I'm not one of the regulars, but tend to post here occasionally, so I guess an introduction is in order.
My name is Clive, 49 years old. I live in the UK, about 15 miles north of London. My day job is in IT: relational databases, client-server applications, database-aware web sites. > 1. You post about your music experience, your audio experience, what > drives you in this hobby, what brings you to Slim Devices, etc. I used to play drums (so I'm not a musician, although I do have a music O-level), but gave up as a teenager when I heard Bill Bruford and realised I had nothing to contribute to the art. My musical tastes are fairly wide-ranging, but the core of my collection is the stuff I grew up with: 70's rock - mainly that extremely unfashionable prog-rock stuff (Crimson, Yes, Canterbury bands, etc). Most of my in-depth audio experience came courtesy of the fact that one of my closest friends worked in HiFi retail (Studio 99) for many years, so I got to hear quite a lot of gear. I am also a very enthusiastic LP to digital transfer hobbyist. It started out in about 1994, using a Tascam DAT recorder and a 486DX4 PC with a 1.2GB disk (which was about the biggest you could get in those days) with a Zefiro ZA1 SPDIF I/O card, running Windows 3.11. Software for restoration was a bit thin on the ground in those days, so I wrote my own (which is available as shareware - but here is not the place for advertisements). Having finished my own LP collection (well, those albums which I hadn't replaced on CD), I can now be found visiting record fairs looking for albums to feed the habit. Current PC is an Athlon XP2400+, 512MB RAM, 600GB of disk, and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard. What brings me to Slim Devices? Well, I bought a Rio Karma DAP, which required ripping (some) CDs to disk. So then I started thinking about perhaps playing music from the hard disk into the stereo, and bought a SB2 on impulse to see how it performed. The "paradigm shift" (what a dreadful phrase) was a revelation, and after ripping the entire CD collection into FLAC, I quickly - albeit reluctantly - made the decision to sell my preamp and much-loved Micro-Seiki CD-M100 CD player. They were simply redundant. > 2. You post about your current, past, and future (hopefully!) rigs. > Discuss your room, speaker placement, cables, whatever. My audio history is fairly long and chequered (about 35 years). I've been through the inevitable Linn/Naim phase, which ended around 1993. The Naim 135s and passive Isobariks were sold and replaced with a pair of ATC SCM100As, which I have to this day. I still have the Linn LP12 and Naim preamp, which are used in my LP transfer setup. The current rig is minimal in the extreme: SB2(wired) analogue output feeding the ATC speakers via a balanced line driver that incorporates about 12dB of attenuation. There's a Transporter on order which will replace the SB2 and balanced line driver. Cables? Just basic decent quality home-built stuff: nothing exotic. Room is about 12 by 30 feet, ceiling is 8 feet high. Typical lounge furnishings, so the room is not too lively or dead. Unfortunately domestic considerations mean that the speakers have to fire down the length of the room. There are some noticable dips and peaks in the bass response when playing a sweep tone, but nothing too horrendous. I'm interested in DRC, but at the moment Slimserver is running on a 533MHz PC, so there isn't enough CPU power to even think about it. > 3. Say something about your audio philosophy. For example, do you > believe in blind testing or not? Why? I'm strictly a stereo guy. Friends who have surround sound seem to be constantly fiddling with it rather than just sitting down to enjoy some music. I do believe in blind testing as a means of discovering what physical noise a system makes. I also believe that what the listener actually hears when not doing a blind test is psychologically affected by lots of other factors, such as how they're feeling, the look and tactile feel of the equipment, probably even the badge on it. And I have no problem with someone hearing a difference between two items even though ABX testing establishes that they make the same physical noise. My old Micro-Seiki CD player was probably no better than a host of other players in terms of aural performance, but it was such an exquisite piece of furniture that it sounded better to me than it had any right to. Self-delusion in these matters is human nature; it's not a character flaw. > 4. Say something about what brings you to the forum and what you hope > to get out of it. I first came to the forum to get information and advice. In return, I would like to offer advice to others where I feel able to do so. And I might make the odd flippant comment now and then. > 5. No one -- absolutely NO ONE -- is allowed to flame, diss, nag, or > anything of this sort in this thread. Spoilsport. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. -- cliveb Performers -> dozens of mixers and effects -> clipped/hypercompressed mastering -> you think a few extra ps of jitter matters? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30141 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
