Temporary Blog Suspension

Due to my fathers recent illness, I am sad to report he has been admitted to hospital. Due to this situation I am suspending updates to this blog.

Visiting Hi-Fi Shops is Expensive

My Linn Keilidh speakers were purchased in 1993, a fair few years ago…… They performed excellently for the years I have had them. They have a nice relaxed presentation style letting the music flow from the NAIM pre/power combination that feeds them that’s allows hours of fatigue free listening.

Anyway as per usual I was in the market for a simple set of banana plugs and some speaker cable so I visited my local RICHER SOUNDS outlet in Romford, Essex. They staff know me well in there and assisted me in selecting what I needed. So as with all visit to this small outlet they have limited demo space, so a lot of DEMO action goes on in the actual shop space.

 

The DEMO started of some small bookshelf speakers from KEF the Q150……..the demo played back a tune I was most familiar with, ‘the chain’ by Fleetwood Mac, the second half of the track being the old BBC F1 coverage theme tune……for small bookshelf’s these speakers sounded marvellous, great low end and outstanding sound staging, even with the speakers being not ideally positioned.

Anyway at the end of the DEMO I noticed that the Q150 had a big brother model the Q350…….yeah you can see it coming cant you !

 

The Q350 sounded outstandingly good, the bass extension killed my Linn’s, plus the over all sound was amazingly appealing, the speakers almost disappeared and you were left with a brilliant sound to the music in question. Ten minutes later and £499 pounds (minus my 20% discount) lighter the speakers were on the way back to my flat in the back of my car.

HIGHLY recommended………..

The BEST Budget In Ear Monitors (EARBUDS)

Ever heard of TIN ? They are division of LINSOUL, https://www.linsoul.com/collections/tin-hifi , They supply the world with some hand picked Chinese HI-FI, as with any product ignore where it comes from or whats inside the black box, i evaluate it on the performance in MY EARS. I am writing this review and recommendation while listening to TIN T2 IEM's, after about two hours of testing. The units are as you can see below small devices with independent cables you can swap out.


In terms of price point they are £44 on amazon, bargain basement in HI-FI terms, however given one of my fave cans are £17 from KOSS, i never judge the book by the cover price. These fit my ears well and i am sourcing the sound from a Linux PC running SPOTIFY premium with a Audioquest Dragonfly RED USB DAC and also just plugging them into my Samsung S7.
Firstly
For comparison i have a £200 pair of IEM's from Beyer Dynamic, a pair i am most familar with in terms of audio performance.

Well i must say the TIN T2 are amazingly close to the performance of the beyer devFirstlyice, considering the price differential thats quite a feat. The TIN's hang the whole sound together very well, the trick i feel they pull off is a great midrange focus allowing the music's signature to shine thru, the bass is well controlled and not overpowering, however high frequencies can be a little harsh. But thats me being ULTRA CRITICAL.

Honestly these IEM's are brilliant for the price, no gimmicks just a good sound and sturdy construction.......I am currently listening them doing a fine job of making Sellac "Dude incredible" sound like the band are in my head.

At £44 quid you can use and abuse them and just buy another set when they give up the ghost without breaking the bank.

So you want a great 1st home listening system ? (PART 2)

To remind you, this second installment of this trilogy is for a home system for listening to music via headphones with stunning musical clarity. This system was created with a budget of in the range of £700, this system has some seriously nice kit and a brilliant end result, which is the wonderful sound reproduced in your ears.

The DAC and AMP -- Chord Mojo (£400)
Chord electronics MOJO DAC/AMP is class leading, very musical and very powerful amplification capabilities. A 100% British designed and manufactured device based on a solid CNC milled aluminum shell with unusual globe style LED indicators. The internals do not use an off the shelf DAC chip, it's a FPGA chip with allows Chord to write their own Digital to Analog conversion algorithms. The result is a very detailed and thrillingly engaging sound reproduction, this device is class leading at sub £1000 budgets. 




The CANS (£250)

Modhouse Audio ARGON Mark 3, these cans are incredible, they are a modified version of the Fostex T50RP MK3 Professional Studio Headphones. You can only buy these cans from Modhouse in the USA, it takes about 8 weeks from them to source the headphones from FOSTEX and modify the internals. The results are spectacular, slamming low end and brilliant balanced sound across the whole frequency range, real HIFI bargain.......you would pay at least £1000 for this performance elsewhere in the industry. 

 

So you want a great 1st home listening system ? (PART 1)

I am creating here, in a series of 3 posts a system for Music reproduction using a Computer (PC or MAC) and headphones. the systems will consist of a USB-DAC, a Headphone Amplifier and set of Headphones. I have tried to cater for everyman's budget here by recommending 3 systems, STARTER (around £300), MID-FI (£600-£700), HI-FI......(£1000 +)

These solutions would work well with streaming services like Spotify, Quobuz or Tidal, the more expensive options benefit from HI-RES audio sources. Also these systems are for use at home via a laptop or static computers. You can buy the kit below via the SCHIIT Europe website and the SIGVA via amazon.co.uk.

I benefit in no way from these posts, i have owned all the kit i am saying make a good system to spend your hard earned cash on.

One thing i would say if you can't stretch to £300, start with a Audoquest Dragonfly BLACK USB DAC for £90 and KOSS KC275 clip on headphones for under £20, see my post here

System 1 -  STARTER (around £300)

USB-DAC
SCHIIT Modi 3 (£120)
SCHIIT are USA based HIFI company that design and build their hardware inn the USA, great value for money. This DAC is powered over USB and does a brilliant job of producing a clean and weighty reproduction of the music you wish to listen to. For £99 this is the bargain HIFI component of the century. I have this DAC driving by very expensive NAIM AMPS and LINN speakers and it was not out of place, AT a HUNDRED QUID.



Headphone AMP
SCHIIT MAGNI 3 (£115)
Matches the DAC above perfectly and is frankly a classic combination. The AMP Provides a Full 2000mW into 32 ohms of output power and quite simply converys the supurb sound signal out put from the DAC and drives the cans that are plugged in, NICE unclouded and natural sound.


Headphones
The SIVGA SV006 (£90) 
These cans are built like a tank, have real wood as ear cups, they pull off the amazing trick of being brilliant value in the modern RIP OFF world of ours. OK you are thinking WHO ARE SIGVA ?  SIVGA Electronic Technology Co Ltd are located in Dongguan city in China, one of the new wave of Chinese HI-FI companies that are trying to be quality driven at fair pricing and try and get a foothold in the global market. These can's have great bass response, offer a easy to drive profile, the amp and DAC i have defined will drive these cans perfectly. The headphones have a high level of comfort and are made of high quality wood and metal/plastic. GREAT VALUE

Start your addiction

So you listen to music on your phone with the headphones that came with the phone or you plug those same headphones direct into the headphone socket on your computer......well for not a lot of investment, you can upgrade your quality of sound by quite a large margin.

STEP ONE: Good Budget Headphones

WIRED -- Koss KSC75 Clip-On Stereo Headphones (Under £25)

KOSS have performed miracles with these budget cans, they clip on your ears and you do look a little strange, but the sound is brilliant. Not great in noisy environments like a tube train, they also leak sound all over the place but they offer a punchy crisp clear sound profile which is vastly superior over the headphones that are give always with a new device. Brilliant choice for holidays by the pool given the low cost.

WIRELESS BLUETOOTH --  TaoTronics SoundSurge 46 (£70)

OK so you want noise cancelling headphones so you can block all the chatty morons on your daily commute on the tube/overland rail. However Sennhieser / BOSE / SONY want £350 for very swish Bluetooth Noise Cancellation headphones with top of the range HIFI sound. Well if you want some compromises on true HIFI sound, there is a GREAT set of Noise Canceller cans on a budget. They sound BIG with a nice bass/low end profile, but Sony and Bose will blow them away on PURE musical performance but these cans are SEVENTY QUID yes £70. which means the TaoTronics SoundSurge 46 is £280 CHEAPER than the SONY/BOSE models. The NC functions are great, you can use them wired and Bluetooth too. Highly pleasing NC Bluetooth cans at the lowest price you can imagine. BTW i prosper in no way from this, purely my opinion and my willingness to help people make the right music-tech choices.

Step 2 : An entry level step to REALLY great sound quality

 
A DAC and a Set of Entry Level Headphones is first step to audio satisfaction, i would say most people should just stop here as the sound produced by this combination i am providing here is totally excellent and will blow away most peoples expectations, deep controlled bass, nice detailed sound in the mid range and sparkling high frequencies.

A DAC converts digital signals from your phone/device/PC/MAC and converts the digital stream to analog sound waves in your headphones. This the better the DAC, the better the reproduction of sound from the original recording. Your device will ALREADY have a DAC built in, that's how you hear the sound currently, here we are upgrading to a external DAC that does several things a lot better than the built in DAC.

• Better conversion from digital to analog, a better sound.
• Better isolation from interference which degrade a digital signal
• Better power consitioning, which means more music and less electro magnetic interference.

These entry level devices are small USB DAC's that you connect via USB to your device and then plug in your headphones, there in my opinion is one leading supplier here, AUDIOQUEST.

They have three models that ascend in price and performance, i have tested and owned all of these deices.

Dragonfly BLACK (£70) / Dragonfly RED (£160) / Dragonfly COBALT (£300)

I would recommend the RED and BLACK as first step, they have excellent performance, being musically superior due to the built in technology on the devices. The models differ in several ways but the most important being that the RED sounds more detailed and has a wider soundtage due to its superior DAC chip, resulting in a very enjoyable listen given it's ability to reproduce the music with a real authority. The RED has a more powerful headphone output and will drive well 95% of headphones.

These devices use DAC technology from ESS, the ESS 9010 DAC chip in Black and the higher-performance 9016 chip in Red employ minimum-phase filtering for naturally detailed sound. 


Also if you are going to connect these devices to a phone or tablet buy an appropriate connector from Audioquest known as the DragonTail at (£15), see below



The trick now is to pair these DAC's with some headphones that are easy to drive and provide a performance worthy of the superior sound the Audioquest DAC's provide. My choice here would be the 1More Triple Driver over ear headphones at (£160)  this set of headphones for the price are truely amazing, they have some great technology like THREE DRIVERS a 40 mm graphene dynamic driver + ceramic tweeter + bass reflector. The result is a sound signature with great highs, precise mids, and deep bass, which match the Draonfly perfectly......



in fact typing this review i have been using the DRAGONFLY RED and 1More cans with SPOTIFY and enjoying every random track......great starter system in being addicted to HI-FI

Test Yourself

OK if you want to test out the capabilities of your HI-FI, this album will do it, it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but let me tell you, the sonic RANGE this album covers is amazing, the production is amazing and the tunes are delivered brilliantly by the musicians. The Pale Emperor, Marlilyn Manson from 2015. Break free, stick it on your headphones, sit back in a comfy chair and let it wash thru your brain. You may realize that certain tracks have been used in film soundtracks, for example John Wick (Killing Strangers)

https://open.spotify.com/album/0F9brQbQ3vLDYyTElx9f9n…