kal
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Post by kal on Jul 23, 2022 7:43:27 GMT
trafford Make sure you keep the stylus guard on until you’re really ready to start fine tuning alignment. When you use a record to test use one that is the average thickness for all your records. As recommended before, if you are a bit obsessive about getting it set up right you should pick up the HiFi News Test Record. There’s millions of secondhand ones around because you only really use it once. It’s invaluable in really getting those fine tunes right, especially anti-skate which is the one that can really drive you mental when you’re listening to music. In terms of getting the tracking force right it depends a bit on your tone arm. Some have a weight indicator, some don’t. If you don’t have one you will need a scale of some sort but you don’t have to buy the fancy digital ones. The cheapo see-saw things are pretty decent in my experience. I also bought a cheap magnifying glass/Iight on a bendy arm light thing from Amazon which I found incredibly helpful for getting the cartridge alignment just right. It’s a simple task like you say but can also be incredibly frustrating as every adjustment affects everything else so you’re constantly doing the same loop. Be prepared to take your time with it. Walk away for a bit if you get frustrated. Again keep the stylus guard on whenever you can. And ultimately realise that there is no ‘perfect’. You’re looking for the best possible compromise.
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Post by trafford on Jul 23, 2022 9:56:14 GMT
Thanks chaps, there's some good advice there.
I have spent a decent chunk on vinyl to get me started but just might hold back on the phono until I can source a copy of that HiFi news record.
I do have a lone survivor from my teenage collection, The White Album, that I was going to use to calibrate, but that could be an outlier in regards depth of modern vinyl.
Fuck it, I'm gonna just take my time and go for it 👍
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kal
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Post by kal on Jul 23, 2022 11:28:50 GMT
To be honest the above advice is based on my experience of setting up some very finicky carts. Those Ortofans are pretty forgiving and I doubt you’ll go too far wrong. You can even replace the stylus easily and cheaply if you accidentally slam it as I have done.
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kal
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Post by kal on Jul 29, 2022 7:31:07 GMT
Finally made the leap and upgraded my PSUs. It’s really not a fun way to spend money but it was final weak link in my set up and had been bothering me for ages.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Jul 29, 2022 8:29:11 GMT
I think Im finally, after much fucking about, at 'end game'. I havent got the best of anything, in fact most of it is barely mid-tier, but Im happy with the sound and, most importantly, its *quiet*. Ive finally managed to mostly eliminate rumble, hum and hiss so I dont really want to touch it now.
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Post by trafford on Jul 29, 2022 15:10:00 GMT
I'm nearly a week into life with my new music system and very happy indeed.
Setting up the cartridge and calibration was okay. I was worried about messing up prescious vinyl but took the plunge in the end and it sounds great.
Oddly enough, a couple of discs jump at certain points, they are all brand new.
Most are fine though and I can't be bothered looking at returns.
Do people actually do that?
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kal
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Post by kal on Jul 29, 2022 15:11:41 GMT
I return records that are properly warped but the odd minor tick I don’t bother.
If you’re finding records skipping you might consider increasing the tracking force just a hair. You might have it a little off.
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Post by quadfather on Jul 29, 2022 17:23:05 GMT
Yeah was just about to say, make sure your tracking force is right. Had that a few times
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Post by quadfather on Jul 29, 2022 17:26:04 GMT
I haven't upgraded anything in a long time thinking about it. Still got a marantz mid range amp, and a marantz cd player (not intentionally same brand, just what I could get at the time), and a pair of 1210s. But I've removed one of them as the mixer was a bit of a bottleneck. And some eltax floorstanders. Again, nothing special. But I just keeps belting out quality so for once, I'm not going to interfere until something goes pop!
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Jul 29, 2022 19:26:58 GMT
For me, 100% the most difficult thing about getting into vinyl was knowing when it’s a bad pressing and to give up on it.
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Post by quadfather on Jul 31, 2022 10:53:34 GMT
After listening to it for a while I came to the following conclusions-
1) older vinyl is a mixed bag, but it's the older stuff that has the decent pressings amongst the turds.
2) stuff from mid/late 80s can be crap as all the focus was on cds then.
3) late 90s onwards is another mixed bag again.
4) brand new stuff today is starting to get a bit better again
It doesn't seem to be an exact science though
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 10, 2022 16:14:28 GMT
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mrpon
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Post by mrpon on Aug 10, 2022 16:16:43 GMT
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 10, 2022 16:18:43 GMT
Thanks dude.
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Post by ryder35 on Aug 10, 2022 16:20:30 GMT
I havbe a couple of their one steps that it turns out are from DSD. Not happy with the deception but they still sound great!
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 10, 2022 16:24:29 GMT
I never bought any one-steps but I have plenty of normal Mofi records. I haven’t checked to see if they come from DSD yet. Yes, the deception is outrageous. But yes, they sound fantastic so perhaps it doesn’t matter. It’s kind of hard to know how to feel about it.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Aug 10, 2022 16:41:16 GMT
Yeah, a few YouTube channels I follow have been going pretty hard on this. Most of them have cancelled all of their pre-orders and one has pivoted to only doing A-B comparison reviews rather than reviewing them standalone.
It is really shitty and obviously deceptive practice. It also blows a big, fat hole in ‘our runs are limited and super expensive because we don’t want to kill the tapes’. The source is, effectively, digital, you can make infinite, cheap copies if you want.
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 10, 2022 16:52:32 GMT
I was seriously considering getting the upcoming Thriller one step, but I’d feel like an idiot getting it now. I wonder if the price will come down. It could/should honestly be the end of Mofi. It’s awful.
Be interesting to see if Analogue Productions have been doing something similar or whether they really are legit.
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 10, 2022 16:54:51 GMT
Haha there’s an 800 page thread on Steven Hoffman about it all. That’s my evening sorted.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Aug 10, 2022 17:28:28 GMT
I was seriously considering getting the upcoming Thriller one step, but I’d feel like an idiot getting it now. I wonder if the price will come down. It could/should honestly be the end of Mofi. It’s awful. This is why that guy is doing A-Bs. £100 is bonkers for a dsd sourced re-issue when you can pick up an original 1982 copy for less, so he is going to be comparing pressings to see if it’s even remotely worth it. It’s crazy. A hundred quid for an artificially limited run of something sourced from a digital file. |
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 10, 2022 18:31:58 GMT
The thing is, their records sound amazing. Whatever they’re doing, it’s not just an average pressing. And the one step pressings are genuinely one step pressings and justify a high price for that. It’s just the dishonesty that sucks, and it casts doubt on other claims they make (such as whether they are truly one step pressings).
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Aug 10, 2022 19:15:44 GMT
Yeah, the digital aspect doesn’t really worry me. Good is good. I’m more of a ‘vinyl as a meditative process’ kind of person.
It’s just very sharp business practice. Buying records is enough of a MIMO pain in the arse already.
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 11, 2022 10:43:46 GMT
Does anybody happen to have, or know of, some sort of cheap but effective device that give AirPlay functionality to a hifi set up?
Essentially something like a Chromecast Audio but for Apple devices.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Aug 11, 2022 11:02:44 GMT
Wiim mini does airplay
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 11, 2022 11:21:16 GMT
Thanks that looks good. Also fuck Apple for making iTunes lossless but making it virtually impossible to benefit from it in nearly every single possible real world scenario. |
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Post by gamingdave on Aug 11, 2022 11:44:11 GMT
If it sounds good, it sounds good. Very dishonest to say it's 100% in the analogue domain, and they should rightly get grief for it. But there must be a lot of egg on the faces of those claiming to have golden ears right now.
I love vinyl for many reasons but if you have a decent enough DAC, then having the DSD file used to make the vinyl is surely the better option if you really want the best sound possible.
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mrharvest
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Post by mrharvest on Aug 11, 2022 15:07:53 GMT
Do you even need a DAC for turning DSD into analog? Just stream those bits into a low pass filter and you end up with an analog signal.
It's the ADC that makes DSD difficult.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Aug 15, 2022 8:47:31 GMT
Its become big enough for Fantano to cover
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kal
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Post by kal on Aug 15, 2022 10:45:16 GMT
Having done a lot more reading on it, it sounds like it’s not quite as bad as everyone first thought, and it’s very likely all the other high end vinyl brands do something similar.
I’ve never paid massively over the odds for any Mofi so I’m not too arsed, and again, whatever they’re doing works as their pressings sound phenomenal which is all that really matters.
That said I do have the Triller one step preordered. It was going to be my first one step as it’s an all time favourite album and anything Bernie Grundman mastered is a bit special. I was really excited to get this but the shine has been well taken off. I’m also worried the news will harm the resale value which was always a bonus of getting these things.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Aug 15, 2022 11:36:41 GMT
I was having a browse through the steve hoffman forums yesterday and the resale value of.... I cant remember.. but it sold for slightly more than it did before the news broke, so it seems resale is unaffected. And fantano does make a good point. Because there are no real standards for this kind of thing, people or companies can say what they like.
Thriller is a weird one. Because it was so gigantic you can still get the original and what seems to be considered one of the best pressings for like 20 quid.
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