What was the last bit of gear you bought in 2023?

My speakers sit on a thin carpet over a concrete floor and the Herbie’s Cone/Spike Decoupling Gliders work exceptionally well in this environment. I also bought a set to sit under my HiFi rack. Great performance and speakers and stand are easy to move if needed.

2 Likes

I suppose there is always trial and error and decide for yourself. When I had a pair of speakers for home demo they forgot to include the spikes so used for few days without until they arrived. And yes you’ve guessed it, I preferred without spikes. Yet when I made a purchase I still used spikes. Why? Because that’s what I was always taught to do. Even though it took me hours to get everything acceptably but not perfectly level
The speakers on the Herbies feel more stable and sound better on my floor.
EDIT: Just listened again to Joy of a toy and there is no doubt the system is sounding better . Good excuse to play such a brilliant album twice in a day.

2 Likes

Good stuff, messing around with stands and various mediums between speaker and stand and stand and floor can certainly produce some interesting and varied results as I’ve discovered, I’m using thin walled Spendors so they’re quite sensitive to these changes.

1 Like

What really matters is the compliance, just use a heavier counterweight.

My Naim adventure ‘Phase 2’ sees its first fruit today. I’m off to pick up a DAC V1 from a purveyor of preloved HiFi equipment.
Will post pictures and views later.

2 Likes

Upgrading my Mac mini late 2014 from SATA hard drive to a Samsung 500GB SSD which Audirvana runs on. There’s a simple update available to those mac minis that I have missed out on. You buy an adapter called NVME SSD adapter which you mount the M.2 NVME SSD disk onto. Super small footprint. This bundle you just connect to the visible connector under the round rubber plate on the mac mini and done. Performance shall increase dramatically which is good since the HDD is slowing down OS performance a lot these days. I use the mac mini to run Audirvana and earlier used it to run Roon. All parts to upgrade from normal HDD to SSD cost me about 45 GBP.

Also started a membership with the awesome radio stream Jazz Groove. Got the FLAC link and entered it in Audirvana and saved it as a playlist which now sends my NDS an PCM 44.1/1411kb.s stream which sounds great.

2 Likes

I ‘had’ a LaCie d2 Professional 4TB drive attached to my Mac Mini until yesterday. It has had a complete logic failure and will no longer mount, even though it is visible within the system config information.
I will be replacing it with a Mac Mini Dock with SATA Bay and fitting a 2TB Samsung SSD.
A much tidier solution that will hopefully be more reliable.
The LaCie d2 is 10 months old and Amazon have agreed a full refund. The replacement parts will save me £30.

The dock connects to the mac mini over USB? Will that throttle the performance compared to mounting an NWME SSD directly inside the mac mini?

Yes, but it’s not a problem as I’m only using it as a repository for HiRes music files.
Connected via USB C it should be more than fast enough for the Media Room system and via the network to the future ND5 XS2.

1 Like

Big fan of the Spendors range. My room won’t tolerate floorstanders or rear ported design but sealed boxes might be worth a listen if I ever fancy change in the future.

1 Like

Hello, @igahman. I have Spendor D7.2s which have quite small rear ports. They are positioned close to the walls but still sound absolutely superb, no bass flabbiness etc. Well worth an audition – even if space is limited.

1 Like

Rega doesn’t recommend also heavier arms than 11 g, if i remember well for the RB3000.

11g is the effective mass published for Rega tonearms, I don’t think it’s related to cartridge weight limits.

How would a room differentiate between standmount or floorstanders? Or is it that you have room issues below certain frequencies, and floorstanders often (but not necessarily) will go lower than standmounts.

They need to be just far away from any boundary not to impede airflow. A rule of thumb is the diameter of the port. Beyond that, the port location really doesn’t make a difference.

1 Like

Specifications

Effective length: 237mm

Overhang: 15mm

REGA RB3000 Specs:    Mounting distance: 222mm

Effective mass: 11.5g

Cartridge weight: 4 to 11g

1 Like

Okay, I never saw that before, good info :+1:t2:

Just to nip this in the bud - Rega make an extra-heavy counterweight. I’ve ordered one solely so that it can be closer to the pivot which is, I believe, the best solution.

2 Likes




HiFi Rose RS150B to replace a Node

11 Likes

Many reasons which others in the Community could explain better than me.
Speaker/room compatibility is huge subject.
When I last changed my speakers I wanted floor standers but couldn’t get a pair that sounded right.
Top of my list was Neat sx2 . Good match for my system, price was right, looked good, well reviewed and sounded brilliant in my dealers showroom but in my home they sounded awful.
Ended up with stand mounters that weren’t even on my shortlist and above budget but sounded brilliant.
Which of course is why you should never buy speakers until you hear them in your home.

1 Like

I can wholeheartedly recommend the 120g Expressimo Audio Half Moon weight, I don’t know if it’s because the underhung weight or the Delrin interface but it tightens the bass and adds drama to the music.