It's a mini adventure in hifi!

That's it! Rub it in!!!

To be fair my WAP is also old in IT years. It's about 3 year old Netgear and only supports 802.11b. Perhaps it's time for an upgrade.

 

Ahhh, trying to stream FLAC over b is a route to madness.

 

I've ordered a 7dB gain antenna for my WAP to replace the 3dB one. I'll also check what channel neighbour's wifi is on and use a non-overlapping channel... hopefully that should get rid of interference issues.

 

Yup.

Concrete good, floorboards bad.

Beleive me, it really really does! Extremely effective; stunning value for money

I think it's nice that somewhere in this world someone is prepared to stand up for their true art and deeply held beliefs and put concrete before the need for a second settee... or, erm, coffee table.

Having seen it in the stone, I do rather like the granite equipment rack... it's very hard for things to be knocked off accidentally and they haven't got very far to fall
And, in the absence of a remote for volume, it places the volume control in very easy reach - foot operated volume?

Chris

 

I have a granite equipment rack, and very nice it looks too.

Weighs a ton of course.

Doesn't affect the sound one iota of course, but it does look pretty.

 

In Isaac's room it (dramaticallly) helps break up a horrible resonance from the floorboards

Chris

 

I had the same issue of resonance from the floorboards, and it virtually disappeared when I put the speakers on the solid steel plinths donated by a kind ZG member (KUB3).

 

As you are having a Squeezebiox conversation. Can people say what their backup arrangements are, in anticipation of the day when the hard disk lies down and dies, as all hard disks do?

I have two 320Gb hard disks in my home PC, which is my music server, and I have software that keeps the music directories in the two hard disks identical. This doesn't protect me from fire or theft, but it gives me some protection from hard disk failure.

 

Currently nothing, as I've not yet acquired the NAS which will hold the collection. Once FLACed I will probably back up to DVDs, then add backups as an appropriate amount of new material is added. Ultimately, the CDs themselves are there as backups too of course.

 

ah.

I had a similar problem.

I put 2 layers of sound absorbancy down, then thick underlay, then the carpet, then a big rug.

 

Problem is that the room is REALLY bad in that it is rather dull at HF already... even as a bare room it had no echo, and with just a sofa and an oil painting it's rather dead at HF. Lower down, without the concrete there's a HUGE peak at 40Hz where resonance just takes hold (there's a ~2-3ft deep cavity beneath the floorboards). Sorting the floor as you describe would help, but it would further dull the HF. The granite/concrete loads the floor and massively pulls down the 40Hz boom, as well as livening the HF a little. Once I get ChrisPa's room measuring rig figured out then I'll get more info.

 

If it's your house, and you have access to the void under the floor (i assume it's the ground floor) - get in their and brace the lot with some 2x4s and folding wedges.

PM if you want more info...

(nice setup BTW!)

 

I've considered that Felix.... the concrete is a temporary solution/experiment just to prove that the floor was the real problem. I'd have to take the floor up to get under it.

 

Rather than go to all that trouble, why not put your 2 data drives in a RAID 1 Mirror? Windows XP will let you do that from disk management. Then you have the benefit of instant backups which are online all the time, no messing around with synch software and a simple job come 'change the hard drive' time.

 

Regretably, Raid doesn't protect us against human error..

Delete something by mistake and it affects both drives, as would data corruption virus or whatever (I think).

Granted, Raid provides protection against mechanical failure but for 'real' backup protection use a seperate external hard drive, and if possible keep it somewhere completely seperate from the pc so they don't both get nicked!

 

I've been playing with a couple of DACs (a Tenson modified Benringer DEQ 24/96 and a WM modified Entech) with the SB3. I found it quite hard initially to make comparisons because of the different output levels on the SB3, Entech and Behringer, so Simon came over to assist and made a few adjustments to the DEQ to match the levels as best as we could hear. I asked him to come over because I couldn't be bothered to RTFM.

I'm not very hot on writing reviews and my hearing's shot but briefly, I'd say the order of preference was the Behringer, followed by the SB3 and then the Entech.

To me, there was not a night and day difference between the Entech and SB, but I marginally preferred the SB, probably because the SB seems to have a better bass response. This was a big surprise, I expected the Entech to win easily.

The Behringer had better treble detail than the SB3. We also tried the Behringer against my Arcam 9 CDP and the DEQ sounded more detailed but not as warm as the CDP. I still don't feel tempted to sell the Arcam.

This may be asking a lot but I'd like to buy a DAC that sounds substantially better than the Arcam and the SB3. Any suggestions? I realise that it's possible that my amp and speakers (not to mention my hearing) may be holding back the Behringer, in which case should I even be looking at any DA upgrades?.

BTW, I only played with room EQ briefly. and to me it sounded quite surreal. The bass seemed to become leaner, not sure if I preferred it.

 

Stop faffing about and get a Chord DAC64. It's what Jesus would do.

 

Jesus would probably have a bit more money and a more understanding boss.

 

'And Jesus said unto his disciples: "Yea, verily I say unto thee, thou gettest what thou payest for"'. (Matt 2:34).

 

Not alway Joe, and certainly not in HiFi, otherwise a £2k interconnect should crap all over a £50 one. I originally bought the Entech because at the time it sounded better than the McLaren DAC20 despite the fact that it only cost a fraction of it's price.