Home Audio 3.0

The spring of 2006 was not a terribly monumental time. There had just been a Winter Olympics at Turin, Italy, and the Russians were giving the Ukraine a hard time. So nothing new..... That was 14 years ago. We were into our second year here in DFW and my son was 3. That April, my wife was a month away from giving birth to our daughter, and Rotel brought forth the RSX-1057 home theater receiver. 

 

Here's Rotel's baby. I'm showing the image of the sliver-faced version (I have the black) because it's easier to see everything, and of course the connector covered back panel. One of the things that makes this model special is that it's a 7-channel unit, and pretty much up-to-date in terms of home theater decoding. So much so, that very little has changed since then, unless you're looking for Dolby Atmos, WiFi or Bluetooth. The main knock on it was the rather low power rating of 75w per channel (remember, these are Rotel power ratings).

Why are we looking at this? Because, three and half years after the last major upgrade and around 10 years since I've been using the Integra DTR-6.3 as the heart of my system, I've finally upgraded! I actually went back and looked. I wrote a post on May 1, 2011 discussing my system built around that receiver and already had it at that time! Wow; that's a long time! So, let's get into what I've done. As is typical, I'm not going to review it, I'll just discuss the main features that caused me to go with this component.

The driving force was not really the features, or the newer processing capabilities, but the simple fact that this is different/higher level of sound reproduction. Rotel in a general sense is at the top end of "Mid-Fi" or budget "High-End". I've been dabbling in this direction for some time.

You might remember that close to 2 years ago, I had moved on to using some Rotel amps to drive my speakers soon after I got the B&W DM603/S3. I went with Rotel for their smooth uncolored power and the ability to bridge the RB-976's 6 channels into to a very solid 150 watts into 3 channels. That resolves the major criticism 1057's with something I already had in my system. At the same time, since it was a receiver, I was able to eliminate the use of the RB-956AX by using the 1057's internal power for the rear speakers. I figure that by removing the load of driving the main 3 front channels off of it, the 1057 should have more than sufficient power reserves to drive the 4 rear channels. What else did I do to warrant a full version change (3.0)?A major overhaul of the input sources.

I always saw the Dual turntable as being a temporary fix until I found something better. 10+ years later, it was time. I had always wanted a Rega Planar 2 or 3, or at the very least a good clone like the Music Halls, Pro-ject, or ....... this! Well, actually, I've really wanted the Rotel RP-900 with the glass platter, or it's predescessor, the RP-850/855 as well. There were/are rumors that they were contracted by Rega, but in all probability, they were built by Systemdek, a well-regarded British company that built Rega clones! 

This is the latest piece which I'm listening to right now. The Rotel RDV-1040 (yes, mine is black). A DVD player for music playback? Yup. Rotel DVD players have always been well thought of as CD transports. Unfortunately, it's not far enough up the chain to do SACD or DVD-A, but I'm happy to have a single disc transport. Other than Christmas time when I put on 5-6 CD's and let them play for several hours, I've never really played my discs several at a time and found it annoying to have to have the mechanism rotate them out. So, not having a multi-disc changer was no loss.

You might be wondering if there's a point to changing out everything to all this Rotel equipment. I'll have to be honest, and say that I haven't sat and listened long enough to tell you that I'm hearing a distinct difference. That's going to take time. I'll say that I do seem to detect less stridency and everything sounds more relaxed. Of course, I'm almost 60 and my hearing isn't what it used to be. I will say that I'm happy, after 15+ years, I've finally been able to replicated the equipment of when I work in the industry,  I could honestly tell customers that it was the best sounding "bang-for-the-buck" stuff that we sold.

The Obscure and Sublime.... At Least In My World

I have a pair of these, and if you've been around audio for a while, you'll probably recognize them as a/d/s/ L***. ......and you'd be wrong...... kind of! They're NAD 20. So, here's the story.

In the late 70's and 80's when a/d/s/, otherwise known as Analog and Digital Systems was at the peak of their influence in the audio industry, they were tied in one way or another with Braun, the iconic German electronics company more known on this side of the Atlantic for their coffee makers and shavers. NAD, which was also a highly thought of company at this time went to them with a proposal to design and build some speakers. But for reasons unknown, a/d/s/ turned them down, but redirected NAD to Braun. This part is clear as muddy waters because, somehow around this time, a/d/s/ which had previously been a subsidiary of Braun bought out the parent company or at least the audio end of it. This ended up not going well because of some economics issues vis-a-vis doller vs. Deutschemarks. In any case, Braun did in fact build the two speaker offerings of NAD at this time, the 20 and the 30.

The 20 which is the subject of this post was a relatively small floor-standing cabinet 2-way with a dome tweeter and an 8" cone woofer. The 30 was a larger floor-standing 3-way speaker. 

My personal history with a/d/s/ speakers mostly center around a pair of L1290s I found in dilapidated cosmetic condition which I refinished and used for quite a while a few years. Along with them, I also had pairs of L200s and L300s which are the last of my collection of a/d/s/ speakers from that time. When my son inherited an old Yamaha receiver from my collection, I also passed along the L300s as well.

So, other than from a historic sense, how does the NAD 20s enter the picture? Some years back, I came across a pair listed on the local Craigs List for something like $75-80. I met the man and found them without grills and a badly scratched up woofer cone courtesy of his cat. I ended up paying about $50 for them. When I finally got around to hooking them up, they actually didn't sound half bad even with the bum woofer! When I started researching, I found virtually no information and certainly no sources for spare parts! But I went ahead and dismantled them anyway and found, not surprisingly, Braun parts numbers on the drivers since they looked just like the ones on my a/d/s/ speakers. Unfortunately, these numbers didn't match up with anything I could find here in the U.S. so I had to take a leap of faith and just find a similar Braun driver with a/d/s/ part number. I ordered it and it looked identical to the original but the speaker refused to work when I connected it to test using my office system Advent Response 420S receiver. So I decided I had done something wrong and set them aside.

After sitting for about 3-4 years, last week, as part of an effort to clean up, I decided to take another shot at them. However, I had also, reorganized my office sound system as well, now connected to an old Onkyo TX-82 receiver which is rated for a mere 45 watts per channel, but these 45 real 80s watts, not the "amp-on-a-chip" kind! Much to my surprise, those speakers fired up and sounded just fine!

As much as I'd like to tell you that I'm that good and those speakers were healed by me; that's just not the case. I'm pretty sure the issue was that I was too stupid to realize that those speakers were 4 ohms (pretty common for Braun) and my little vintage baby receiver couldn't drive the load! So yeah, my bad! The nice outcome is that my son's hulking older Yamaha receiver drives them just fine and he's been happily holed up in his room listening to them constantly for the last week.

My Audio Systems: The a/d/s/ Era

 

Audiophiles of a certain age will instantly recognize these as the "new" and "old" logos of Analog and Digital Systems of Wilmington Mass. Before I get into my end of things, indulge me while I get into it's convoluted history a little bit.

Starting all the way back to the 50's and 60's, the area around Boston was the epicenter of the "East Coast Sound". And by the 70's and 80's home of audio manufacturers which in some way had spun off from the mother ship that was Advent were still in the area. That group included companies such as KLH started by Henry Kloss who had been at Advent, AR, and Jensen, as well as other companies either based on the design theories behind the "East Coast Sound" or guided by someone who had worked for those original companies. This second wave that hit the audio scene included Boston Acoustics, Allison, Analog and Digital Systems (ADS), etc.

Bear with me while I go off on a tangent from my digression! In the speaker world (and somewhat the American audio world as well), there are basically two camps; the East Coast and the West Coast..... yeah, like Rap. At the risk of starting a flame war, here goes! Generally speaking, the East Coast "sound" is thought to be smoother, more refined at the cost of efficiency because of acoustical suspension (sealed boxed) designs. Whereas the West Coast "sound" was a more "boom and sizzle" presentation, but more efficient due to the use of ported designs. The West Coast "sound" is associated with JBL (James B. Lansing) and it's off-shoots such as Altec Lansing, Cerwin Vega etc. Not surprisingly, the Japanese makers tended to be more West Coast oriented, whereas the East Coast sound is similar to the "British" makers (eg. B&W, Tannoy, KEF, etc.). That's all I'm going to say without commentary since everyone's hearing and tastes are different. As for me:

I grew up listening to a German Telefunken system belonging to my father. Then later, that was replaced by a system built around a Dual turntable, KLH cassette deck and Jensen speakers. When I started buying equipment of my own, I started with B&W speakers fronting a Rotel stack. Then came the a/d/s/.

It started innocently enough when I came across an a/d/s/ C2/3 Cassette deck sold on clearance. It sounded good and was nicely understated. Around that time, I had taken some bad advice and replaced the Rotel electronics with Adcom. Don't get me wrong; there wasn't anything wrong with the Adcom, but it was a bad marriage between it and the B&W DM500 speakers that I was using at the time. We'll just leave it at that.

Around that time, a/d/s/ stopped it's home electronics importation from Braun leaving those components orphaned. That was just the nudge that shoved me off right off of the edge of cliff and down that proverbial slippery slope! Next thing I knew, the Adcom was gone and I had a house full of a/d/s/ equipment. This included:

• R4 Receiver
• PA4 Amp
• CD3 CD Player
• C2/3 Cassette Deck
• P4 Turntable
• A2 Integrated Amp
• T2 Tuner
• CD4 CD Player
• C2 Cassette Deck
• P2 Turntable
• L1290 Tower Speakers
• L300 Speakers
• L200 Speakers

Now, this took some years to do and a lot of it was less equipment that I seriously listen to, but were part of a "collection" and run as a secondary system in my bedroom. 

In fact, I was close to owning all of these iconic pieces designed by the famed Deiter Rams. Then home theater intervened. By that time, it had been a few years since a/d/s/  had stopped importing this gear from Germany and availability was drying up. That was before the common use of the Internet. Although I loved the way it sounded AND looked, it was just a huge headache to connect/disconnect and haul around when I moved (which was a lot since I had just started in Higher Ed Administration in those days). Doing home theater meant that I had to patch in an external decoder, try and match a center channel and get more speakers and amplification. 

 

So, I said goodbye to Dieter Rams designs and greatly simplifying my systems and moving!


 

COVID-19 and Keeping Busy

So, here we are...... sitting at home, wondering how long we're going to be here before COVID-19 crests and we can all go back to our normal lives. For someone like me, who tends to be a little mentally ADHD anyway, that means keeping my brain busy while I'm at home conducting Virtual Education! That's focusing on working on "shelved" projects.

It's a pretty long list! House/home stuff is actually pretty well managed, due to my highly organized wife..... However, my personal list of projects isn't in as good of shape. Most of it has to do with my hobbies; computing, firearms, reloading, photography/camera, woodworking and electronics..... ohhh the electronics!!! As you guys can tell from my writing or lack there-of on this subject, you can probably deduce how much I've neglected it. This ranges from the complex like upgrading my sound system to better focus on vinyl to repairing equipment that can be fixed and either sold off or gifted to someone who can use it. I will say that I've done well in updating and streamlining my photography stuff, but AV? Yeah... Then COVID-19 happened and I bought some more audio equipment!

 

You might be wondering; how in the heck can buying more help me with having too much equipment? So, here's what happened. First I bought the Rotel RP-855 turntable, a piece I've wanted for years to upgrade the vinyl end of my system, and soon after, I bought the Rotel RSX-1057 receiver (which by the way doesn't even have a Phono stage input). What that did was started me on reevaluating my system(s) as a whole.

I came to the conclusion that my system was set up for my family as it was 10 years ago, when the kids were 6 and 3. Now, they're 16 and 13. 

 

I figured, we no longer need to protect the DVDs from their handling by loading them into a huge Mega changer and they haven't played Wii-U in some time! Although, the new turntable only replaced the old one, the much heavier and by far, biggest of all my components is now gone. Off to live out another life with my brother-in-law who DOES have young children. This has now turned into a "domino effect" where, one of the 2 outboard amps has given up it's job of driving the surround channels to the new receiver.

Alas, all is not all wine and cheese as yet. I will have to admit that I pulled an oldie-but-goodie out of storage and put it into the stack. What is this weird thing and what does it do? It's in fact an AV source selector and Pre-Amp all in one box. It's a relic of the of the old days when audio companies were trying to come up with ways to keep up with the rapidly expanding video market. In the mid-to-late 80's there were just a ridiculous number of sources both audio and video, so here-ya-go in one box. This one is my second, having let the first one go years ago when I got out of the Laserdisc and SuperBetas (feeling old yet?)! I got this one to send signals to my computer with thoughts of archiving old VHS and MiniDV tapes. In any case, I'm going to be using it to do two things that have increasingly been left off of even high-end receivers (such as the RSX-1057), that's the Phono input and of all things,.... the switched outlet! Yup, you remember, people would plugged their other rack components into the main receiver and it would turn all your stuff on and off. In the last 10-15 years, people have increasingly used power-strips. Why do I need this? I have and still us AC "line enhancers" (aka fancy power-strips) and in order for it to turn on the components connected to it, you plugged a control cord into the "switched" outlet of your receiver, so when you turned it on, it in turn, turns on everything else..... slick. This slim little component will do both of these critical things (Phono, switched outlet) for me!

And if you don't think that'll keep me busy enough; this afternoon, I decided to see if I could get an old pair of NAD 20 speakers to work (long story which might get its own post). And as it turns out, they're now working fine and my son is enjoying them in place of the pair of a/d/s/ L300s that I gave him last year.

So, what do you guys think? Successfully keeping myself occupied stuck here at the house!?!

The Story of the "Mid-line" Cellphone

For roughly the last 3 years, I've been using the Motorola (aka Moto) G4, and has been perfectly satisfied. This is really a rather unremarkable phone and therefore it's service shouldn't be of interest in any way. And there-in lies the story......

  

I have a long history of buying Motorola's premium offerings going all the way back to the i1000 on the Nextel network. Sure, there were other devices that ranged from the very interesting Nokia 8100 of Matrix fame and my one and only Apple device; the iPhone 5s. They all served me well, but as phones got increasingly complex, I began to feel that I got nowhere near taking advantage of their capabilities. When their life expectencies were closer to 5 years and contracts were close to 2, that was OK. When those things dropped to half, it became not worth the cost. At roughly the same time, the feature set became such that one didn't need to buy "halo" device (Z4 below) to get all the features one needed. 

There were 2 paths for the makers to put these devices to market. They could go the traditional route and sell them in bulk to the big carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint etc), or sell them directly to the consumer as "unlocked" phones ready to connect with virtually any system. My Moto G4 bought from Costco was one of these. It cost me about $150 on a Black Friday sale. That makes the phone itself cost less than $5 per month (of course, there is the cost of the plan itself). That's cheap! More importantly was that over the course of the 34 months that I used it, I never wanted for anything in terms of features.

So, last week, after my G4 committed suicide by jumping into the pool at practice one day......, I went out and chased down another mid-line phone. The Moto G6 Play. 

To reinforce the concept:

• It has all the features I need and some I don't.
• It has the old Micro-USB charging port. I'm really not ready to buy a bunch of replacement cords, and it charges plenty fast enough for me!
• It has the regular 3.5mm headphone jack! 
• It was cheap. I paid $63 on eBay from a DFW seller who got it to me in 2 days.
• Despite being 2 generations newer, it's interface was comfortably familiar. 

The fact is, even if I'd have gone out and paid full price for it, the price wouldn't have been any higher than what I paid for it's predesessor, the G4. As thing would turn out, I actually ended up paying nothing for it. I won't get into that story today. But I'd have been quite happy to pay $5 a month for it's use over the next 2-3 years.

Workstation Interrupted..... and Then Detoured!!!

This has been what my personal computing world has been like for the last 2 years! In September of 2017, I wrote a blog post on my workstation rebuild project. At that point, I had acquired the motherboard, processor and memory. Everything was pretty much in place to move on to the build itself! Then a number of things happened:

• For my birthday (October) of that year, I got a gun. Subsequently, I've been very involved in all things firearms!
• I started coaching the swim team at my school. We'll just say that it's time consuming, and exhausting and leave it at that....
• Since that time, my children have turned 12&15, then 13&16, which is in and of itself exhausting, but has included things such as teaching my son how to drive, as well as dealing with a teenage daughter...... enough said......
• I found out that the X99 motherboard steadfastly remained dead, despite my best efforts, so it went to Gigabyte warranty depot. Which is why you buy from a quality manufacturer.
• Gigabyte had a glitch and forgot about my board for about 6 months.....
• Gigabyte now has no more of the X99 boards to replace it and we are now going back and forth as to what to do about this situation.....
• MS Windows 7 support is ending, and I've been dealing with ours' as well as clients' machines.

You can see, what that above picture is about now.

After I sent the X99 to Gigabyte, I decided to pull out one of my old computers as a stop-gap measure, expecting that it would do email and some light web surfing for a month or two at worse. 8 months later .....I finally took it off of my desk and put the old warhorse out to pasture. For those who don't recognize it off-hand; it's my old "Tomcat" build. It's an IBM (which should be your first clue), Z61m running a Core2Duo processor with a chipset so old that it has a 3Gb limitation! Which goes to show that for what most people do (email and web-surfing), they don't need the latest and greatest. In any case, although it was slow and occasionally a little annoying to use, I was grateful to have it. On to the next thing.....

....And this is the next thing. An ASUS Rampage III Extreme with an Intel i7-950 processor and 6 sticks of 2Gb Dominator memory that I picked up for $50 about 3 years ago off of Craigslist. It has the X58 chipset and was from the 1st generation of Core CPUs! I'm using it because I'm tired of not being able to use my monitor rig, including the 28" 4K panel. I spent a few hours this last Saturday getting it up and running. I've got to say that for a 2011 motherboard, it runs (Windows10) pretty well, especially compared to the old ThinkPad! 

As of yesterday, Gigabyte and I are in the process of negotiating a mutually agreeable replacement for the X99 board. They asked me for a chipset and I prudently asked for a Z370 board vs. the X299 which would be a direct replacement in the product line. However, after some research, it turned out to have some hardware limitations that would have boxed me into some very specific (read expensive) hardware that I didn't want to get involved with. Much like my new philosophy about my cameras, I've decided to give up on some dreams for a more practical a outcome. Despite the "Z" chipsets being more "consumer" oriented, it will do everything I need it to do. There was just no sense in spending more money on spec that would have been meaningless. I'll explain more when I detail the build in a future post. 

Burn The Ships!

 

Columbus may have sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and forever changed the world...... But it could be argued the things didn't really get going until 1519, when Cortes landed in Mexico and gave the fateful order to "burn the ships"! What does this have to do with me? Well...., awhile ago, I made the decision to give up my full-sized DSLR Nikon gear (APS-C) based around the D300 and bought a Panasonic Lumix GX-7. This last weekend, I burned the ships! About 3 weeks ago, I sold the D300 rig, but a few days ago, I cut my emotional ties.

For some time now, I had been collecting an ad hoc selection of old film 35mm cameras from the heyday of Japanese manufacturers. They ranged from the old and quaint such as Topcon Uni, and Miranda RE to true classics such as my Minolta XE-7 all the way to the hi-tech from last years before digital as represented by a Contax 139 Quartz. The group was so varied that I collected a number of Tamron Adaptall II lenses so I could use the many adapters made for the numerous cameras. Unfortunately, this little hobby, while fun was getting stale the last few years and it was a vast clutter of jumbled and dusty hulks. So, between meeting a guys who bought several lenses on Saturday, and another guy on Sunday who bought everything else; I'm out of the "big/old camera" business. 

It's not as simple as cleaning out, or even just switching gear. There's a lot of emotion associated with those old cameras. In a many of ways, it represents my youth, my most abiding hobby interest, and even some professional aspirations. On the other hand, it's a lot of stuff that sits there and did nothing, but collect dust. And, although, I probably didn't sell it for as much as I could (or should) have, it did bring in some money and to a large extent, was a relief as well! Those ships got burned!

What did I do with the money? I used some of it to replace the cameras and lenses I used. I had previously picked up a Lumix GX7 with a 12-32mm (24-64mm eq) lens. After selling the Nikon D300 gear, I decided to use some of the money to replace the Nikon 18-200 lens with a Lumix 14-140mm. Uh..... I did that by purchasing a GH1 with that lens! And along with it came a FL-360 flash (which I needed), and an Olympus 14-42mm lens, along with misc accessories. Why? The whole thing was about $50 more than what I was going to have to pay for that lens anyway at about $300 total! Those lenses alone routinely run anywhere from $200 to $250. 

After I sold all the old camera gear, I decided to give myself a little reward. That is in the form of one of the "littlest" Lumix lenses around.

The 20mm/f1.7 (40mm eq), considered one of the sharpest for the format. They typically sell for $125 to 175. I paid $145.....

 ....for a 20mm/f1.7 and a Lumix GF-1 attached. Yup, I found it on eBay for $150 after shipping (down from the original listing of $200) with an "OBO". So I offered $130 for it. So, now I have a Lumix micro-4/3rds system. More to come.