear has been able to take a significant step further towards this goal. Indeed I have noted a trend some time back by reviewers being struck by this phenomenon. Instead of the ubiquitous "this gear was excellent, it sounds more analog" ...there started to appear comments like "this gear was excellent, it didn't sound digital or analog, it just sounded real". For many years the moniker "analog" was the pinnacle in achievement, a throwback to vinyl days and an acknowledgement of just how bad digital sound could be. All that has now changed.

 

Not really. It has been available for decades, but shortcomings in most of the products put out made it much harder to circumvent their issues. A general improvement in understanding of what is important has slowly built up, and now 'extreme' versions of the boxes get enough right in raw form to deliver, ahem, magic. Of course, this costs big bucks ... the less fortunate now have to wait until, at a molasses like rate, it trickles down ...

 

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26 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Hi Teresa. I have commented on this before and I think you are absolutely correct if I paraphrase by saying that "the Emperor has no clothes". As I have mentioned before this is twofold. If the vast majority of us listen to Franks audio system we would all be scratching our heads wondering how this guy could consider it a convincingly real rendering. He will describe in great detail what convincingly real means but it simply won't match what is on display, except in Frank's mind. Frank will very likely be the only one convinced that it sounds like real instruments in a real coffee shop or whatever. The corollary is that if Frank visits any members home with a high-end system he will only find flaws and scoff at the sound quality as "a typical ambitious rig". This is to be expected because it wouldn't sound like his modified ghetto blaster.

 

So I think the 'reality test' is interesting but in some ways it would serve no purpose other than to tell us what we already know.

 

There was an audio dealer here in this country who had a few high-end products. I and others visited his place a number of times and listened to the gear. His "thing" was to play music extremely loud, almost painfully loud, as a mark of "true audiophile quality". Nobody in the room got it and he came across as something of a crackpot. A good system will of course play lifelike sound intensity levels with consummate ease and at times you may not even be aware that the sound levels can be getting quite loud. But that's a very different proposition to blowing the roof off with every track. In an analogous way Frank is like this guy, with the kernel of some good ideas and part truths but twisted and distorted beyond reality.

 

 

Who does... Except maybe the "guy up the road" ? I still say the jury is out on that guy and I reckon when he sees Frank coming he is like the opening scenes to "everybody Loves Raymond" where Raymond is scrambling to lock all the doors and pretend he is not home to avoid unwelcome visitors!

I do believe that everyone about 'sounding real' are being honest, but the basis & method of the comparison is defective.   I mean, I work on audio stuff much of the time, day-in and day-out, and REALLY KNOW and understand how terribly defective most consumer materials are -- including even Telarc disks.

 

However, I KNOW for a fact, that even my sometimes improved results are NOT REAL SOUNDING.  I don't care if the material is being played on the best $10k speakers or $2k headphones, those devices CAN NOT do the correction from 20-40dB of compression common on most consumer materials!!

 

What material can possibly sound real with 20,30 and sometimes 40dB of compression in the 3k to 20+k frequency range?  Such material is the bulk of consumer available recordings.   (Much ABBA has 4 passes of DolbyA compression on it, staggered on multiple 10dB layers.)  Much other material has three such layers, some has two.   That is an evil amount of very fast compression -- on almost everything.  HOW REAL CAN THAT SOUND?   Maybe a persons' brain can do the expansion and corrections -- maybe that is what is happening, because the sound field is NOT very accurate at all.

 

The real answer to all of this is a lack of solid basis for comparison and the same wishful thinking that all of us have, but just maybe an overly optimistic case of such 'wishful thinking'.   I am kindly sypathetic to the confused misunderstanding, but certainly don't have time to entertain frustrated & reasoned explanation falling on 'deaf ears'.  I get screwed up with comparisons all of the time as my accurate aural memory is in the 7-12 second range, maybe some people have longer memory, but certainly not mcuh more than the 30seconds range.  After that, then emotional, psychological, and wetware limitations start prevailing.

 

I REALLY wish I could help.  The real solution to 'sounding real' is pretty d*mn detailed & complicated, and more than even I am willing to invest in.  I am the most persistent person that most of you know about, but even I know when to quit.  (I usually got the most difficult/crazy projects at Bell Labs, because they KNEW that if something could be done, I'd be persistent enough to do it.)  However, really sounding 'REAL' is a tall order.  I am fairly confident that a few people here have done it -- but VERY FEW.

 

John

 

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44 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Hi Teresa. I have commented on this before and I think you are absolutely correct if I paraphrase by saying that "the Emperor has no clothes". As I have mentioned before this is twofold. If the vast majority of us listen to Franks audio system we would all be scratching our heads wondering how this guy could consider it a convincingly real rendering. He will describe in great detail what convincingly real means but it simply won't match what is on display, except in Frank's mind. Frank will very likely be the only one convinced that it sounds like real instruments in a real coffee shop or whatever. The corollary is that if Frank visits any members home with a high-end system he will only find flaws and scoff at the sound quality as "a typical ambitious rig". This is to be expected because it wouldn't sound like his modified ghetto blaster.

 

Dear me, I'm mortally wounded ...

 

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So I think the 'reality test' is interesting but in some ways it would serve no purpose other than to tell us what we already know.

 

There was an audio dealer here in this country who had a few high-end products. I and others visited his place a number of times and listened to the gear. His "thing" was to play music extremely loud, almost painfully loud, as a mark of "true audiophile quality". Nobody in the room got it and he came across as something of a crackpot. A good system will of course play lifelike sound intensity levels with consummate ease and at times you may not even be aware that the sound levels can be getting quite loud. But that's a very different proposition to blowing the roof off with every track. In an analogous way Frank is like this guy, with the kernel of some good ideas and part truths but twisted and distorted beyond reality.

 

Yes, the bolded bit is exactly how it works ... very rare to come across a rig that can do such with essentially any recording you throw at it - I would suggest people take notes when it happens to them ... for later reference, 🙃.

 

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Who does... Except maybe the "guy up the road" ? I still say the jury is out on that guy and I reckon when he sees Frank coming he is like the opening scenes to "everybody Loves Raymond" where Raymond is scrambling to lock all the doors and pretend he is not home to avoid unwelcome visitors!

 

Trouble is, he rings me, and says "How about coming across this afternoon for a listen ... I've got some new things happening, I want your verdict!!" ... and I try and put him off, but he entices by saying "I'm cooking a 3 course meal to have when you're here; I went down especially to the shops to get some goodies - plenty of beer in the fridge ... how about it??" 🤪

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7 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

I do believe that everyone about 'sounding real' are being honest, but the basis & method of the comparison is defective.   I mean, I work on audio stuff much of the time, day-in and day-out, and REALLY KNOW and understand how terribly defective most consumer materials are -- including even Telarc disks.

 

However, I KNOW for a fact, that even my sometimes improved results are NOT REAL SOUNDING.  I don't care if the material is being played on the best $10k speakers or $2k headphones, those devices CAN NOT do the correction from 20-40dB of compression common on most consumer materials!!

 

What material can possibly sound real with 20,30 and sometimes 40dB of compression in the 3k to 20+k frequency range?  Such material is the bulk of consumer available recordings.   (Much ABBA has 4 passes of DolbyA compression on it, staggered on multiple 10dB layers.)  Much other material has three such layers, some has two.   That is an evil amount of very fast compression -- on almost everything.  HOW REAL CAN THAT SOUND?   Maybe a persons' brain can do the expansion and corrections -- maybe that is what is happening, because the sound field is NOT very accurate at all.

 

The real answer to all of this is a lack of solid basis for comparison and the same wishful thinking that all of us have, but just maybe an overly optimistic case of such 'wishful thinking'.   I am kindly sypathetic to the confused misunderstanding, but certainly don't have time to entertain frustrated & reasoned explanation falling on 'deaf ears'.  I get screwed up with comparisons all of the time as my accurate aural memory is in the 7-12 second range, maybe some people have longer memory, but certainly not mcuh more than the 30seconds range.  After that, then emotional, psychological, and wetware limitations start prevailing.

 

I REALLY wish I could help.  The real solution to 'sounding real' is pretty d*mn detailed & complicated, and more than even I am willing to invest in.  I am the most persistent person that most of you know about, but even I know when to quit.  (I usually got the most difficult/crazy projects at Bell Labs, because they KNEW that if something could be done, I'd be persistent enough to do it.)  However, really sounding 'REAL' is a tall order.  I am fairly confident that a few people here have done it -- but VERY FEW.

 

John

 

 

Hi John,

 

I agree that bad recordings cannot and will not sound convincingly real. Only Frank talks that kind of jibba jabba.I don't listen to ABBA .

 

There are decent recordings however and even some studio produced somewhat compressed material can be very enjoyable. Life is too short to only listen to perfect recordings, if one could find them. My point was simply that in my opinion over the last decade or so, high-end gear is getting closer to that goal of sounding convincingly real when fed decent material.

 

Sound Minds Mind Sound

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Teresa said:

 

 And no matter what you do to boom box speakers, or the tiny speakers in a lap top computer, both of which you praised after you sorted them, you will never get sonic realism out of them.

 

Yes boombox "The wide use of boomboxes in urban communities led to the boombox being coined a "ghetto blaster", so no "strawman fallacy" here, just Frank's backpedalling jibba jabba.

 

 

5 minutes ago, Teresa said:

 

I own a Yamaha Blu-ray / SACD player with sounds very realistic in my audio system and it had only a retail price of $330. I paid less. I would never delude myself in believing that it sounds as realistic as a $17,000 Playback Designs SACD player. I know I've heard one. Also I would never delude myself into believing that my floor standing Infinity Kappa 7 speakers sound more realistic than a $40,000 speaker system. I have heard many great sounding high-end systems and your trashing them I find highly offensive.

 

 

1+

Sound Minds Mind Sound

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Teresa said:

 

I, like nearly all audiophiles want to reproduce what is on the recording (both the good and bad) and an audio system which gets out of the way, reproduces what the microphones actually captured, nothing more, nothing less. But there is a limit on how cheaply something can be made and still sound realistic. And no matter what you do to boom box speakers, or the tiny speakers in a lap top computer, both of which you praised after you sorted them, you will never get sonic realism out of them.

 

You're doing the straw man dance too, Teresa - where have I said I can get "sonic realism" out of "tiny speakers in a lap top computer"? Yes, there's a limit to how cheaply "something can be made and still sound realistic", but once one reaches the limit of what a part is inherently capable of, you don't try and push it further. I'm also fascinated by the need of people to portray NAD gear as being of boom box quality, and as for the speakers, if I held up both the original B&W mid/bass drivers, and the Sharp equivalent, the number of people who would guess wrong which was which, would be interesting ... 😉.

 

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I own a Yamaha Blu-ray / SACD player with sounds very realistic in my audio system and it had only a retail price of $330. I paid less. I would never delude myself in believing that it sounds as realistic as a $17,000 Playback Designs SACD player. I know I've heard one. Also I would never delude myself into believing that my floor standing Infinity Kappa 7 speakers sound more realistic than a $40,000 speaker system. I have heard many great sounding high-end systems and your trashing them I find highly offensive.

 

What I find offensive are high-end systems which are way less than great sounding - for the money ... I don't trash them - I note that they produce defective sound, and wonder how the owner, etc, managed to get them to such a parlous state 🙂.

 

 

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52 minutes ago, fas42 said:

the original setup that delivered what I'm interested in, composed of audiophile approved brands

 

Another example of backpedalling jibber Jabber. If you used audiophile approved brands you would get good results as expected whether you "sorted them" or not. Now you are trying to disassociate yourself from your claims of sorting your favorite modified ghetto blaster boomboxes. Perhaps the Emperor is feeling a little cold, wearing no clothes🤣

Sound Minds Mind Sound

 

 

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