Personal Introductions: Please Make This a Sticky!

[gusi]

I started with hifi in the 70s as a teenager with hand me down tube radios. I wish I still had those old beast but since have moved on to a Naim/Linn system.

In my 9-5 life I work in industrial automation and have been a UNIX fan since first exposed to it in the mid 80s.

The combination led to an instant attraction to the Squeezebox and its open source software.

In making hifi decisions I prefer AB dems vs measurements. While you can measure all sorts of things like SNR, jitter, and harmonic distortion you can't measure if something will sound good.

Having said that it is often not possible to dem all the items you'd like and I have bought quite a few things blind.

My background in electronics is purely academic, I am useless with a soldering iron and my 41Hz kits remain unassembled.

Current system SB3/DAC1, CDX, LP12/P75 into a 52/250/briks.

[jmourik]

Allrighty, here we go then...
I'm a Dutch guy living in the US, my name is jan. I'm an Oracle DBA, and ride a Yamaha FZ1 (with Holeshot pipe and Ivan's jet kit) when the weather is nice :-)

The first single I bought was "Ob la di ob la da" from the Marmalade. Yes, really. Got into music more seriously when I was in high school. Hanging out with friends, that's what we did mostly, listen to music. I started buying audio gear once I got a temp job, stuff like Akai at first, then Kenwood, Infinity speakers. Then when I was 18 I met a guy who build his own speakers, I thought that was neat, so I build some myself too. Big transmission lines, two, the size of a nice bookshelf, 6 feet high :-) Simple design, lots of bass for sure! But I'm not too handy, so they looked like crap and, years later, had to go due to WAF, well, GAF to be exact.
That's when the Mission speakers were bought, the 753. They survived until this fall, to make space for the B&W 803. The SB2 has been in my system for a while, spent a lot of time in the bedroom, but is now playing in the living room until the sb4 with AKM dac is introduced...

The SB2 is connected with Blue Jeans LC1 interconnects to my Denon avr4800, from there through the pre-out to the Rotel RB1090, also with LC1. The RB1090 uses Blue Jeans Belden 5T00UP to the B&Ws. For home theater I use the Oppo 971, and the Denon, to Denon center and surround speakers.

I'm fooling around with the interconnects and speaker placement at the moment. I'm also reading up on room correction, so expect some questions about that soon! AC conditioning is also high on the list to try out...

No idea what my audio philosophy is. Just trying to have some fun here, to get some good sound going, without driving the wife mad :-) I'm willing to try most anything, as long as it's reasonably priced!
This forum is fun to read and a great place to read up on all kinds of hifi stuff and ask questions. It's always fun to hear contrasting ideas and opinions! I even enjoy the flame wars. Hey, it's all in good fun right! Personally, I don't really care if somebody flames me, really, why bother! That person might be some 8 year old having fun pissing people off, so for me it's water off a duck's back! Don't take it all too seriously!

Well, that's about it. If you read this far, thanks :-)

jan

PS. Favorite music: Steely Dan, Talking Heads, The Police, ABC, Heaven 17, Andrea Bocelli, Doe Maar, Pet Shop Boys, U2, The Cure, Donald Fagen, Joe Jackson, Nina Hagen, Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre...

PS2. Favorite quote:

All is vain!
This morning, a healthy friend;
This evening, a wisp of cremation smoke.

Ikkyu

PS3. Favorite blog: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/ Gotto to love it, with sentences like this: "The man took one look at capitalism and beat it like a 14-year old boy with unrestricted Internet access."

PS4. Favorite books: Hardcore Zen : Punk Rock, Monster Movies, & the Truth about Reality by Brad Warner
The Garden : Geshe Michael Roach

[empty99]

Lemme see, hmmm...It was 1966, I was like 7 or 8 yrs old, living in Vietnam. Money was tight, my dad has a Philips tubed reel to reel, I still remember waiting for the power gauge to turn green before cranking it to Play. Not satisfied with it's 2x6 built-in mono speaker, my brother and I took it out of the player, crawled under our dad's wooden desk, emptied out the biggest compartment and spent days turning it into a speaker enclosure, we just wanted some bass badly from that little driver. And bass it did, real nice warm tubey sound! Next come treble, we wanted some treble. My brother got a hold of a microphone, he took the thing apart and lo and behold, there was a nice delicate dome membrane there with fine coil around its diameter. He put a signal to it and whoa...TREBLE! Fine fine treble but it needed a flared cone to bring the level up to par with the other driver. To really be in the sweet spot, we were both crouching under that desk listening...
Other equipments came and went...A tubed mono amp that glowed so hot it split open a ceramic capacitor, Soundesign stereo/turntable AM/FM that we listened to Xmas and New Year Top 50 hits countdown from one of the US Army radio stations, we were just glued to it during this time. A Sony TC-366 reel-to-reel with the unique sloped front, sounds great but mechanically fragile, and those damn slipping belts...Ahh, next come Sony Cassette deck (still carry Scott brand). Huge Sansui then Fisher, Pioneer, Marantz receivers driving Pioneer speakers with elaborate wooden grills, remember those?. We spent ALL our money on stereo gears! Then came Advent speakers, wow what sounds, then those JBL with “chocolate bar” front grills, hey American speakers really kick ass we all felt.
Bobbing on the boat to Thailand a year after the war, I think it was 1976, the only thing on my mind was IF I made it to America, am gonna git myself a huge stereo system AND JBL L100 speakers, the thought kept me warm and fuzzy thru the whole ordeal...
Forward to 1980, Sansui AU-717 integrated and ESS Heil air motion speakers and Technics turntables, and those wild college parties…
I was a pest at the local hifi shop, bugging them EVERY wkends, borrowing equipments home. One of which was a pair of Bang&Olufsen bookshelf. Now, these sounded quite different from my kick ass ESS, warmer yet full of inner detail, smooth…and I started to wonder about my choice and taste in speakers. During this time, I was saving every dollar for those TDK high bias tape, like $5 EACH And I was making 2.35 an hour! I spent hours tweaking the azimuth record head on the Sony cassette deck, not really satisfied with its playback quality…
In 1985, owning our home with a decent listening room, I got a pair of B&W DM110, 200W/c Nikko amp, a first on the block with a Sharp vertical loading CD player (which lasted 6 mos and the local Tower Records in Portland Oregon has 3 CD titles $24.99 each!) wow, no more hand washing LPs!
In 1986, I made myself a passive volume pot from Radio Shack part and thought it sounded clearer than my preamp (an NAD) but the L/R level tracking was off. The hunt was on for some better pot out there continue even today for me…
I made my own IC out of either RG59/RG6 Belden solid core coax cables and goldplated connectors from Part Express, solder them wherever possible, Home Depot 12 gauge Monster cable for speakers. I spent no more than $100 total for wires and interconnects in last 30 years.
I bought the cute looking Roku 1001 last Christmas and had a hard time liking the sound, which was both hissy and I doubt very much it was bit-perfect digitally, I had to return it. Then came the SB3, wow, now this thing is clean sounding and has a cool bouncy on screen menu. I am hooked!
I have about 200 GB of WAV files and backup to external HD. I do not want to re rip these…They are extracted from 500 CDs! I also have about 50 SACDs that I haven’t listened to much, the SB3 totally spoiled me and I felt that it is the best thing ever happened to an audio geek like me.
My current setup:
SB3>Musical Fidelity A3.24>Alps 50Kohms pot>2 Nakamichi PA7s>B&W 802 Nautilus>Nice!
Updated 11/29/2010:
SB3->Benchmark DAC1 HDR->Mogami XLR->Pass Labs X250->cheap Romex->B&W 802N->Nicer!

[CardinalFang]

1. You post about your music experience, your audio experience, what drives you in this hobby, what brings you to Slim Devices, etc.

I'm not aaudio engineer or anything like that, although I have a degree in Applied Physics and have studied acoustics and solid state physics. My first job was actually in electronics, but now I'm a CTO of a new company developing consumer products (not competing with Slim by the way!) I know a fair bit about embedded software, 3D and multimedia as well as Internet site development. I also used to do robotics and games.

I was into music from my teens and have a pretty decent collection of singles and LPs from the 70's to show for it (Sex Pistols on EMI, early Stiff and of course the obligitory Iggy and New York Dolls LPs.) I also used to be a bit of a plank spanker, although I stupidly sold my Strat in the 70's to buy a HiFi - sorry to all your audiophiles out there, but it was a bad swap. I picked up guitar again about five years ago and now have a couple of electrics (Suhr, Gibson) and an acoustic.

I got a SB2 after a recommendation and getting fed up with all those CD cases lying around the place. I don't see that mentioned often on these forums, the sound is great, but it also clears up a whole load of mess from the listening area.

2. You post about your current, past, and future (hopefully!) rigs. Discuss your room, speaker placement, cables, whatever.

My gear reflects a fairly simple approach to HiFi, no fancy cable, classic looks and a neutral performance. I have a Pink Triangle turntable which I bought new in 1978, Copland CD and hybrid Amp and currently running some old Rega speakers - they're next for an upgrade, hopefully to some Anthony Gallo's. Prior to that I had Naim Nait 2 (actually I still have it) and a Transcriptors deck, looked wonderful, but the PT was so much better sounding.

3. Say something about your audio philosophy. For example, do you believe in blind testing or not? Why?

Never bothered with blind testing for my own choices - if it sounds good to me, that's all I care about. I like to compare gear with my own fave test CDs, currently they are "Vaughan Browsers - Family Style", "Persuasions - Man, oh Man", "Yello - Stella" and "Eric Bibb - Spirit and the Blues". I've just added a new one to the list "Rodrigo y Gabriella", some Mexican thrash metal flamenco.

Where I do believe blind testing has a place is proper reviewing, as do measurements as they usually provide evidence for what is heard. My reason is simply that those people have the power to influence people's purchases and therefore should accept the responsibility to carry out thorough evaluation of technology.

My view on modders is that they definitely have a place, although some of the pseudo science seriously detracts from the credibility of the scene and I personally have some qualms about after market changes affecting long term safety of products (I would doubt that many of the small concerns have got the means or facilities to do long terms soak testing or critical electrical safety testing).

For your own home, just buy what you like.

4. Say something about what brings you to the forum and what you hope to get out of it.

I came here to learn about the SB from real users before buying it, now I stay here because I enjoy chewing the fat with interesting people. I'd love a transporter, I don't care much for the looks, but it is the best component out there for networked music playback. If only it had a better remote!

[radish]

I'm Adam...(Why does sound like the beginning of an AA meeting?)... I'm an ex-pat brit living just outside New York. I'm a programmer by trade and it's fair to say my life pretty much revolves around technology of one sort or another. I actually recently worked out I've been programming for 24 years, 16 of those professionally - which is pretty good going since I just turned 31. Luckily I have a very tolerant fiance who puts up with all the gadgets provided every so often one of them is pink and has her name on

1. You post about your music experience, your audio experience, what drives you in this hobby, what brings you to Slim Devices, etc.

Tech-lust also permeates into my musical tastes which are squarely centered around dance & electronica, my 1000+ CD collection is easily 70% in those genres. As a part-time DJ in London a couple of years ago I also acquired a decent pile of vinyl (which is a real bugger to ship trans-atlantic!). Just to be different I also know my way around a clarinet and have dabbled in writing & production (but with no results really worth listening to).

I found SD while looking for something to replace my old Audiotron. The combination of the original Squeezebox and the philosophy of the company won me over, I've bought every product they've made ever since.

2. You post about your current, past, and future (hopefully!) rigs. Discuss your room, speaker placement, cables, whatever.

I know right away I don't fit into the audiophile bracket, but that's fine with me. My main system is for 2-channel and 5.1 and consists of:

Transporter
Marantz SR-6200
Polk RTi 10 Floorstanders
Polk CSi 5 Center
Polk PSW 10 Sub
Mission Surrounds

All hooked up with a mixture of Cambridge Audio and Audio Research cables. Speaker placement is a definite problem, but as it's the lounge practicalities (and WAF) come into play.

I also have an SB2 hooked up to Swan M200's in the bedroom and an SB3 in my office/studio hooked into my DJ rig (1210's, mixer, Mission bookshelf speakers, Korg midi controllers & PC running Ableton Live & Serato Scratch).

3. Say something about your audio philosophy. For example, do you believe in blind testing or not? Why?

Human ears, like our other senses, simply aren't very good. Pick any one of them and there's going to be some tiny animal or insect which has us beat hands down. What makes us unique is our brain and the way it's able to interpret the data it gets and make sense of it. Thus, whatever we perceive is as much imagination as it is reality - particularly when it comes down to the fine detail at the limit of our range. To me it's a matter of scientific fact that we have meters and sensors which are orders of magnitude more capable than those we have attached to our heads, and to suggest that we can hear (or see, or touch, or smell) something we can't measure is absurd. The key is whether we know what to measure and how to interpret those measurements, and of course in many cases we do not.

In general I'm a very "live and let live" kind of guy, what someone else spends their money on is their business. But, one thing which really gets me going is people intentionally using non-science and mumbo jumbo to trick people. When I was recently buying a HD video switcher I went for one from a company who demonstrated, via scope traces, that their product introduced less noise and artifacts than the competition. It's the same for audio, if you think you've done something special prove it - don't just ask me to close my eyes and believe.

4. Say something about what brings you to the forum and what you hope to get out of it.

A bookmark brought me here, and one day I hope to get out of it

[pjdowns]

Well errm, here I am,

My name is Paul, I am shortly going to be getting married to the nicest girl I have ever met (Christina) and I work as a IT Engineer.

I live in England and have an avid interst in Hifi and Music. My system comprises of

Naim CDI (CD Player)
Sony ST-505ES (Tuner)
Slim Devices Squeezebox 2
Exposure XVII (Pre-Amp)
Exposure XVIII (Power Amp) (Hi Frequencies - Bi Amp'd)
Exposure XVIII (Power Amp) (Low Frequencies - Bi Amp'd)
Rega Ear (Headphone Amp)
Epos ES14 + Dedicated Stands (Main Loudspeakers)
Epos ELS3C (Centre Speaker)
Epos ELS3's (Rear Speakers)
Yamaha DSP-E800 (Prologic Amp thingy)
Panasonic 32 Inch Widescreen telly --- Want Plasma
Pioneer DV-575A (DVD Player)
Chord and Cable Talk Interconnects
Cable Talk and QED speaker cables
Merlin Power Cables
TCI 6 Way Power Block

I have been intersted in Hifi and music for as long as I can remember, my Dad is also a massive follower so I picked up some of his old equipment as time went along and it sort of continued from there really.

I have only recently got into the MP3 etc scene when I got a IPOD about a year ago. I was so impressed with the idea and then came that fateful day when I was invited over to a friend of mines. He had recently bought a new box of tricks and wanted to show it off. He said something about a Squeezebox, a squeeze what ?. So I went along and oh my life. I was sooo impressed with the little gadget. Not only was it a cool little toy, but it was also Wireless and the sound quality was not at all bad. I went home and got he usual NO from er indoors. But in the end after, well about 6 months of bugging her, she offered to buy me a Squeezebox for Christmas. Now I didn't want the 3 as it wouldn't fit in the hole in the Hifi rack and at the time they only made the Silver ones which wouldn't have worked in my all black system so I went looking on Ebay for a 2. I managed to get hold of one for a very reasonable price which is wired only which is fine as my computer is only in the next room to the Hifi, so was able to dig a hole in the wall to connect it up. After countless hours of converting the music over to AAC and waiting for Christmas Day to come, I now have the system up and running. Ok so the Squeezebox doesn't really measure up to the Naim CD player in quality of sound, but for ease of use, it is well up there and as I suppose the majority of my listening is done while doing other things, that is not a major problem, and it really is a great toy .

Well there is a little about myself.

Nice to meet everyone here !

Paul.

[Antipodes]

I just registered so here goes.

I bought a SB1 shortly after they were released and was totally taken by the experience. I had always been so so picky about sound quality, and here was a piece of equipment that transcended all that. No it didn't sound nearly as good as my CDP, but the difference it made to my musical enjoyment of my music collection was a revelation.

It took me a while to get good sound out of the SB1, and then along came the SB2 and the sound quality I could get out of that was suddenly in the ballpark (with mods and an outboard DAC that is).

So I am here because I am totally sold on the Squeezebox concept.

Enjoyment of music of all kinds (so long as it is the best of that kind) is what I am about, but I also own an audio cable firm called Antipodes Audio here in New Zealand, selling cables starting at USD100 up to USD2000. All made with 99.99% pure gold and silver (no other metals), and all insulated with pure raw cotton and air.

I don't believe in heavy use of blind testing. Our cable designs were developed using bursts of many rapid experiments with subjective judgements. Conclusions were drawn from these, and then these conclusions were verified or refuted using blind testing. Blind testing never reversed any conclusions, but did cause us to decide certain conclusions were either not supportable or not material.

I have joined this forum mainly because I am hoping to find ways to get even more value out of my Squeezebox and maybe be convinced that my heavily modified SB and outboard DAC can be bettered by the Transporter.

[chiefersone]

I'm running my SB3 into an Adcom GTP600 preamp with a 6 zone amplifier and I enjoy perfectly clear, hum free music. I attempted a split of the RCA jacks onthe SB to send a signal downstairs to my basement and immediately upon plugging in the y RCA spiltter humming exists. Has anyone out there spit the RCA jacks without getting hum? If so tell me what cables you used please.

[pfarrell]

chiefersone wrote:
> I'm running my SB3 into an Adcom GTP600 preamp with a 6 zone amplifier
> and I enjoy perfectly clear, hum free music. I attempted a split of
> the RCA jacks onthe SB to send a signal downstairs to my basement and
> immediately upon plugging in the y RCA spiltter humming exists. Has
> anyone out there spit the RCA jacks without getting hum? If so tell me
> what cables you used please.

You have a ground loop.
Probably you are running your upstairs amp on a different circuit than
the downstairs one.

Cables won't fix it.

You could take the toslink output of your SB to one amp, and the RCA to
another, that will work if you have TOSLINK imput.

--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[chiefersone]

So I could toslink to my Adcom GTP600 upstairs and use the RCA outputs from the SB3 to my downstairs Denon receivervia my through the floor RCA interconnect cable? Is this what you are saying?
I just looked and I do not have a toslink on my Adcom, unit too old. Any other suggestions