StephenJK

The best resource for used audio components is HiFiShark.com Note that prices are what’s being asked, not what it may have sold for. Sell price used to be available through a subscription Blue Book service on Audiogon, but that seems to not be as popular as it once was.

Why not contact AfterDark directly? They may be able to make one for you.

This isn't a car audio site, but I'm not quite sure what your question is. "why going from audio pre out of display to equalizer works freeing up one more set of audio pre out" seems to be what our English teachers always called an incomplete sentence.

Just for the record. Unless this was done in a separate post that was not linked to this one, your comment regarding "entirely verified" remains unsupported. I don't have a dog in this fight, but accusations of fraud, being a criminal matter, should be more than a thread on a forum.

I'm not familiar with anything that Barry Diament has done, but will certainly check it out. Thanks for that, it's nice to know that there are still people out there doing there best to make recordings that matter.

I'm presuming we're not talking about something like the old BBC stereo setup LP where one of the tracks is "Sound should now be coming from your left speaker" and more of a sampler on how wonderful an album can be. It's still largely subjective, as you're listening to one version of an album or track and can't have any frame of reference as to how it could be better or worse with a different system. I tend to use a couple of albums that I know only too well and have been using since the early 70's - with Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". The original versions would have been the standard releases on LP, now with recorded versions of the MoFi issues. And yes, I know that Brothers in Arms was digitally recorded and don't find that using a digital recording to evaluate a stereo system to be any less valid. And it's really not that hard. When you've heard the same musical piece over and over on a number of different systems, you tune into what you hear or do not hear from what you did before. That. and of course with soundstage. The clarity, depth and detail, positioning of instruments with either clear definition or blurry boundaries - that sort of thing. Go with what you know...

I'm presuming you've sent a PM to the owner of this site? That might get you a more positive response than making unverified claims in a public post....

Gentlemen, Perhaps this conversation about filters should be moved to another thread? From a historical perspective, we don’t want anyone years from now wondering why a discussion on the merits of MQA turned into a college primer on Nyquist theorems and filter effectiveness.

Perhaps another category for this meaningless poll. The person who listens to music in a room without a TV.

The Korg MR-2000S was discontinued some time ago. The Tascam DA-3000, considered as an equitable alternative is now also discontinued. I suspect both are available as NOS or on the used market.

A simple test for any bubble level is to rotate it in place to see if a deviation is consistent. Most are not. For example, I had an expensive miniature Clearaudio level supposedly good for a tonearm headshell that was pretty much useless. I have an older milspec chromed bubble level that is extremely accurate. https://www.geier-bluhm.com/products/military-applications/2-24024/#:~:text=Chrome plated brass case with,at 10 (ten) degrees. I don’t remember what I paid for it, but certainly far less than the listed price on that site. Mine is dated 1999. The chromed case and accuracy makes it look like something to be taken seriously. As a suggestion, if you have a smartphone try a bubble level app. I have something called iHandy Carpenter and it reads with the surface level the same as the mechanical bubble level. With the app version you can change sensitivity etc. It’s a far better value and gives you a level and other tools you can use elsewhere. For headshell azimuth, I use the small level graduated in 0.25 degree increments that came with Feickert’s Adjust Plus. However, I see that’s no longer available. Perhaps that level is available from the OEM, whoever that might be.

After having digitally recorded over 2,000 LPs I like to think of myself as an expert on the subject. The first question is how many LPs would you like to record? If it’s a dozen or so, perhaps find a service. The second question is what level of quality are you looking for - at the beach MP3, sounds like a CD, or high resolution that will record that album the way it was made. I always had a much better than good turntable, and over five years most were done with a Clearaudio Innovation Compact with Universal Tonearm and either a DV Te Kaitora or Te Kaitora Rua MC cartridge. The Clearaudio setup alone was about a $20K CAD cost, not including the cartridge. Your recording is only as good as your turntable and your phono stage. That brings into the conversation the phono stage, but that only matters if you want the high resolution recording, a fully and completely faithful digital reproduction of whatever was on that LP. And, for each of those three options, there are ADCs to suit. I used a Korg MR-2000S, recording at 1-bit 5.66 MHz and then converting to 24/96 FLAC. I tried 24/192 but couldn’t hear a difference. The recording was the easy part, the Korg was in a tape loop on an Audio Research SP27 preamp through a PS5 phono stage. Cue the album, hit record, hit pause after side A etc. With the SP27 and its remote control, I could compare the original LP playing on the turntable to the playback from the Korg to the mastered version from the laptop being used as a music server. The real work is in the mastering, taking a single digital file for any LP and breaking it out into individual tracks with track names, comprehensive meta data and cover art. At the end of the day, while a considerable effort, I enjoy listening to all of that music in digital form. Having a 4 TB drive connected to a Roon core and controlled through an iPad is magical. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Hold the phone. Yes, I think we all understand that the original premise was that it would reduce the size of files for download - streaming wasn't that prevalent when MQA was rolled out. However, when that faltered, a number of manufacturers, now apparently against their will, included MQA unfolding and a light of some type (?) to authenticate an MQA recording so that it could be heard in its true, full glory. There is definitely a hardware connection, and one that was concocted between MQA, the labels and the manufacturers who did it because "their customers wanted it." If we're looking for the "man behind the curtain" we need to start with the usual suspects.

You're talking about the labels - the people who own the recordings, who were drooling over the thought of us buying our music all over once again. From LP to 8-track to cassette to Elcaset to CD, and then to DAT and Laser Disc, DVD, then to High Res upsampled downloads to the current flavors of DSD is so much better than PCM and MQA is the best yet. As the labels might say - "It just sounds better and better folks, take our word for it." "You need to buy it all over again. It may not be worth it to you, but it certainly is to us." What is new in all of this is the labels working in concert with the manufacturers in their efforts to encourage us to buy our music in a "new, much better than ever before!" format. I remember that with Quad and Discrete, but the hardware was expensive and, at best mid-fi, and there were few titles available.

That's how I recall it as well, but I seem to remember a singular focus on compression, and how that would allow people to download/stream music on networks that didn't support high resolution at the time. It was shortly after that that they did, and MQA seemed to be a solution to a problem that no longer existed. I do understand that not everybody has a high speed connection, but enough of us now do that I don't think any potential service is much concerned anymore. I remember a friend building a new home in 2001-ish and paying an extra $3K to have internet cable dropped to a jack in every room of the home. It was a few months after that you could buy a wireless router for a few hundred dollars, I bought a home in 2018 that was built in 1963. Doing renovations I've pulled out huge amounts of coax and phone cable. It's all obsolete and serves no purpose. All we need now is that wireless electricity, and we're all set.