...and More Letters.

12 / 27 / 00

Hi Steve,

Stumbled across your website searching for info on 300B's. Difficult things to audition on home dem are tubes (here in UK anyway). I have a pair of Audion Silver Nights (slightly modified by Steven Harper's firm Audio Consultants, London NW1 - a quick plug for a very helpful and patient guy). Although very skeptical about the usefulness of reviews, the 300B comparison was therefore very interesting. For me the choice ultimately will be between JJ and Svetlana models but the Svetlanas are nearly twice as expensive as the JJs.

Anyway, a good site. It fills the hole between the aspirational (eg. Stereophile) and the budget market writings. About time the audiofreak (as opposed to audiophile) Joe Public (or GI Joe) had a voice.

Keep up the good work

Jeff Goodwin

12 / 26 / 00

Dude, you have a way-cool site. I am lusting for tubes Dude. Help, Give me a few great sounding, great looking names that I won't have to take out a  second mortgage to buy.

Thanks,
Aaron ( Bubba before it was cool )

12 / 23 / 00

I'm new to your site but I have greatly enjoyed it. Both presentation and content are very interesting and informative. I like diy tweaks and articles best. By the way thanks also for your vinyl list of records, which will make us enjoy the music more !!

Cheers and keep up the good work.

Joe Abdilla 

12 / 16 / 00

Thank you!

I'm researching for a paper, and I love your page - thank you for all the great information!

Courtney 

12 / 15 / 00

......keep up the good work, this hobby need people like you who have the fire of passion!

Marq

12 / 11 / 00

...Absolutely sweet site by the way; love the tube and turntable lust pages, too! 

oamnuayphol@800.com

12 / 03 / 00

Brilliant site !

Regards

Rob Heath

12 / 01 / 00

Just a quick "thank you" for the cart alignment protractor. It arrived quickly, just in time to mount my new Goldring 1022, and was a very big help. Keep up the work on your great website!

Kevin McDonald
Oswego, IL

Steve sez: Always glad to be of service. Others can score their free cartridge alignment protractor by clicking here.

11/26/00

Did you tried the Rainbow Foil or any other P.W.B. devices? I did get in touch with this fellow who was posting on Enjoy the music Forum, and did get curious about it so I ordered a sample! I would like to have your opinion on it.
Marq Doyon

My opinion? Go to your local big car parts store and check out the pin striping and stickers. You will see a product very close to "Rainbow Foil" for only $3 for a twelve foot by two (or three) inch wide length. Of course you can feel free to spend $20 on a small two inch by three inch or so piece. Barnum said it best "There's a sucker born every minute"

Enjoy the music,

Steven R. Rochlin

11/14/00

Hello-

I just wanted to write and tell you how much I enjoyed your tube lust portion of your web site. I have recently come into possession of a McIntosh labs MA230 which had been neglected over the years which I now plan to restore (as soon as I find out much much more about the whole thing) Your site was very motivational, thanks.

Keep up the great work

Steve Dewey

11/11/00

Thanks for the opportunity to comment and make suggestions - more site-owners should follow-suit. I would suggest dating the letters on the letters page. At present it is difficult (impossible?) for readers to know how old they are, and some time-frame would would put things more in context. When I get my speaker/s fixed I will again E.T.M..

Best wishes,

Brad McIntosh

Brad, we have now starting dating the letter we publish. While not all letters make it to this page, we encourage everyone to write to us their comments on articles as well as give us constructive criticisms.

Steven

11/3/00

Did you know?

That box shaped loudspeaker enclosures cause fatigue on the human ear starting at DB levels as low as 40 DB?

That box shaped loudspeaker enclosures haven't really change there over all design factors in nearly 75 years?

That putting round speakers in box shaped enclosures is like putting a round peg in a square hole and that most engineers just wouldn't do that.


That a study conducted at The RCA Princeton Audio Lab Department in 1933 concluded that the sphere was and is the ideal speaker enclosure?

That there have been several companies manufacturing spherical loudspeaker system enclosures for nearly 25 years. And that these enclosures out perform box shaped enclosure nearly 4 to one for area coverage and reproductive accuracy and produce little or no amplitude diffraction or mechanical movement distortion what so ever?

That there are companies out there trying to tell the industry that making furniture as loudspeaker enclosures is just not good for reducing the listening fatigue on the human ear?

Well, I just thought you'd like to know, or not or maybe the industry is not concerned with helping us all keep our hearing in tact. But, thank god some of the new manufacturers of spherical enclosure loudspeaker systems are.

Sincerely, James

Your website is just short of porno. Those pictures of turntables, with ECU (Extreme Close-up) just makes me drool. Great pictures! I have saved them all for my screen savers...

Louis McFarlane

The turntable lust page is great!!!!!!! both informative and, dare i say, sensual and funny. a definite bookmark!

Robert E. Warfel

Thank you very much Sir, I have spoken with Sead here in Sarajevo and he will give me one protractor. You are every kind and it would be great if there was more people like you - we would all be closer to achieving the absolute sound.

regards, Hazim.

RE: Meridian's New Reference 800 on the News Page

Steve,

Just a thought, how about going into a computer store and tell them you want to spend $12-16,000 on a computer?

I'll bet they would throw in a DVD RAM for $99.95c extra.

Have proudly owned Meridian speakers and pre-amp before so no direct criticism intended. But a quick heads up reality check may be in order
don't you think?

Regards

Grant Newby

Steve sez: Gary, imagine the REAL computer one could buy for $12,000...

Hi Steve:

I'm I big fan of your web site and have leaned hard on your tweaks pages. Recently, I spent a rough month installing three dedicated circuits in my listening room. This was a fairly nasty job because the house was finished and the wires were stapled up the studs inside the walls. Eventually there were 17 holes in the walls trailing from the listening room to the circuit breaker while I tried to pull three 70 foot runs of 12/2 through stud holes made for one wire. Huge mess, but well worth it afterward. My audio buddies did a before-and-after and called it a 40% improvement.

In any case, when I got to grounding the circuits, I agonized over the separate ground rod scheme you talk about in the tweaks. Even went so far as to pound in a ground rod. Then, while doing research, I ran across a paper entitled "The Hows and Why's of Isolated Grounding"  http://powerquality.com/art0043/art1.html. This is an excellent paper that explains why installing your own ground rod in a residence may indeed be unsafe and hazardous:

"Note that an effective ground path is not provided between the isolated, dedicated ground and the power source (service entrance) grounding electrode system. It is not known if the ground path between these two earth electrodes is permanent and continuous or of ample current-carrying capacity. Further, the ground path surely does not have a low enough impedance to allow the OPD to clear the ground fault quickly and safely."

I ran this paper by the engineers on rec.audio.high-end and they all agreed that the paper was correct. Please give it a read as it may save some readers from both extra work and possible injury.

I ended up terminating all three circuits to the neutral bar in the circuit panel and hear absolutely no noise.

Thanks for the hard work, great articles and the kick-butt web site.

Bob Lowery

hi steve

i love your site and all that groovy tube gear. in fact i got a 300b integrated w/the KR 300bxls tubes and it is truly superb. i am auditioning some speakers called ODEON 17 monitors - do you know any info on them or a web site to check out? i appreciate any help
keep up the great work

yours,
Robert K. Lyons

Steve sez:  Alas, i have not seen a website with them.   Anyone else?

Greetings

I have playing right now on my vintage Quad II amps, Anthem Pre-1 w/tubed phono and power supply, and Dual 601 w/ Shure M111E "THE VOICE" - Frank Sinatra --an original mono.... nice. Thanks for reminding me to play it. He was great.

David
Canada

Steve sez: What David is referring to is the Enjoy the Music.com contest with Classic Records.  We are giving away some wonderful music for free including a copy of Frank Sinatra's "The Voice".

Hey-o, Steven!

Just a quick note to let you know that your work...idiotic (!) hole-cuttin' and all...is appreciated by those of us who really do "enjoy the music"!

Rock on, dude....


David Robinson
Editor, Positive Feedback Magazine

Steven,

I apologize for the intrusion but I was amazed at the quality of the music on your web site. Especially streaming at 20K. Would you mind sharing how you made the sound so great!

Thanks

Joe

Steve sez: There is no *one* technique.  Think like a mastering engineer my friend (and have big $$$ in software).

Steve,

Sounds like a great merger.  I've never met Harvey but I sure enjoy his writing style and it's pretty hard not to like someone with the passion he displays for triodes. Good listening.

Fred
AudioNow!
http://www.audionow.com

I throughly enjoyed your coverage of the NY Noise. I have one question. Were the amps being demonstrated also driving the big TAD subs? I am speechless.

Gregory Hee

Steve sez: Yup!  Subs and all.  Sounded really groovy too.

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