Here we go again......

It's funny how things pan out in life. I had wanted too keep this blog updated regularly, but work and health prevented that for a while. Now while nothing has changed much on that score, I find I want to get on with my "Audio Life".   I've started a new Musicosis eBay record and music store located HERE. Early days yet with literally hundreds of records and CDs to be cleaned, graded, photographed and posted, but hopefully it's getting there, please check it out.

Eric Yam hand made Passive Pre, made to my
unique specification.

Also, I've been playing with equipment design and modification again, for the first time in ages.  I'm now using a passive pre, I configured this and had it made to my specs in Hong-Kong.  Using Vishay resistors in a stepped attenuator that presents a constant 50kOhm load to my Art Audio Quintet power amp and a hard point silver selector switch coupled with very high quality RCA sockets and Belden silver wire, this pre is just transparent.  I will be marketing it in the new year, as a bespoke produt,  under my Shushan Audio brand.

Moon LP3 Phono Preamplifier

As I now needed a phono-stage, I auditioned a few O'Briens in Wimbledon offered me a new Moon LP3 for less than half price and as I like Sim Audio products and I can't resist a bargain, I took home to try.  The highs and mids were sublime, the mids being especially fluid.  The bass to me lacked just a little weight and the obvious culprit was the tacky switch mode wall wart power supply.

A "Mains Cables 'R' Us" Power supply
main unit

I know it's all about cost, but why do manufactures lobotomise their products with these crappy things?  I discussed this with David Phillips at "Mains Cables 'R' Us" and decided on one of his top of the range three box units.  this sorted the bass end perfectly, increased the overall dynamic range and lucidity and made the whole thing holographic it terms of stability of image.

On the digital side,  I started playing around with DACs again last year, as most commercially available product didn't cut it for me until you were spending at least £2,500.  However, I found a nice little Chinese supplied unit, which uses a Wolfson Upsampling Chip Set.  On this, I could easily modify the Op Amp as well, to make the thing operate as near single ended class A.  This works equally well from my Mac Mini, which is used both with iTunes and Spotify, as well as various other streaming sources on the net.  After a bit of experimentation, I discovered that using an optical cable, instead of a USB connector, sounded better.  This is, of course, because the glass in a piece of medical grade phase coherent fibre optic (or any other fibre optic, for that matter), does not transmit RFI from the noisy "computer environment" and as the input is all up sampled by the DAC anyway, quality is maintained.  Having reclaimed by Orelle CD 10 T from a dealer who had failed to commission sell it for me, I have put this back to use with the new DAC, with which, it sounds superb.

So, in all, the last few months have been a very busy period on the audio side and I hope to keep everything updated more regularly this year.

Thanks for reading!