photonman

Welcome to AS, a great place to get information. Don't sweat the speakers as Paradigm does not seem to get much respect in the audiophile world but I love the Be drivers. My old signature 6's only have the Be tweeter so I would be interested to hear how a full line up of Be drivers sounds. You are assembling an interesting setup.

Admittedly I am a sucker for a nice polished chassis and faceplate or the heavy-duty appearance with swiss watch type fasteners and hardware. I really dislike the generic black aluminum project box type cases some companies use. All my equipment tucks away out of sight though inside a night stand type piece of furniture.

Try VH Audio. He cators to the DIY crowd.

Spotify is one on the best for music discovery with their algorithms that track what we play and like and then present curated playlists based on that data. Many of us make concessions with music quality due to their excellent interface and features such as connect and a great selection of playlists to suit all tastes and moods. Amazon HD is trying to follow Spotify with their user specific playlists but they are not quite there yet. Amazon does have the CD quality and higher streams but honestly, I cannot tell the difference between Amazon and Spotify. The Ogg Vorbis that Spotify uses to compress the streams seems like a pretty good codec. Everytime I try divorcing myself from Spotify I run back to it. If you are not into music discovery and using their curated playlists, than the other services might be better suited expecially if you want the better quality streams. I just signed up for a month of Amazon thinking that when I know what album I want to hear, I would use Amazon to get the CD quality, but I somehow end up back on Spotify ($13 sunk).

What about the "dual-mono" single chassis amps out there, do they qualify as biamping too? Specifically if you have an amp with a seperate power supply and amp board for each channel but only one common mains connection, do you get the same benefits of bi-amping? Seems you would stay within KISS parameters.

Christmas Eve price drop to $275.

Only reason I wanted to change the power cord was for "something better" to get the most out of my amp. I lost control of my audiophilia I guess. I will find a normal generic plug and try that too. I did a lot of testing this morning with various configurations. With only amp plugged into power, all interconnects disconnected, all other devices unplugged from wall, the amp is fine. Plug in the dac (wall wart or the LPS made no difference) to power, connect dac to amp with IC's (shielded vs. non-shielded made no difference) the hum was back. Plugged amp with Wireworld into a ground cheater, still had hum. Plugged Qutest with wall wart to remove ground, still had hum. Powered the dac with a USB from my Mac, Mac running on battery, made no difference, it hummed. Wish I could of tested a balanced DAC with the balanced amp inputs. I am back to using the Isotek for the amp and the Wireworld for the LPS to the Qutest and this is fine. There really is nothing special about the Isotek whereas the WW touted shielding and being a "power conditioning" cord.

Okay so I plugged in a generic Baohing shielded 3 x 16 awg I had from some other computer or whatever and it is dead quiet too, just like the Isotek. So the problem is with the Wireworld. Wow, I would never had suspected that result but I will be contacting the dealer to see about getting a replacement. Either that or getting a refund and just running with the Baohing!

Both cables have ground pin intact. That is interesting how the Isotek specifically mentions RFI/EMI rejection which I did not even think about when I got the Wireworld. I am going to see if I can swap it out for another Isotek. Darn as the Wireworld is really nicely made. My interconnects are double shielded. Thanks for the replies.

So I purchased a Wireworld Electra power cord for my class D amplifier to replace my Isotek Premier one. I was looking for a larger gauge wire which was my only reason for changing. With the Isotek everything was black and dead silent with no music playing. I swapped in the Wireworld and there is a horrible hum. I am not sure if it is the 60 Hz or 120 Hz type but I am leaning toward 120 Hz. I swap the Isotek back in and everything is better. Why would the WW one cause that hum? Things I noticed: turning up volume had no effect on the hum level disconnecting the source had no effect on the hum swapping out different interconnects had no effect (DAC direct connected to amp)

Set the rules and enforce them with your proposed item 9. I would avoid too many rules that require granular management by yourself or your designees. Everyone here knows how to conduct themselves and should not need too many do's and do-not's. To help manage the site can you assign additional forum moderators (after an exhaustive selection process of course) perhaps from different world time zones so the site has good 7/24 moderator coverage so you don't wake up to site crisis.

Definitely not the face of Jesus since pizza was not invented yet. That is obviously the face of Juan Cabrillo.

These are in excellent condition with no visible scratches or blemishes. This half meter pair has the WBT 0114 locking connectors. Two strands of copper and one of pure silver for the signal. Price shipped via USPS anywhere in the USA is $300 (no paypal fees).

When they label that single malt with a hand written barrel number boldly marked, it sure does make it more special and taste better

That optical illusion is pretty cool as I had to get out my tape measure to confirm as at first sight I said "no way". The video is very interesting too and kind makes you question everything we ever heard or believed. I guess another subjectivist vs. measurementalist angle here.