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Free Free Feedback Advice Advice may now, therefore, make sense. Or it may not. It’s your choice which horse to bet on. A true test would require having two LP-12’s that are absolutely identical, getting one of them modified, and then ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine having both properly adjusted by someone who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome. It’s not the sort of demo any store is likely to offer. I recently wrote to you questioning if I needed to have my speakers connected to my tube amp even if I was listening to it via the headphones. You expected that my headphones would provide sufficient load on the amp, and that the speakers did not need to be connected. But I expect that one day I will turn on the amp and will have forgotten to either attach the speakers or the headphones, and then… So, I would like to make a pair of 8 ohm resistors. Can this be done easily from a pair of speaker binding post soldered up to a 8 ohm resistors, or is it more complicated than that? If it is a DIY project, how do I do it? I don’t trust the guy at The Source. Tim Leeney GEORGETOWN, ON We’re not sure why you want those 8 ohm resistors, Tim. You can’t leave them connected all the time, and the danger remains that you might turn on the amplifier when none of the loads is connected: speakers, phones or resistors. That said, we can understand why you’re wary of the people at The Source (full name, for the benefit of non-Canadians, is The Source by Circuit City, the sign affixed to what used to be Radio Shack stores). The resistors you’re likely to find there have a power rating of a quarter watt, and we’re being optimistic. Put any amount of power into one, and…poof! Followed by possibly another poof from a tube in your amplifier. You’ll need a power resistor from an electronics supply house, and you may have to put several resistors together to get the rating you need. When we made up the dummy load we use in amplifier tests, we purchased three large precision 24 ohm resistors and connected them in parallel (24 divided by 3 is 8). If we had found 2 ohm resistors, we could have wired four of them in series (four times 2 ohms is 8). I just replaced my aging Dual turntable with a Goldring GR2. I also replaced my Rotel RQ970 with an ASL Phono LUX DT. The Dual had a Grado Green cartridge with a 5 mV output. The GR2 uses the Goldring 1012GX, with a 6.5 mV output. The ASL phono stage has 41 dB of gain. Is this combination too much gain? I don’t know the gain on the Rotel, but with my old combo I had to turn up the volume much more to get an equivalent output level (as CD). The current Goldring/ASL combo is at least the same, but probably slightly more than what I get from most CD’s. What are the drawbacks of this combo? Should I be looking for a lower gain phono preamp, or should I stop worrying and enjoy the music? Tim Leeney GEORGETOWN, ON We suggest enjoying the music, Tim. It’s normal to hear some hiss when you turn up the volume on a phono stage. A worse sign would be hum that is louder than the hiss. The output voltage from even a moving magnet phono pickup is a thousand times lower than that from a CD player or other component. What’s important is that the noise not be noticeable from listening position even in a quiet room. The output difference between the Grado and Goldring cartridges is not significant, a mere 2.3 dB. Even so, it could be accounted for merely by differences in testing methods of the two companies. Those figures are what are called “nominal output.” Translation: well, we had to say something.
I just picked up your magazine for the first time and love it. I especially enjoyed The High Fidelity Digital Jukebox (in UHF No.74) and looked up your previous articles on the CEC DA53 and the iPod. I would like to know what would be necessary to make a “hi-fi” system with this technique. I would start fresh and abandon all my mid-fi and at this point would use a CD or DVD player and stream music via Wi-Fi or LAN. Thus I am most interested in playing music from digital sources. I would like to start building my system, so could you list the components in order of necessity? I already have a computer, iTunes (I use Apple Lossless) and a network. Derek Sou VICTORIA, BC Derek, this issue includes a review of the Slim Devices Squeezebox, which may be one key to getting the best possible sound from your computer. The Squeezebox connects by Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and it can feed a digital signal into a genuine hi-fi system. Using the Apple Lossless codec is the right choice in our view. Anyone not able to use iTunes can download the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), available for all computer platforms including Linux, Unix, Solaris, plus some we’ve never heard of. It’s at http://flac.sourceforge.net. Actually, if your computer is near your music system and it has a digital output, you don’t even need the Squeezebox. The idea of getting a digital signal from the computer or the accessory box is to avoid letting cheap computer gear handle the digital-to-analog conversion. That means you’ll need a good quality external converter, which could turn out to be your most expensive single component. If you want to be able to play CDs directly, look for a good CD player which also has a digital input. Then add what you can afford in the way of an integrated amplifier and loudspeakers. Both should be made by companies that also make the products you wish you could afford. First of all I want to tell you how much I love reading your magazine. I am very ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 3 Free Feedback Advice
Page 1 and 2: No. 76 $6.49 ISSN 0847-1851 Canadia
Page 3 and 4: Issue No. 76 Cover story:A new look
Page 5 and 6: DOG-EARED MAGAZINES? PHOOEY! How’
Page 7 and 8: I’d like to thank you for publish
Page 9 and 10: Free Advice Box 65085, Place Longue
Page 11 and 12: Probably not, Michel, because the V
Page 13: up radio-frequency noise and feedin
Page 17 and 18: system. The Audiomat Opéra, with i
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Page 21 and 22: Rather more formidable is the highe
Page 23 and 24: Good enough UHF uses them! This rem
Page 25 and 26: Aurum Acoustics (from Newfoundland)
Page 27 and 28: Touring the Old/New Show “Lo ok a
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Page 31 and 32: Ut at nu lla ndre modipit wismodo l
Page 33 and 34: that it would be all right if we di
Page 35 and 36: faccum ver sustrud dignibh ent ero
Page 37 and 38: sum augue con hent ulla feuguerci e
Page 39 and 40: getting the tone wrong on a couple
Page 41 and 42: complicated things. Here’s how we
Page 43 and 44: THE UHF CLASSIFIEDS Run your own ad
Page 45 and 46: THE ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION: Issues
Page 47 and 48: we know well, and listened to them
Page 49 and 50: tet lore tio eugait ad magnit utpat
Page 51 and 52: Power On the Go It struck us when w
Page 53 and 54: That could just mean more channels
Page 55 and 56: that, with the right equipment, the
Page 57 and 58: 55 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE TWO CABLES
Page 59 and 60: 57 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE CLEANER POW
Page 61 and 62: 59 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE Just Like L
Page 63 and 64: 61 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE Burgos, who
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We are in Peterborough, in the Prov
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Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand.
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Big 707 set to go But I’m stuck h
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You know you’ve always wanted the
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paying for it, a detail that subseq
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large orchestra and a choir of 150
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On the other hand, he was able to h
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Is hi-fi — or consumer electronic
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DRM in Canada “DRM” of course s
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Broadcast Canada publisher of UHF i
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