Misc – Tao and Zen

Wednesday, April 30th 2025…audio update…

So, last night, I busted out some sweet new speaker grills and replaced the battered and bruised ones on my HPM-100’s. The new ones are Olive in color, and although they don’t look designer – they look awesome. I think I may get 2 more pairs. I was thinking of sending my old ones in to get reclothed in the standard black fabric and order a new pair of orange, like JBL used on their 100’s back in the day. I moved my Sony disk changer and the Nak over to the stack – which is getting quite high, I might add. I have to wait for some new cables before I can hook everything up. I think I will probably also move the Vault down there. It’s nice to have upstairs, but I think I am going to grab a Node or some other streamer. I’m debating if I am going to stick with BlueSound. I used to have a crapload of mini-disks and now I can’t find them. I’ll have to put some pix up tomorrow.

I got some cables delivered this morning – my wife says, “you got more cables?” I said, “cables to an audio guy are like saws to a carpenter…”

-Rat

Monday, April 28th 2025… never a dull moment…

<<Updates…>> You know, you’d think that after I grabbed my Pioneer HPM 100 Speakers, I’d be listening to them nonstop. You’d be wrong. I haven’t made any time for it << I made time for it, this weekend>>. They have been sitting there for 3 weeks. Which for me is very bizarre. I ordered some speaker stands that would support these behemoths. They were just sitting there on the floor looking at me with their unloaded speaker stands (so, I actually put them on, on Friday afternoon). Tonight, when I get home, I think that I am going to pair a Carver CT-3 preamp together with one of the Carver TFM-25 amps and attach the NAD M-50 stack, the Sony 400 disk DVP-CX995V disk changer, a Nakamichi RX-505 tape deck, and an ADC SS-315 EQ. << So, I set the components up on a small roller cabinet >> This will allow me to test several things – first, does my TFM 25 really have a bad channel or is it the receiver that has a bad preamp out? <<As it turns out – the receiver is starting to go bad, and the amp is still kicking ass!>> What is the best way to hook up the NAD streamer stack to the preamp? <<Didn’t connect the streamer stack because I would need to run ethernet and I was feeling lazy>> Also, what are the best ways to utilize my equalizer, DVD/CD changer and my tape deck? Do I throw a mini-disk recorder into the mix – I love my mini-disks! <<Also, I didn’t connect the Sony or the Nak yet. However, I did connect the mini disk recorder and the EQ>>

I will say a couple of things – the Pioneer speakers sound sweet – especially if you are sitting in the sweet spot. Off axis, I was unimpressed. Unless you are way off axis – like upstairs. They are as clear as a bell. I was listening to Wynton Marsalis Standard Time Vol 1, Vol 2, Journey – Escape, George Michael – Faith, and Deep Forest – Boheme. Nice separation, range, clarity, and punch. The base is not sloppy, the upper midrange frequencies were clear, the highs were ringing without causing fatigue. The equalizer helps with some of the recording deficiencies. Mini disks rock! Ill connect the CD/DVD changer and see what I think tonight.

-Rat

Monday, April 14th 2025…

AXPONA was an experience to behold. As far as the conference was concerned, there was a lot going on -a large hall that housed local guys doing sales of vintage audio and consignment, vintage repair services, ultrasonic vinyl cleaning machines, cable sales, record sales, and various vendors. There was a hall that was purely headphones and headphone/turntable preamps and also a hall devoted to car audio. In addition, there were lots of listening/reviewing rooms on the first 4 floors with dealers, components, and their accompanying speakers, and in addition there was 12 floors of listening rooms for audio.

There were 2 pair of speakers really stood out above all the rest. One was the Avantgarde Mezzo speakers, and the others were the MBL Speakers. These 2 needed nothing in my estimation. I sat in the “sweet” spot area of almost all the speakers when I was listening. Some had interesting experiences with imaging, separation, range and clarity. Some speakers were better than others. Some sonic ranges were better than others – some, you’d definitely need an equalizer. Some you’d need to augment with a sub.

Everything else were varying degrees of ho-hum. That said… there were 2 other standouts from the pack – a pair of bookshelf speakers that sounded better than most floor speakers – Elac (the company name) that made a pair of bookshelf speakers that I understood to be less than 1k$ and they had a better range than most of what I heard – both bookshelf ad floor standing. I will have to find out what the others were, but they were floor standers and while they didn’t impress me by sight, suffice it to say that their sound really impressed me. Thankfully, I actually know the sales guy (well, my buddy Joe does).

-Rat

Friday, April 11th 2025… add another one…

Today AXPONA starts and I will be attending tomorrow with my buddy Joe. We have been friends since sophomore year in high school. Which is saying “an effing’ long time”. I am looking forward to seeing/hearing some of the more highly exotic and esoteric speakers this weekend. Maybe I’ll see my other friend “Joe the dentist” there. He apparently purchased some crazy expensive speakers, but I haven’t been over to his abode to check them out yet. I am sure I will see a lot of “snake oil” salesman at this show. It really doesn’t matter what you spend on audio, you like what you like. I remember in college, we had 2 guys (Tom and I) whose rooms backed up to each other and another guy on the floor who spent some big dollar amounts on audio equipment. The guy whose audio cost a lot (I can’t remember his name) never sounded well – his amp was so big that he kept damaging his speakers and they would rattle and hum (sounded like shit). And we used to have stereo wars. Tom and I both had good setups with better than average speakers. However, Tom’s speakers were highly efficient, and he could mop up the floor with me. Needless to say, I never won stereo wars – my speakers while having a better range and separation (imaging) were not even close to the efficiency of his speakers. I would have had to have a 1000-watt (RMS) amp to even begin to compete and probably would have blown out my speakers. He had rock and roll speakers, and I had classical music speakers. His were about beating you over the head and mine were about inserting the knife. His had horn tweeters and mine had a beryllium ribbon tweeter. His had no midrange – the horn did double duty, mine had a boron coated midrange, we both had woofers – his was a paper cone with a passive radiator on the back, mine was a polymer woofer. The difference was really efficiency – his was 90dB efficient and mine was 86dB efficient. Which as a physics major and understanding electronics, I should have figured it out. For every 10 dB in volume rise, I would have to double the power. Meaning if we start at 1 watt – mine would produce sonics that would measure 86dB. In order for me to get to the next dB, I would have to turn it up to 10watts. 87dB? – 20 watts would net me 88dB?

-Rat

Tuesday, March 11th 2025…Updating the update…

So, as it turns out – both my front and rear brakes needed to be done to the tune of $$$ – ouch! Also, as it turns out the fronts had 2mm left which is next to nothing since they start at approximately 15mm. Better to have them replaced before you need to turn the rotors. Turning the rotors is the process of machining them down (refacing to prevent uneven wear) so that there are no grooves or bumps (needed to be smooth). You can typically only have them turned once or maybe twice if not too bad, and then they need to be replaced. The backs were kind of bad but they are drum brakes, so they are a bit more forgiving. They also needed to be replaced (pads) but it was before I did damage to them (whew!). Better to be safe than sorry.

Still listening to the adventures of Skippy and Joe on Audible and still reading book one of the Legends of Dune series. On Saturday, we got different battery powered sconces (from Costco), so I returned the Amazon purchases (the ones with the morphydite bulbs).

Anne’s family came over on Sunday and Mo and I went for a walk to Catalina grove over by the bike path and back (approx. 3.5mi). I think this weekend I might take the covers off the patio furniture and put the pallets away – and bust out the fire table. I still need to pack up the amp and tweeters send them out for repair. I added my Jetpack subscription to my main website, and it seems to be coming along (and yeah, this was kind of a brain dump).

-Rat

Friday, March 7th 2025…what’s up?…

What the hell am I doing these days?

I’m sitting at the dealer getting my breaks fixed. Hopefully it won’t be too financially painful 🙂

On the audible front, I’m listening to a Craig Alanson book called “Task Force Hammer”- read by R.C. Bray. It’s book 17 in the Expeditionary Force” series. It’s a fun read/listen (entertaining) about a wacky AI and a semi-dysfunctional human set out to save the galaxy. Its sci-fi/action/comedy series that’s wash-rinse-repeat. But every time the author ended or thought he ended the series – his fans wouldn’t let him rest unless he wrote another book (at least that’s what I think). Also, I would get sad knowing the series was ended. But now he just keeps on going :).

On the book front, I am reading “The Butlerian Jihad” which is “Book One of the Legends of Dune”. I am on the second read of this book. The first time I read it was sometime back in approximately 2008. The Dune series are really cool and forward thinking. I have no idea where he came up with this stuff. Herbert and Anderson were/are really great writers.

On the home front, we ordered battery powered sconces for the front room, which is different. No wiring, what a concept. I’ll install them this weekend. The only problem that I can see is that the bulb is an LED and a one-of-a-kind type (thanks China) and cannot be replaced on Amazon.

I am limping along in Duo Lingo in Russian. I want to go back and start brushing up in Swedish. I really haven’t done anything in Music which is a bummer.

Most of my spare time has been spent in burning CD’s and when it’s not that, I’m fixing one of my audio things (lately I’m listening to Tate McRae), or treadmilling it, or going the gym, or cleaning, or doing laundry, or fixing a meal or life in general.

-Rat

Monday, March 3rd 2025…ugh…

So, I’m happily burning CDs on Friday, and I go downstairs to find a box and start packing up my tweeters to send for refurbishment, and I put on some music… I hear that one of my channels is out on the amp (TFM-25). Well, I see it occasionally trying, so I turn off that amp, and listen to one of the others. Figuring that I will look into it tomorrow (Saturday). Oh, and buy the way, I can’t get the powered Klipsch sub to work with the Klipsch speakers upstairs on the Pioneer SC-07 receiver. I don’t think it’s anything except that I can’t use a preamp sub RCA out connection with the speakers functioning off the regular amp. I guess it’s just me not understanding the limits of the receiver. I may have to ditch the Pioneer for an old-school 60W Yamaha receiver with way less options. I don’t really need all the “bells and whistles” with all that power anyway. However, now I have to send the TFM-25 in for service early. I was going to do it anyway, but now I have to do it sooner rather than later. I think I’m going to get the “Cadillac” refresh on this first one so I can see what all the mods are up to. It’s the one amp that I use the most – it powers the Ohms downstairs.

-Rat

Thursday, February 27th 2025…Can’t wait!…

So, when I get home today, I am going to do 2 things – first, replace my Energy 22 Reference tweeter (I just got an extra one used via eBay) and second, pack up my other tweeters and get them ready to ship off to the guy who will recondition them. And while I’m doing that listen to some music. I need to treadmill it and sling some weights around – I have MEPS to get! (flipping MyZone). I am also doing a class centered on electronic circuits – it’s funny how much stuff I forgot. Also, it’s kind of interesting using this software called Tinkercad that can do some of the circuit analysis – it’s all virtual! It kind of floors me – yeah, I know that I should expect things like this, but I remember doing all this stuff by hand – meaning with pencil and paper. My original electronics teacher from COD was an engineer at Bell Labs and was on one of the teams that worked on a part the development of the integrated semiconductor. He was probably in his 70s at that time. He had some interesting tales.

-Rat

Wednesday, February 26th 2025… Well, I’ll be…..

Just when I thought I wasn’t going to find an M52, I find one – new, vintage 2012 and in a box nonetheless! Whoda thunk? I’m happily going through and burning my CDs to the Vault2i. I have a crap load. Now I’m beginning to wonder, do I have enough to contemplate getting rid of some Apple products and pick up Roon? Supposedly, you are supposed to have over 5k of songs in order for it to pay off. I’m kind of happy with BluOS and do I really need or want to stream to my iPhone? I’ve lived with being able to stream to any device within the confines of my house. Do I really want or need another 15$ per month service? Do you ever get rid of a subscription – I really need to think on this? Hmmm…

On a separate audio note, I subscribed to “Audioholics” which is an audio blog site.

-Rat

Saturday, February 22nd 2025…I’m a burnin’ fool…

I am reburning all my CDs in my collection to the Vault2i, so I can catalog and stream them. I had burned them all to iTunes about 20 years ago, and just recently (within the last year or so) I burned them to an external drive that I had attached to my NAD M50. Needless to say, it got corrupted somehow, so now I am starting over again but on a newer platform. On another note, I found out that my tweeter that i ordered for the Klipsch’s is stuck at some post office distribut6ion center somewhere out near Fox Valley. Also, as it turns out, I have a lot of country music these days – amazing. They must be from my wife or my bro. The only country that I can remember having was Charlie Daniels Band and Garth Brooks. It will be interesting (either confirm or deny) when I start hitting (burning) my old CDs again. I am not going the country route without kicking and screaming.

-Rat