Dipping a toe into the world of Hi-Fi

[Dartz]

Doing a load test. Everything on.



There's about ten different things into two multi-adapter sockets from one spur. Got to love 240V mains. You can really push it.

The CDP-790 is also proving itself a damned fine player for something that was mid-range at the time. I overpaid for mine to get one that'd been serviced - but its onboard single DAC more than matches my amplifier's 24-bit per-channel DACs for sound quality. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two. The only reason it's connected by Toslink rather than an analogue connection is convenience.

Anyway. After tracing an electric humm to a bad phone pre-amp picking up the EM noise from my laptop's power supply I bought a 'better' pre-amp for it. Project Phono-Box S2 is about as simple and basic as a record player pre-armp can get while still being 'good'. And it only cost about 150 quid, delivered.

It's definitely an improvement. The humm is almost completely killed - which tells me that the previous amp just didn't have an internal ground at all. I'd also say it sounds far nicer to listen to.

Also treated the turntable to a new drive-belt, a new cork platter mat and a new needle because the old one was about five years old.

The record player sounds at least as good as the CD Player now. It cost significantly more money to get it to that point. And it really attracts dust.

I suppose that's the thing. A well mastered CD will sound better than a record. But most of my CD's are brickwalled - the few that aren't frightened the shite out of me with voices appearring from the middle of nowhere and a sharp crispness to them. You know it's bad when your first reaction is 'Fuck that's loud' to one person counting before the track even starts.

A badly mastered record is awful. Especially masters that don't respect the constraints the format imposes. Death Magnetic on Vinyl is fucking terrible - it crackles and bounces the needle. However, most of my records sound better than their CD or digital equivelants solely because they can't be brickwalled. I've Amon Amarth's Fate of Norns album on record, and on digital and the record sounds a thousand times better, while the digital is just clipping constantly into mush.