New audio experience using tech along side my vinyl (long winded)

iPads & turntables. Tech meets old-school.

I'm board at the moment while I move stuff around on hard-drives so I thought I'd write a testimonial here.
Once in a while I get frustrated w/ my system like a lot of us here, don't like my gear, don't like my room, sometimes I even don't like music that only a few days ago I loved. Yes, I'm in therapy, thanks for your concern.

It happens with my guitar playing obsession as well. There are times when I spend every free minute with a guitar in my hands, then I lose interest for days/weeks and need to find inspiration. I usually do find it then it starts all over again.

Anyway, this recently happened again with my critical listening. I found inspiration in an unlikely place, and that is looking for a 4k video switching solution in my stereo/home theater. Won't bore you with those details but ended up buying a Pioneer Elite SC-95 AVR to use as a pre-pro for home theater and multi-channel audio. I can also put my entire hi-res FLAC collection on a flash drive and plug it into the front with amazing results.

What I didn't expect was the fun it bring listening to 2-channel sources including LPs.

I've used AVRs in the past as a pass-through (tape loop) for my spectral pre-amp & Rega TT. AVR set to Analog Pure Direct and away I go. Would never put a digital processing link in the analog chain because that's just wrong on every level, isn't it??

This new beast has a much better room correction system than my previous, so just for fun I was tempted to see what it would do to my LPs. (in my experience using room eq while listening to music did some things well like limiting standing waves etc but at the expense of sucking the life out of the music. Vocals lost texture and the soundstage would narrow so I would typically set all EQs off) This doesn't happen with this new unit and modes like extended stereo which basically sends a stereo signal to all 7 channels can be tremendous fun.

Straight two-channel stereo almost always has that attack and punch that fake surround modes lack, but those surround modes can make up for that with impact/wow-factor. Now if I'm listening to Dire Straits' debut record I leave it alone and go stereo every time. However putting on Scorpions Blackout LP and going 7 channel surround (which incorporates my 15" velodyne) its a religious experience, and it's not only loud R&R that does it for me; I pulled out Melissa Etheridge Skin and Boz Scaggs' Memphis CDs and they both knocked my socks off in surround. The bottom-end on the Skin CD is tremendous! Sometimes these can be better to me than a 5.1 SACD or DVD-A because sometimes producers of those can be heavy-handed with rear channel info to the point of being gimmicky and losing 'reality', where a good surround presentation of a 2-channel source can be simply HUGE and natural. An in-room headphone experience.

So most of the time I'll continue to be a purist, but boredom sets in easily and it's nice to have an alternative.

Lastly, the iPad app that controls the system is the cherry on top. This is where worlds collide. Listening to an LP and switching to a different room eq or dragging volume up or down or switching sources all with your iPad is crazy. Showing contents of all your music folders and picking a song and having it play back instantly is crazy. I know this is old-hat for some of you but man is it fun.

Long story short (too late!?) it's cool to be able to switch between FLAC files on flashdrive to LPs with the touch of an icon on an iPad.

OK, done backing up. Back to the tunes.

Cheers!

(a few pics of the iPad app)

 

Variety is the spice of life!! Enjoying different formats is a good thing. If understood "streaming" etc i would maybe like that too. I enjoy my TT, CD and ipod. Why not?

 

My TT runs through a PS Audio preamp and then into an Outlaw surround processor. Unfortunately, the Outlaw doesn't support a phono section, but it all works out anyway because it also doesn't have all of the inputs I need either so the PSA takes those on as well.

But, as for listening to my system, I've tried the surround setting for my TT but I don't enjoy having the center channel being active. It just seems wrong to me. I feel I'm in a league of not wanting to disrupt the nature of things. I feel like I'm taking away from the intent of the recording, and too, the center channel isn't really meant for playing what is normally played through speakers designed for full on musical passages. That's my thought anyway.

I tried to cut the center from the mix but my unit won't do that. I probably wouldn't mind so much for just the rear channels coming on but I really do get a lot out of listening to two awesome front channel speakers (Heresy 3) and an awesome sounding sub (SVS SB2000) in a typical 2.1 environment so I don't feel I'm missing anything otherwise.

In fact, my latest passion of late is the Lou Reed Transformer LP. The sounds that are on that LP haunt me through the day. I don't think it would have the same effect if it was playing in surround.

I appreciate your new direction though.

 

Clever iPad. If I was able to do that I'd lose most of my daily exercise (jumping up to swap LPs & change sides) !!!

Interesting thread though.

 

I have to confess that my LP listening lately is in Stereo mode on my Marantz SR-5010 AVR. The way it blends in the sub as well as the overall sound is very good. I prefer it over pure direct or using an external amp with the AVR, even though I am committing the sin of putting my analog signal through a DSP.

I haven't done much stereo listening in surround modes, but I'm sure it's awesome with rock.

 

That's one of the aspects I find fun to experiment with. Stereo vs. pure direct. In pure direct obviously I'm using my tower speakers full range, but with a quick touch of a button switching to a stereo mode using the AVRs internal crossover (where I have those large towers set to 'small') and let the Velodyne do the heavy lifting. Funny how sometimes with some material one is clearly preferable to the other and other times not so much.

Just another way this hobby can drive you nuts one minute and give you bliss the next.

 

I've just set up my Onkyo HT-R 410 AVR in my bedroom. It was just a spare system that I was using in my garage. Using all the stock speakers, except for the sub. I never got the stock one, but I picked up a Boston Acoustics one for cheap at a garage sale.
I've got my turntable hooked up, along with a cheap old CD player and a Google Chromecast Audio so I can play my digital collection.

I've always been a needledropper. Even back in the old cassette days, I'd record the record & play the tape. I say that because I've been enjoying spinning vinyl to listen to it live. I'm liking it a lot!
I've actually been using a DSP. It's not a crazy surround sound one, it's just called all speaker stereo. It uses both front and rear speakers, and it will send anything that's mixed to the middle to the center speaker. The further away from center it is, the lower it is in the center speaker. If it's a sound that's only in one channel, it will not go to the center at all. It fills my room with sound nicely, and I get good separation, so I'm happy.
It is really nice to be able to play whatever I want in any format I want. If I want to spin vinyl, I can. If I want to play the CD (and I can find it), no problem. If I'm feeling lazy, I can just pull up my phone & play a file over the Chromecast Audio.

I know this is no audiophile system, by any means, but it sounds so good to me, and again, I'm really happy.

 

No thanks.

 

Or as Trump would say; "Wrong!"

 

Sad!

 

I got Pioneer SC-95 last week and played with 4.2 playback today by setting all my speakers to small and ran Mcacc Pro (keeping speakers settings). I really enjoyed some material in extended stereo mode. It was a much more immersive experience for certain songs.