The HiFi and Home Theater thread...what gear are you listening to?

[wschofield3]

Do you ever have issues with synching to lip movements?

I rarely use BT for video, however, when I do, the lip sync issue is not severe.

[Smeagal]

[chuckmiller]

Do I count 15 components, plus speakers? And 1 Nikon camera.

[Smeagal]

Do I count 15components, plus speakers? And 1 Nikon camera.

" 2 Nikon cameras 2 denon tapedecks one is three head and a B/O deck 2 minidisc recorders 2 cd players1 record deck and and Reel to Reel blueraay and out of pick is projector The ones on the left are backup and equaulizer

[tribe125]

I’m considering doing an odd thing. I’m sitting in our Kraków apartment, which as I’ve said elsewhere, we will be giving up. In front of me is a hi-fi consisting of a Cyrus 7 amplifier that I brought out in a shoulder bag from England, and a pair of Dali Zensor 5s, which I bought in a local shopping centre. The source is a laptop with FLAC files, as it is at home. There’s an HRT Music Streamer II for a DAC. The Cyrus was once my amplifier at home, 20-25 years ago.

It sounds better than my system at home, which is a Marantz PM-8006 and a pair of PMC GB1s, with a Chord Qutest for a DAC. I also have a Naim Nait 5i, but found the Marantz to be just as good, and more convenient.

The contents of this apartment will be disposed of locally, with just a few small things going back to England. Shipping of larger items isn’t out of the question, but neither my wife or I can be bothered with it. We’re prepared to write things off, regardless of their niceness or value.

So what I’m thinking of doing, is to give the speakers to a friend in Krakow, and then buy the same speakers in England. Not quite the same speakers, because the Zensor 5s have been replaced by the Oberon 5s, which by all accounts are the same but better.

This is a curious state of affairs. The current equivalent of the PMCs cost the best part of £5k. The Dali Oberons are £799. The PMC cabinets have real wood veneers and are made in England. The Dali cabinets have vinyl wrap, and while ostensibly Danish, are made in China - albeit it in a Dali factory run by Danes.

The big unknown is the room. I suspect I may have a better-sounding room in Kraków. Placement and listening position may also be better. However, I suspect that the Dalis benefit from having two main drivers rather than one, even if other aspects of resolution might favour the PMCs - although I’m not conscious of anything being ‘missing’ with the Dalis. Nothing would be lost, soundwise, if the Dali speakers didn’t do their magic in England - I could just swap back to the PMCs. But what a faff, whether they did their magic or not. I’d have spare floorstanding speakers cluttering up the house, and I can’t just walk down to the post office with a pair of speakers like I can with a watch.

Money doesn’t matter in this deliberation. The PMCs were expensive to buy, and would be expensive to replace, but are only worth a few hundred. I might gift them if someone came and took them away. I don’t know of anyone who would do that, though. The Dalis cost no more than an affordable watch, bought without much thought.

The cost/quality thing is interesting. I had an ‘enthusiast approved’ system of Naim/ Qutest/PMC , which was moderately expensive. I was happy to swap the Naim for a Marantz. The PMCs are specialist and upmarket, and I might prefer something you can buy in box-shifting shops in retail parks. The HRT DAC wasn’t as cheap as chips, but it’s the size of a bar of soap, it’s several generations out-of-date, and I couldn’t honestly swear that it’s obviously inferior to the £1,200 Qutest. I will be taking the HRT home, because it’s small, and because I have a fondness for it that I couldn’t quite explain.

The PMCs have a high wife-approval rating. Ideally, she’d like invisible speakers, but they’re discreet, and they’re real-wood cherry, which suits our living room. She can polish them like a dining table. The Dali speakers are a similar size, and are very nicely-made, but are more obviously ‘equipment’. She’d probably prefer them in a light wood finish, and I’d prefer them in black. I once told her I would never have a reason to change the PMCs and she said ‘Good’. I haven’t told her what I’m currently thinking.

[skywatch]

I generally avoid this thread because I'm on the creator side of this equation, but I just want to send out a little warning that I am entering back into the speaker hanging world, as I am adding Dolby Atmos capabilities to my studio (against my better judgement and common sense... trust me on this.) I just got back home from the SF Bay Area (we lived in Silly-Cone Valley for decades, and I grew up there before that abomination of privilege, greed and aspiration.) I had loaned my brief 2007 experiment in 5.1 surround to a filmmaker friend who needed affordable mix verification. These are Dynaudio BM5a studio monitors, 2-way self powered. I didn't like them 18 years ago, next to my main monitors (Duntech Sovereign - similar to Dunlavy SC-V but with a better matched super-tweeter). I could "hear the box" which I hate. So now I have these back, and I will be hanging them from the ceiling to create a 7.1.4 monitoring environment. In this setting, I probably won't notice "the box" But I do have to figure out how to hang them safely. The Rear and Side Surrounds are Dunlavy SCII, the front center channel will probably be a pair of Dunlavy SC1, stacked together. Amplification is Parasound. (I had a Mark Levinson 333 for 20 years, but sold it at a profit when the interior rubber mounts started to deliquesce.)

I plan to show pictures here when I have it working, although I fear it will be butt-ugly. I hate the idea of hanging speakers. I am trying to decide between a lighting-rig-style scaffolding in an 8-foot cube around me, to hang the .4 overheads, or whether I should get some carpenter to help me hang them from joists on the ceiling. Either way it will be ugly.

Here's the current calm and attractive setting...

[tribe125]

The ceiling speakers in this picture don’t look too bad -





The Dynaudios are a bit bigger, I guess, but this kind of mounting would be less obtrusive than a lighting-style rig.

[tribe125]

I’ve paused for thought on my hi-fi changes. Swapping the PMC speakers for the cheapish Dali speakers has worked. A trained ear might say (if ears could speak) that the PMCs had finer resolution but the Dalis suit me better. I’ve now got them running from a Naim Nait that I had in storage and the combination works well.

It’s replacing all the electronics (source, DAC, amplifier) with the one-box Naim Uniti Atom that I’m wondering about. I’ll need a home server, and then I’ll be reliant on streaming from it. I’m sufficiently old-fashioned to prefer the idea of things that stand alone - and I’m meant to be getting rid of boxes, not adding another.

The resultant set-up would be simpler for my wife - or she would perceive it as being simpler - but the only real difference is that she wouldn’t have to turn on a computer (the source) and fire up the music library software. And out in the hall there’d be a new box that she didn’t fully understand. If there was a problem, and I wasn’t around, she wouldn’t know where to start. Technical advance has made things simpler, but only if you’re a bit technical. The untechnical have been left adrift. You shouldn’t need to get a man in if your record won’t play.

[skywatch]

The ceiling speakers in this picture don’t look too bad -





The Dynaudios are a bit bigger, I guess, but this kind of mounting would be less obtrusive than a lighting-style rig.

That does look decent, but alas I don't have a false-ceiling to hide the wires. Also, indeed the BM5a doesn't have built-in mounts on the base, so they will need some sort of clamp, bracket, shelf-like thing. I plan to make some phone calls today, to ask advice.

As for the complexity issue - this is a problem in a lot of entertainment technology. Selling downloads of surround mixes, for example, requires the listener to integrate their computer with their entertainment center, which means the computer needs a multichannel audio interface to talk to the amplifier, unless it uses HDMI, which is rare and flakey. There are very few "plug and play" standards. Or, as the engineers like to say "Standards are good. That's why we have so many of them."