groovyd

Desktop and mains

OMG this has got to be amazing right... it has a tube and it's a Cavalli and it's a Massdrop. What more could anyone ask for https://head-fi.org/threads/massdrop-x-alex-cavalli-tube-hybrid-amp-cth-dropping-monday.857673/#post-13654584 edited: ah man i was so excited till i saw this... ''Please be aware that this is not made by Cavalli. It's made by Massdrop by a China manufacturer with the Cavalli name being licensed, etc.''

LOL... how far is the place from Decatur? Anyone nearby want to carpool? I hate driving around Atlanta unless I have to...

Eventually got it to calibrate but doubting the accuracy of calibration. Anyway, also finally got my PrimaLuna DiaLogue HP amp to power my headphones but coincidentally the post office seems to have all of my headphones stuck in clearance somewhere in Riga which I sent to be calibrated now a month ago. Little nervous.

ATL meet? I live in Decatur...

mixed nuts from nuts.com... great stuff

lol this is hilarious and great response... i had a feeling there was a ton of this going on over there

Zoom TAC-2R fixes the latency issue with speaker position estimation but my D100 DAC appears to be sample drifting enough to make it impossible to finish the last 10 calibration measurements. Have to get some adapter cables to hook the Zoom outputs up directly to my speaker amps thus using the thunderbolt interface for both ADC and DAC. It is quite a challenge to get this thing calibrated with their very picky software. I'd say it is trying to be too phase precise in what is ultimately a simple EQ non-phase setting to optimize around a target listening space of about 4' x 4'. Really I don't need perfect flat, not in this room, maybe a studio but certainly not this room. Anything even close would do unfortunately it doesn't let you accept what you can get and just make the file from it. It has to pass all 25 measurement spots and a few more.

Turns out sonarworks does not work with the shure xlr to usb adapter i originally got for it so had to pickup a thunderbolt based zoom audio interface for reduced latency. this is getting costly to calibrate. really hope it works and makes a positive change.

Purchased full Sonarworks setup for calibration of both headphones and speakers using reference mic. Has made a pretty significant improvement to my LCD-X already. Should be interesting to see how the maggies take to it.

lol... exactly

You can't polish a turd

room is narrow and long. they fire roughly into the middle of the room lengthwise. there are no chairs there for listening, couch on the side. they were really meant to just fill the room with high quality sound even at low listening levels since it's a condo. the mini's are what i 'listen' to while working on the computer (programmer) and when i really care about 'listening' i fire up the WA7 and put on the X's. the 20.7's are really just for ambience around the mini desktop setup which is the normal place i sit. stereo is on all day every day. headphones get used maybe an hour a day anymore since the minis + 20.7's do a pretty good job on their own. i have adjusted the mini gain to match the fixed mc252 gain through the 20.7s so the transition from walking around to sitting is seamless. speakers can be muted from D100 for example when i need to answer skype which i do via the MHP1000's which are connected directly to the D100 and always on. since they are semi-closed it helps isolate for things like computer calls and meetings etc. I much prefer the sound of the X's through the WA7 for any serious listening. if i ever move from here will most likely be to a proper home where i can set them up in more of a listening room fashion and actually turn up the volume

yeah the room is the limiting factor here. i actually got the biggest maggies possible because i knew the room would be killing the half of it. Can't really move them much from the wall without them being in the middle of the room. I was hoping the angle into the corners would reduce the back wave into the driver a bit but think a sheet of some acoustic damper on the wall behind them might be my best option. They still sound incredible but I know they aren't showing their best at the moment.

awesome amp! yeah i am sure that thing can put down some sound. my only concern is at the impedance of the X the Dialogue has quite high distortion (1% i think). Just not sure if that is something I would even hear and if I did could it maybe even add to the sound? I love the warm tube sound (due to distortion?) and a lot of people seem to prefer the speaker tap sound which I am assuming this would closely represent since it was designed foremost as a high power speaker amp and switched to a headphone amp with what I am guessing is similar circuitry to speaker tapping inside.