High End Audiophile thread

Heh, variety is the spice of life
Nice kit, stands the test of time as well !
I considered the Anthem MCA2 II then ended up getting the Emotiva XPA-2.

Careful powering up older amps that have been in storage, the electrolytics in the power supply can go bang, causing further harm.
You can ease them back into life by using a Variac if they havent dried out too much.

 

actually...it was in service just before it was in storage..and directly from Anthem..they put 2 new coils from the new 5000 series in my MCA 2...but not a new PSupply...so just before it went into storage...it arc'd and im pretty sure its toast..and needs to be sent BACK IN sadly. the arc never damaged anything else...as ML saw fit to replace my ribbons and the complete panel array with their, at the time, next gen panels *same ones that are in the current ones So....I should be good...pending Anthem replaces/fixes my powersupply on my amp...awesome amp..never a complaint with it whatsoever and good neutral uncolored sound too it just sucked that it happened like that....the power source it was using was brand new wiring and everything...so...im guessing the coils were just too much for the PS in the amp?

 

I havent seen an Anthem 5000 amp, you mean the 500 AV amp?

The coils are part of the power supply.
They bring the AC voltage down from mains to close to the levels required for internal DC operation.
Perhaps they fitted higher VA rated coils to give higher headroom (higher max current flow on peaks), either that or your coils developed a fault and that is what they replaced them with.
Too high current can burn out circuits not designed for the power level, I wouldnt expect them to get this wrong though.

The arcing could have been capacitor failure due to aging.
When they age, they allow DC to pass through them.
If enough DC current flows, they can go out with a bang/spark.
I would have expected them to replace the caps if upgrading the tranformers (coils) on an aging power supply, unless they had already been replaced.
So maybe this isnt it.

Its possible the newer coils are wound to slightly higher voltage(s) and that caused an overload.
I wouldnt expect them to overlook that though.

There are many possibles, see what they say.

 

yeah...ill have to send it in once i pull it out...so that should be fun to pay the shipping on that...1/2 way across the country blah lulz

and yeah..it was the 5 channel amp that came out as the 'next gen' after the MCA II series..a few years later...

 

Bummer, whats with the shipping?
Is there nobody a bit closer that can help?

That is an interesting topic also, I have been told many times that if you are using older grear -vintage amps..etc that from time to time you should have them refitted with new components as certain discrete components degrade over time and need to be replaced.
From an electronics point of view, it does make sense.

 

Also, speakers can become magnetized after a long time of no use... Vintage amps sold today that don't work properly have probably been in storage and not used for a while. When they are continually used, they are fine...

regards,
RagDoll.

 

Capacitors degrade with use & time so with any vintage equipment it would be a worthwhile exercise recapping at some point.

 

well the arc'ing incident with my MCA2 occurred maybe a couple of months AFTER receiving it back from Anthem/SF themselves. I wouldnt have some local hack do the work esp when it was factory installed in the first place. Id rather pay the little bit more to ship and KNOW, ya know?

 

For sure have the manufacturer do the work.

 

Well holy ****! I just pickedup a Monster Power HDP 2500, and WOWOW. What a huge difference! Seriously, I had no idea that it was THIS LARGE of a difference...Jplay can lick my ____ compared to this difference. Wow. Clean filtered power....yay!


oh..and I accidently picked up a set of Ultralink Matrix 2 14 AWG speaker cables too whoops
butterfingers!

 

Hehe, thats something I've been meaning to do and completely forgot.
Damn, I may have to borrow some cash!

Does JPlay make much difference on top of that?
Does it make any difference when you have your PC on/off it?

 

well on preliminary watch...'Celebration Day' is FAR clearer...HDMI from my 5850...sound....well...theres more detail there, so much more...but thats just preliminary...Ive only had it going say..2 hours now? I listened to Chinese Democracy..an album I listen to an extensive amount..and I THOUGHT I had heard it all..with my B&W's....I was incorrect, vastly. Yes, it made that much difference on the initial listen. I dunno man...I talked the store down to $200 from $500 and then I got the cables for $62, so I think i had a pretty good Xmas this year hehe wouldn't you agree?

and I havent had time to do Jplay yet...and now i have to go and drink a 26..bbl whee!

 

Sounds neat.
What have you plugged into it.
All the hifi and the PC?

 

Comparing power conditioner to an output plugins is like comparing apples and banana's.
I am glad you like your new gear...cleaner power is one of those endless debates in audio.
Well to a certain point it can be I guess.

 

You've been using JPlay extensively, right? If I may ask -> do you get some over-pronounced reverb on some tracks too?
I only installed the trial version yesterday and while some tracks sounded really good, others were way off.
It was like looking through binoculars with broken lenses as the stereo image got all blurred, positioning was lost and I heard lots of reverb.

 

As for Audio software for Output from PC, I've been using following:
Winamp with: MAD input plugin, DSP Stereo tool plugin, PowerFx output plugin
(Only part which was left in control of Winamp is playlist)
Spider Player
Foobar

Rating: Default winamp 2/10 = trash. Potential 10/10. Right Plugins turns it to best one around. A lot of tweaking needed and allowed.
Spider: 8/10 out of box. Potential 9/10. Sounds really nice for regular users since they do not want or are not able to do tweaking of huge amount of variables.
Foobar: OOB 9/10. Potential 10/10. Best Player out of box, easy to get cleanest reproduction.

Now I use Foobar since Winamp turned brown. But sometimes I really miss that extreme amount of settings you could use in plugins mentioned above.

HW as on left: Xonar ST (good headphone amp built in) + AKG K-701 (This soundcard is 1st which actually managed to produce high quality sound on those cans as they are extremely sensitive and you can notice anything what is out of place.)

And I got 8Hz from this combo. Could not hear, but You can feel it. Maybe it can produce even lower freqs but that is out of my sensor capability.
As for highs 21.5kHz is what I heard from it. I love to know It is capable to reproduce it even while I know even alternative music is nowhere close to such ranges.

 

I heard nothing of the sort during playback with Jplay. No reverb, everything just sounded, cleaner with a more precise soundstage. That's all....
I use it as output for Foobar.

 

Just some few tracks were like that, tracks that I do know very well (or for a very long time now) though.

I used the "mini" version but I'll see if I can hook it up to Foobar somehow.

 

I've heard a few extra strange mixing errors but am used to them now.
Reverb is something that DACs can have difficulty doing well.
I notice reverb more, its better defined and lasts longer with my Minimax Plus Sabre32 32bit DAC compared to my Auzentech Preludes AK4396 24bit DAC.

Some more info:
http://www.stereomojo.com/Stereomojo Six DAC Shootout.htm/StereomojoSixDACShootout.htm

(The older version of my Minimax DAC is in this test fyi
They incorrectly call it the EASTERN ELECTRIC MINIDAC)

 

Sometimes with good output plugins, they allow you to hear more of the venue or reverb that can be muddied with others which can make the song sound different as you are just hearing more of the song. You think that might be the case here? If it was a case of the player adding some effects it would be applied to ALL tracks not just certain ones. Do some tests...

BTW,
For foobar, you copy the dll out of the Jplay file and put it in the Foobar components folder. Open foobar and set the output for NULL OUTPUT. If you forget this last step, it will not work.