The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Tube amps are as hot as they have ever been. And the prices are hotter than ever as well. And honestly, I can understand why. My dad's business partner has a McIntosh MC275 on B&Ws and my buddy has one of Marantz's flagships digital with the same series speakers and the sound is so much warmer on the McIntosh for pure 2 ch audio enjoyment...and I don't even have a 'trained' ear and to me the difference is substantial...which is even more ridiculous considering the 275 is a 50 year old design and the Marantz is mid 2011. IIRC McIntosh was the most surprised of everyone when they saw older tube designs gain high demand, but the sound is just...just...wow. McIntosh kicks butt not only in the performance but the styling of their products too



Even with higher quality AAC files, vinyl dynamics are much better. I first learned this in regards to bass response. I used MK1200s and a Vestax mixer and bass response was tremendous. I decided to try a CD mixer and I actually thought my amp or sub was malfunctioning! Carver amps are golden and from what I've read about yours, it sounds like they are still among the finest of their type. The only Sunfire I've ever owned was one of their earlier subwoofers and it was exceptional. I've heard nothing but good things about them. The rack system you have flows very well with the room and it is a nice compliment. Sometimes when I see a rack system it seems to overpower everything else in the room, but yours adds to it. The only DVD player we own is a PS3 which never gets used as only my brother plays with it perhaps once in a full moon. Most of my DVDs are played on an upconverting Oppo progressive scan as our largest TV right now is about 50 inches, but it is actually an older plasma, and I don't think we'd see a huge difference on the 30 inch 1080p TVs we have.

Who makes good projectors these days? I know Runco used to be highly rated (and priced). How large is the screen you have currently? It looks huge

Two boxes, both slightly larger than an iPhone, but both thicker. Attahced back to back with velcro they are probably about 5 times the thickness of an iPhone. Interconnect is a thick (about the equivalent of 8 gauge) 2 inch long cable and then just in ear monitors. I would class it as portable vs. transportable, but wouldn't want it much thicker. Sound however is just incredible and worth a thicker brick in a pocket. Actually fits quite well in a compact camera case.

Oh man, vinyl with a good cartridge, a tube amp and good imaging speakers.......must......leave.....thread......now.

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Scott

AP Royal Oak 15400, silver
Zenith Chronomaster El Primero Classic Cars
Vintage gold Corum
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Baume & Mercier Riviera 200m, silver dial/aquamarine bezel
Breitling Superocean 57, rose/stainless

Dang! I am getting old. The ex got - ok I let her have everything almost - the Marc Levinson components and Klipschorn corner speakers (oh man those were marvelous monsters!). All the vinyl was....ready for this.....SOLD for next to nothing. A quarter century of vinyl and she sold it like souvenir salt shakers. But I'm over that.


Could someone please define "spare time?" I don't know what that looks like.

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SHARKMAN

I think that the only vinyl that I have left now are a few classic albums - T. Rex, Stones et al and a bunch of not so classic singles in an old jukebox - and that's probably going to be sold soon.

Thats on my bucketlist...get a jukebox, preferably an older one, refinish it, and put it in the game room (which would have to be created beforehand).

Come and pick it up and I'll do you a deal

Well...my spare time is race cars and bicycles, for the most part, along with the normal home stuff. My daughter is grown and gone, lives in silicon valley, get out there every few months. In winter we ski. I travel quite a bit for business so there is not a lot of free time.
On the audio front, i remember those names from the past - and recently sold a big Sansui G8000 bought in the 70s on ebay. Still surprised on what they sell for!

I go fishing often, body build, and I'm a foodie - I like trying various types of restaurants.

Also I like cruising, and difficult puzzles (not jigsaw, but difficult mathematics equations (yes, that's a hobby for me), or extreme Sudoku types).

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End of Discussion.

I heard of the Jerry Harvey earbuds (if that's the proper term for them), many musicians use them. What is the difference that you would notice with your setup vs just the earbuds going into an iPod (can they even?). Seems like a lot to carry around - where do you store the actual music? Do you know of anything in particular that you can listen to where the difference is notable?

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End of Discussion.

The biggest issue with the iPod is that the output quality is garbage - lossy file formats and no support for high quality formats. iPod and most consumer digital audio players (DAPs) are focused on storage capacity, battery life and size. To get quality music you first have to start with something that captures all of the music rather than using a compression process that drops part of the sound (which is what mp3 does). That drives you to a lossless format like flac. Then you need the ability to support higher quality sampling rates - the frequency with which the music is sampled when being recorded. Typical mp3 is 44.1KHz, high quality audio can be as high as 192KHz. Finally you need to look at the bit depth - the number of measurements for each sample when the music is recorded. Typical is 16 bit, high quality is 24 bit.

Then you need to get all of that sound out and that's what my setup does - supports high quality recordings and gets it out 'clean' - fast processing of the sound without constand digital to analogue conversions. Then it delivers it to 8 different speakers in each ear. The DX100 (the DAP) has 64 gigs of onboard storage plus micro SD card support.

SEE, this is exactly why I still use an analogue amp (Denon), CDs, and old school floor speakers (presently Polks, a poor substitute for the truck sized Klipschorns I had.........). Because what I read was seemingly in hieroglyphics.


If I'm away from my home or my truck, I can always hum.

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SHARKMAN

Well, while I recognise that your tongue was firmly in cheek, this is actually one of the advantages of vinyl technology - everything is analogue and stays analogue so there are fewer steps in the process of getting the sound out of the storage medium and into your ears. Everytime you do a digital to analogue or analogue to digital conversion you have the potential to damage the quality, and in an mp3 driven world the quality is pretty low down in the scheme of things for a lot of digital anyway.

Thank you for dumbing it down I used to think I was an electrical wizard because I could put the white and red ends of some patch cords in the correct position and strip the ends of some monster cable.

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SHARKMAN

Golf, golf, and golf during the 2.5 months of warm weather in Chicago. The rest of the year, I masquerade as beer aficionado to cover up alcoholism.

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“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.” - Albert Einstein