Video blog chronicling the activity of an OCD Audiophile who has a career designing, manufacturing and selling HiFi gear and accessories. Im generally skeptical and jaded, and Ive decided to start to educate the buyers, so if you subscribe, Youll get a notification when I post a new Vid showing you how to tell the real HiFi from the fake HiFi. Keep in mind I am used to the top level of Boutique 2 channel Audio. My rig is over $100K
Source: Self built server with JCAT USB card and JCAT Power supply DAC: Playback Designs MPD-8 Active Xover cstm Marchand 4 way fully discrete differential Amplifiers. Sub-2x Rythmik Audio, Low and Mid-2x Jeff Rowland 625S2, High - 2x NAT Audio Magma NEW Loudspeakers: Analysis Audio Amphitryon made into 3 way with custom additional 60 inch Magnepan ribbon tweeter. Townshend Audio Supertweeters added on back of panel. Subwoofers: dual Rythmik Audio 3x12 inch servo sub towers 6 subs in all
You can hear clearly the difference with vinyl playback,even with the cheap ones(turntable and cartridge)mickey.I can't understand the problem,don't get me wrong ,please,but it is something organic,anyone who listens to records can understand what i mean.Anyway,i love your videos,please,don't get me wrong,this is my opinion,thank you!!
I have an Astell and Kern KANN loaded with everything from old MP3's to CD rips to the most popular versions of hi-res and by far the stand-out is "Toys in the Attic" by Aerosmith on DSD. My "Thriller" by Michael Jackson is the only other DSD and isn't that great, so not all DSD are made alike, but when it's good, there's none better
Love the Dali kore! But probably needs more amplification for that speaker! Maybe your NAT audio giant tube SET amplifiers will wake them up nicely to stun us all!
I just found your videos and I can't get enough. Would like to email you and ask a few questions. Just need to know the fee. You have given me so many ideas. Thanks!!!!
I’d love to build my own tower speakers someday . In order to get past the passive crossover trial and error building , I’d love to go active . Been doing active crossovers for decades in car audio, not sure why there’s so few options in home audio
Thank you for the reiview of what I'd call midfi. I'm a midfi guy as I have other expensive hobbies and don't have unlimited funds. I'd like to go seperates but the Peachtree is on the radar. I have been looking to put together a system with .7 or 1.7 Maggies. No, I don't expect it to compete with the $20k+ system. Honest reviews of midfi isn't the easiest to find as more are reviewers of Hifi or fun fi. They are not the same. The fun fi reviewers often review something up market but pair it with their fun fi crap then say the mid fi stuff is over priced.
Chord and Soulution use aerospace grade switching power supplies - they operate in the Mhz range, Old school linear psu's will give off a lot of heat., but dam if they don't sound f..king great! FYI: Chord uses MOSFET and Soulution use bipolar output devices (transistors)
All too funny, keep up what you do. Needed a good laugh this Monday. You nailed it as far as I can tell it looked like dead on like the myriad of reviewers out there. Remote part was to die for.
Another Class D GanFET integrated amplifier is Java HiFi from New Zealand. It beats the hell out of my AGD Audions V2 and the Orchard Audio monoblovks in my system.
Love the video. Puts things into perspective. But it begs a question... where to focus and put your money. Suppose you had a budget of 10K or 20K for everything. Where should you focus? At some point, you hit a point of diminishing returns. I guess a challenge to you would be to find a mix of components that will punch about their weight in a given weight class. Could you build out a system who's total budget is ~50K that beats out a 100K or 200K system? I'd also tell you to save your money on your network switch. Just go out and buy a decent 10GbE switch using CAT 7 cables from MicroCenter / NewEgg . 'Audio Grade' Network switches are a myth.
Again, wonderful music. Mikey, if you are really in music from Mali, check out “Agadez” by Bombino. Keep exposing tribe members to more world music. Take care.
The Wall was almost certainly recorded on analog tape, so that’s one scenario where if a DSD file was made directly from the analog tape, it IS worth seeking high rez. But I 100% agree that virtually all recordings made since the late 80’s are certainly recorded in 16/44.1 and it makes ZERO sense to pursue an up-converted “hi-res” version. You’re just introducing more artifacts. Keep preaching, Mikey!
You’re 100% correct, Mikey. I’ve had the good fortune as an entrepreneur to have grown some of my businesses to a fairly large scale and I’ve spent a lot of time with ultra-high net worth people and most of them have no idea that high end audio even exists. When I tell them about it, most balk at the idea arguing that it can’t be any better than their $2K Bose or Sonos systems. My previous business partner had a net worth of $100mm and would gladly spend $50K on a few hour private jet flight but laughed at the idea of spending even a tenth of that on audio system that he could last a lifetime - and that particular guy liked music quite a bit. Totally uneducated on the topic.
Yeah the Maria killed it. I could hear you easily over that peachtreason. Maybeeeee its putting out 50 wpc. Unless those speakers are 82db efficient........not! lol It does look ok, but I thought it was going to fly out of your hands when you lifted it out of the box. Not my taste, but it does look ok. My Emerald Physics 200.2SE would destroy that amp.
@@OCDHIFiGuy I'll form a society for fair pricing, e.g. create a photo with a Porsche Cheyenne or top notch Audi and beside it a hifi box and then assess pricing by voting from customers, with all ingredients accounted, work force, materials, intellectual property etc.
True words, if someone wants to check out a wide collection of "true" high res recordings you can check out NativeDSD though. They are extremely elaborate about what the original recording format was, where and how it was recorded etc and a lot of their stuff (not all) has original been recorded in some kind of high res format. They also offer all the other formats (usually converted with HQPlayer) which you can simply ignore. Since their labels are very high quality and special audiophile labels they actually put a ton of effort into high quality recording of the whole process, i.e. location, equipment, proper mastering etc the whole chain and you can easily hear that those are indeed phenomenal. They are an exception in the industry though and may account for 0.00001% of the music out there, or maybe less 😂 For audiophiles seeking some killer high quality recordings (of which the original high res format is actually just one of many factors and not the most important one which you can easily test yourself) there is a nice collection of thousands of these albums. I do have a good collection of their stuff and to my ears it's way above the average modern album released. They even have cool stuff such as albums additionally recorded via dummy-heads for binaureal listening via highend headphones which is another rare thing to find but again, pretty cool on highend headphone setups. A lot of music just doesn't sound "right" on headphones due to those modern studio recording. So you can play the same song on your highend headphone rig and it's "ok" but you check out the same song on a crappy compressed youtube video played back by a nice speaker system and it sounds wonderful. Those echos and reverbs in a room sound natural and only proper binaureal recordings sound the way they should. Crossfeed is a cheap joke in comparison.
Great piecemeal presentation of two integrated DAC-preamp-power amp products. The DH Maria sounds decent even cold, and the fit and finish is incredible. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts after the Maria is warmed up over several days. Did the Maria have your power cable attached?
CD quality has always been enough for me. I have listened to the next best thing over and over and was never impressed. Stuff sounds different not usually better! Anytime the "machine" pumps out too many advances too fast I put the breaks on, that goes for everything. In my opinion it takes a very long time for a truly good jump in quality. Marketing, a tool for taking your money.
Mikey try the Bluetooth input of the Maria just from your cellphone. Unbelievably good for $0 of streamers/severs/cables/routers/switches and bla bla bla.
