h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just came across you by accident!

I have penned a couple of entries that may interest you http://www.h2g2.com/A444395 about Hi-Fi generally, and http://www.h2g2.com/A447581 about some singers/songwriters.

If either/both interest you, I would be very glad of your input. They are both on the recommended list, so will, sooner or later, end up in the Guide.

To enter your club, I see I need to specify. I have a MF A3 CD player (which is new and a great improvement on the old MF CD1) an MF Typhoon bi-amped system (about to be replaced by the new A3 Integrated, thus losing two boxes!) and Tannoy 638 speakers. Also an MF A3 FM Tuner which is not much better than the old T1 it replaced, which was miles better than the Arcam unit before that, a Nakamichi tape deck and a Bang & Olufsen turntable. As you might suppose, I have special access to MF and Tannoy, but nevertheless am as happy as I could be with the system.

I am very envious your D500's. A Tannoy engineer told me that the D900 was the best speaker they ever made, and I was certainly impressed with the series when I first heard it. I also once had an Armstrong amp, which was great, and after that a Sugden, which is still going strong with my brother.

Anyway, glad to have found you, if belatedly, and I really would appreciate any input you can come up with. Assuming that is that you are still alive and going on h2g2!

Hi Pheroneous, glad to meet you.

Yes - still very much alive, but holidays and duff computers have been restricting my input of late. I also haven't done much to advertise the site, so it isn't likely to make the "five most popular" for a while. I will get round to it. And I will get you installed in your own room as soon as I can. Why not say hello to Nitpicker in the meantime?

You're keen on Musical Fidelity gear, then! I like the sound of some of their beefy new power amps, but I'm not into spending big bucks on them until I get around to seeing what a replacement CD player reveals about the system, and I won't be doing that until my Arcam dies. My Tannoys were a 40th birthday present from my partner, which kind of took the sting out of having so many candles on the cake! I can't see me changing them for quite a while either, as they're just on the limits of domestic acceptability as it is. Plus I really like the big-scale sound they make.

Speak to you some more when I get a moment.

I do quite like the MF stuff, but their main virtue, for me, is the massive discount I can get through a Hi-Fi shop that my company runs. Even so, I think you get pretty good bang for bucks in comparison, and their previously notorious unreliability has improved no end. Also, I think their 'X' series did a lot to revive their reputation. Clever marketing, and pretty good stuff too. Even so, their reputation overseas, esp. Far East, is much better than here.

I must say that my change in CD player was a surprise. I hadn't expected such a difference. So, you are right to go for that next imho.

My problem at present is a QED switching box that I use to make a crude four way multiroom system. It is very flimsy, and the bananas in the back very close together. Trouble is I can't find anything more substantial to do the same job.

Yes, a friend of mine had the Class A MF amp that everybody loved (can't remember the s/no) and it died spectacularly by taking both the bass drivers out in his Spendor BC1A's. So he won't be buying any more MF kit.... But I'm sure the reliability is better now, and they were very good to me when I found the Elektra pre-amp cheap and they sent me a remote control and even a battery free of charge!

Your QED box sounds like a problem - I'm not too bad at DIY so I would probably build one with the chunkiest components I could find. It would be a lot of work compared to just buying one off the shelf, though, I'll admit.

You'll maybe notice I've been making a bid to get some new members into the Club Rooms. Hopefully we'll get some good conversations going soon. I mean, DNA is supposed to be a bit of a hi-fi buff himself after all...

my modest system,front mains,infinity Qa 10 inch woofers conventinal sealed full size cabinets,rear mains acousti-phase 10 inch woofers rear ported full size cabinets.front and rear have rubber surrond woofers the rear are now two way to macth the front and all four have macthing epicure inverted dome tweeters. these set on top of full size cabinets with 12inch full range speakers. for the mains im useing a sansui av reciever with surround sound.the 12s are powered by a oki reel to reel with a utah,studio4,ambience regenerator doing the surrond matrix bit.a sae preamp eq runs off one of the tape loops of the main amp before the oki so anything imputed to either amp can be played on the other one. two macthing philips electronics turntables,one with a shure cartridge the other with an empire.a onkyo ta2025.a technics rs-tr355 dubbing deck and a old technics m6 single deck with big ole vu`s take care of my cassette tape needs(the onkyo sounds as good as any cd player ive heard so far)a magnavox five disc cd player,a rca home theatre vcr and a mitsubishi vcr with full size phone plugs on the front that let me dub sound on sound on vcr tapes and a six band per channel numark eq for the vcr's rounds it off.oh yeah a sega dreamcast gives me a single play cd and cheap internet access some mp3 downloads. last but not least a model vv 4-3 victrola

Hi james.

Wow! where do you find room to sit?!

That sounds like the lights should dim when you turn the volume up, and if you're not already in a detached house, I've a feeling you soon will be...

I've not had experience of most of what you describe, although I did hear a pair of Infinity speakers making a nice noise at a Hi Fi show once. Very sweet treble I seem to remember.

So you're running a home theatre set-up without a centre front speaker, are you? Do you use the Phantom Centre setting on your processor, or do you just use your rears for ambience? I have a modest surround set-up whose processor has gone belly up on me, so for the moment I just feed the TV output to the main speakers. Strangely, you can occasionally hear sounds coming from behind, even though the rears aren't switched on - spooky!

Oh, and what's the Victrola? I thought they made wind-up gramophones?

I'll post a room up for you as soon as I get a chance.

hi,the victrola is of the crank up kind and is'nt hooked in to the rest unless i mike it,which i have done before and gotten some surprizeingly good recordings with some eq-ing of the bass.it never ceases to amaze me and can be quite loud on its own.its become a reference.the only drawback being ive recently been informed the needles ive been useing are only good for one play.two plays was the old standard.thankfully they dont cost much and come in packets of 100.center channel speakers are a bad joke imho.they take away from the overall sound. i refuse to believe i need one system for vidieo and another for music i like all the seperation between channels i cant get.soundtracks have been in stereo for as long or longer then home audio has been.if the voice parts arnt centered in the sound stage or anything esle for that mater its not supposed to be or the sound engineer is'nt doing a proper job of it.another marketing lie is that there is not much bass in surround.there is unless your processer is eq-ing it out for you.sansui was one of the first to develop a four channel matrix back in the seventys.mines nothing special only50-60 watts per channel maybe a step or two above entry level going on about 10 years old now,not a bad remote control.the infinitys seem to like it.and they did leave the bass in the surrond.about the infinitys they had little electrostatic type tweeters which sounded real good but unfortunatly or maybe not one blew thats what made me macth up the front and rear with the epicure tweets the inverted domes give a pretty tight dispersion pattern and it does sound better with all four macthed.the four 12s let me adjust the mid range to my mood and the type of music im listening to.i forgot about the sub woofer cause i hardly ever use it i geuss un less i want to go out side and listen to the windows shake or drowned out the nieghbors yelling at each other.its powered by a old bogen mono tube amp,i use the tv as a preamp so i can control the voulme by remote.anyway been up for about thirty hours now and feel im going on a bit .nice to meet you

thats supose to be all the seperation i can get not cant.and i know some may say the rear channels might take away from the stereo image too but i leave that turned down to where its just auditable just enough to open the room up some,unless its engineered to be a true ambient recording like the techno space stuff.even some of the beatles recordings had this in mind i think sure sounds like it to me

Well one old trick people used to do was to plug a single rear speaker across the two positive speaker terminals of a stereo amp. The signal it gets through it is the out-of-phase information in the mix. The more ambient a recording or the bigger the difference between the channels, the more you'd hear through this speaker. So the Beatles recordings where things were panned hard left or right would generate a lot of stuff in a surround system.

Have to go off on me hols now, james, but I'll get your room posted up when I get back in the new year. In the meantime, season's greetings to you.