Hifi-Tag

A friend of mine bought a new amplifier, but he wasn’t pleased with the sound. So he called me and asked if I could recommend a good old amplifier that could drive smaller speakers because he likes the aesthetic of older things. And the venerable NAD 3020B was the first one that came to mind. When I was young, this was the first affordable amplifier that sounded good. It’s not a powerhouse by any means, putting out (a very conservative estimate) 2 x 20 watts. But the phono stage accepts both MM and MC pickups which is excellent, and the sound quality is exceptional. So he scoured the used market and finally found a NAD 3020B. Unfortunately, when he got it home, there was a loud hum from the output. So I told him to send it to me so I could fix it. ...

My Raspberry Pi Car Audio Player A lot of people are using the excellent Linux microcomputer Raspberry Pi and install it in their cars. Usually, they use a color screen that is touch sensitive, being able to play back video and music. But I’m only interested in high-quality audio playback, being able to have all my CDs in lossless FLAC format for optimal sound quality. So a 16x2 LCD with some buttons is plenty. I now have a working system (but not yet installed in my car.) here’s a description of how I’ve built it. Most of the installations I’ve seen the use of the audio out from the Raspberry Pi, but it’s only 11-bit and sounds like crap. I want to use an external DAC, and you can get that to work in XBMC, but only menu and music output, not films. There are some HDMI to audio converters, but I’ll instead use a quality USB DAC. http://youtu.be/wzmFZlpbBCQ ...

Crystal cMoy Freeform Headphone Amp: Very cool transparent cMoy headphone amplifier, made using clear casting resin. This is something I have to try. Via 0pachira

I love my music playback setup that consists of a couple of Squeezebox V3 players in different rooms so I can listen to music in lossless format wherever I am in the apartment. With the iPeng HD app on my iPad, I have a nice interface for controlling the players with album art and other nice features. But the best part is that I can playback high resolution audio directly on my iPad using the Camera Kit USB adapter and an HRT HeadStreamer DAC portable USB headphone amplifier. But I wanted a small, cheap and eco-friendly server for hosting my music files and wondered if I could use the Raspberry Pi. And here’s my findings. ...

Here is the second part of how to improve the quality of an old CD player, the Pioneer PD S-505. You can find the first part here. In this section, I’m going to show you how to install a better, more stable clock circuit into your 505 to lower the jitter. This particular clock comes from Kingwa, that has a series of crystal oscillators for improving DVD players, CD players, and DACs. The price is reasonable. I’ve installed them in three different units and had zero problems, so the quality seems reasonable. Ok, so why install a new clock? Isn’t there one in there already? Yes, your right. But by using better parts like crystals with lower ppm and also design a very clean power supply to feed the clock, you can make your CD-player sound much better. And the reason is lower jitter. But what is jitter? There is plenty of excellent places to go read up on it. Here’s some. ...

[caption id=“attachment_969” align=“alignnone” width=“292” caption=“Lenn-Art Subwoofer”][/caption] Last time I ordered some speaker elements from Germany I ordered some extra Tang Band W8-740C subwoofer elements for a later build. I’ve been oogling this design to go with my home-built?ProAc 2.5 clones. Micke, a friend will make the boxes for me, provided I sent him the drawings. What an exellent excuse to try to learn Solidworks. Amazing program. I have designed my own version of the venerable GainClone amplifier with a beefed up power supply and will use two subwoofers in stereo. Nice to not have to build the boxes. Last time when I built the clones the apartment was filled with MDF dust for months.

Part two of this series is now up. Read on how to install a better clock in your Pioneer PD S-505 CD player. Mods your Pioneer PD S-505 CD Player for better sound quality So I bought this Pioneer PD S-505 for $40 to test how good audio quality I’m able to squeeze out by modifying it. But It will not be just the standard subjective judgment of improvement but also measurements. Back in 2000, you had to pay about $400 for it. It uses the stable platter which means you have to put the CD in upside down. So let’s get going. ...

So finally my new ProAc Response 2.5 clone playing music. And how they play! I got myself a new Class-A amplifier to have something nice to drive them with. At first they sounded a bit short on the bass side, but now after about 20 hours of listening, the bass starts to improve. I’ve never believed in the “burn-in” of speakers, but I have to say I’ve been mistaken. ...

So I finished putting my new diy speakers together. I still need to put veneer on them (probably going to use cherry) But they sound great! Yes, really great. I’m going to add the notch filter, just to try it out.

So I finally decided to go with the Proac Response 2.5 clone speakers. The original speaker costs $4400, but a very good copy or the original is possible to build for around $1000. It uses high quality Scan Speak speaker elements, and I bought them today. My friend Micke is also building a pair at the same time. So now I have four speakers standing in my livingroom. Everything is covered in MDF dust. Thankfully I have a very understanding wife. ...