What was the last bit of gear you bought in 2026?

Apple AirPods Pro3. Remarkably good SQ and such a clever design.

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Did you have Airpods 2 before? I sent my 3 back because I thought 2 sounded much better.

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Nope. I didn’t buy them for music, but was pleasantly surprised how good they sound.

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When I asked my dealer about NACA5 jumpers for my Totems, he made up short lengths of A5 with bare wire ends.

You will be pleased to know that you can get SL jumpers too, I’ve a used pair on my Forests that I bought used.

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They rarely come turn up used but it would be of interest if they did :slight_smile:

I’m surprised the same cable, bare wired, sounded so different from gold plated connectors. It’s only 20cm of cable.

Might buy me 1m of KS-1 and try as bare wired jumpers too.

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When you’ve heard the same cable with different connectors, it can be rather surprising how much impact the connector itself can have on sound. I’ve often said, if we’re talking say a copper conductor, once you get to a certain quality of copper, the connectors themselves will often have more impact on sound vs the cable itself. A crazy thing this audio hobby! :grin:

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Amazing that you have multiple decks to try it on. My very first real TT was a 1200. Based on your initial observations the mass of the Gravity Two likely conflicts with Rega’s design philosophy which is strongly represented in the P6 (light and rigid). Maybe the P2 and P3 are more forgiving?

Thing is it weighs less than half an album, so downforce isn’t its design goal. It is supposedly vibration suppression.

Yet to try it on a Rega but more prepared with an open mind following more encouraging results on the second Technics deck.

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Bought a second hand Muso QB2 as a temporarily replacement of the Uniti Star as it has been shipped tot Latham (and i would not be suprised if it eventually has to be shipped to Naim itself).

Quite an impressive bit of kit. Sounds rather mature, allthough the higher frequencies are sounding a bit dim. For now happy to have some music in the living room.

Upon return it will enable multiroom application, which will be a plus when we move to our appartment as well (balcony stereo).

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I have also now been using the HE XLR output to my Meze Elite headphones using Naim’s UPnP (i.e. without roon and EQ) streaming and this also sounds excellent - just a slightly different presentation than the roon/EQ signal path.
The HE is also a good streaming pre-amp into my NC250 - not as hi-def as with my main Linn Selekt, but a nice relaxing presentation and a good match with the NC250.
I can see/hear why people have chosen the HE with powered active speakers as a nice compact system (subject to the physical size of said active speakers :grin: )

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Could this be the birds bridge? :wink: @Blackbird

No idea. Mine flew down to Belgium some weeks back :airplane: :belgium:

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No. It’s grey, not black. :zany_face:

Bought (Amazon) but not yet delivered. Chose this one because I was so impressed with the SQ from the Go Max dongle, which I’ll still use for travel and summer patio-lolling with the smartphone. Lounge-based headphones listening will now be from the system.

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Bought a Uniti Core last May and it has been suffering from the same localised network issues that our NDX2 and ND5 XS2 did.
Replaced them with the Linn DSM’s last year and this year the Core went too.
Now have a ROON Nucleus One with the SSD from the Core installed.


Not a single problem experienced since its installation last week.
Also the 10 year old VCS has been replaced by a HummingGuru.

Just setup this morning and only one record cleaned, but the results were simply ASTONISHING!!:flushed_face:

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@Blackbird Are you referring to AirPod pro 2? I am thinking of buying pods…

I personally preferred the sound of Airpod Pro 2 over Pro 3. Pro 2 has a more balanced neutral sound whereas Pro 3 had a stronger V-shaped signature. I googled this after I bought them and found out more had same issues. So I returned them. Apple store accepts returns of their earphones free of charge even if you used them. Few stores do.

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If you don’t mind me asking which HG model is that, basic or…?

Yeah just the standard one without the 7” or 10” adapters. The Nova apparently does away with the need for adapters, but I only have 12” vinyl so went for the standard model.
Just cleaned and played my second record (original 1977 PF Animals) and it’s significantly reduced the surface noise from this 48 year old and well played piece of Vinyl. :blush:

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Thanks for prompt response.

On my might buy list for this year, I was going to look at a higher spec model but clearly as I too only have 12” vinyl this model should be perfect.

More research to do but it looks as though this might be a fixture in the house sooner rather than later.

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