About a million years ago, when I worked for Marantz (Australia), I picked up the best power amp they made in the 1970s. Only 3 were imported into Australia out of only 300 made. So incredibly unreliable was the Model 500, that the company refused to sell the last one in stock, so I grabbed it. I was looking for a picture to send to a mate and came across the best Jinlish translation I've...

Good to see that May Belt is still up to her and Peter's old tricks. :o) -- David

Yesterday, I got a Dual 505 on Ebay for £77. I know there are Denons, Thorens etc. around but I have a budget... Here's why I chose it: The price was right! I've seen them on sale for £120+ and another Dual 505 on Ebay for 'spares or repairs' went for £60 just after I snagged mine. A reputation for solid, long lasting performance. Made in Germany before manufacturing went to China in...

Good morning experts ;-) I've been going through my HFN test record. Most of it makes sense but I don't understand my pink noise results. They show an approximate 10 dB / decade tilt, which is what I would expect from pink noise. For example, here's a frequency analysis of a 'perfect' pink noise sample generated by Audacity. http://www.nu-ware.com/Misc/Screenshots/Real%20Pink%20Noise.png

Just to let people know I've done some tidying and added a page to the Audiomisc site. http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/HFN/LPquality/GoldenWonder.html The new page looks at the changes in quality of LPs over the years. All being well I plan to add another page or two soon on other topics. Cheers,

Can anyone tell me the length of the straight part of the Goldring Lenco GL75 plug-in lateral bias arm, and the distances between the rings cut into it? Don't need it exact to the decimal. 'Near enough' will be 'good enough'. Or better yet, anyone got one kicking about that they want rid of ? Arfa

Hi experts, How much DC offset would you consider acceptable in a power amp? What can you do on a rainy Sunday afternoon? I was poking around inside an old Rotel RA-970BX amp. It works OK except that the DC offset is about 100mv and 50mv on the two channels, which seems rather high to me. There is no adjustment, except for bias current, so any tweaking would probably have to be adjusting the...

FYI, something I picked up on another forum, BBC 320 kb/s AAC. Details at: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2043578&page=6 Sound fine to me, but I can only play them using VLC. My internet radios (Roberts 83i and a Cambridge server) don't. -- Cheers, Rob

So quiet in here... I am considering getting hold of a turntable so I can get my small (looks like about 100 items) collection of vinyl into lossless format and then to CD. Any tips/traps/advice please? I'm not after super quality reproduction from what are going to be well-played records stored (vertically) in my loft for 40+ years. 'Proper hi-fi' quality will probably be better than my...

Firstly, Thank you all for the advice/suggestions in the Vinyl to digital thread. All carefully noted. I'm currently looking on ebay at turntables, getting a feel for the market. Here's 2 questions: 1) Sellers seem a bit coy on cartridge types and I'm assuming that I could be looking at cartridge/stylus replacement if I purchase a tt. (I

Hi, I'm looking for these two sony parts: part number sony X-3307-312-0 LEVER ASSY, FR part number sony 3-307-321-00 GEAR (T), DRIVING Both parts for a sony cassette deck model TC-78 (FH7 compact stereo system).

Chaps, Just wondering if anyone has any experience. Given I have some days off I might do this. Have a couple of 4" bass units and a tweeter kicking around the garage and the desire that _anything_ must be better as a centre speaker than a horrid injection molded plastic speaker that came with the (oldish TV).

So how is it that a machine with a fast multicore processor is delaying my audio from input to monitor output, and an XP single core slower machine is not. Its really irritating as if you monitor yourself talking using phones the recording sounds like I'm drunk on the windows 7 machine. is there a way around this? Brian -- From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active

'Eulogy to RadioShack': http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy-stories Can't help thinking Maplin's gone much the same way. -- Cheers, Rob

I notice that BBC Surrey is transmitting a loop on its medium wave basically saying we are not using this any more retune to fm or dab. it ten gives a phone number to ring to tell them what loss of this service means to you, and its quoted as the audience department. I assume this is all part of the medium wave is crap lets ditch it stuff. Unfortunately, on the outskirts of their area the...

I was tuning the medium wave today, and overheard the Christian station attempting to raise dosh for this digital channel that it said it would lose due to it being a separate licence now and had to be paid for. Premier is not a station I'd miss personally, but is it really true that the channels are not costing more or something. Maybe they should pray for some miracle? Brian --

Got an interesting fault on a Denon DN-650F pro CD player. The XLR outputs are fine - but both the phono and headphone outlets topless - although level seems normal. And all three are in parallel except for a 680 ohm resistor in series with the lines to the phonos and headphone outlet. I'm guessing it is something to do with the muting circuits - which seem to be separate for each output pairs. A...

Possibly a dumb question but do any CDs use pre-emphasis? Possibly some early ones? And do modern CD/DVD players have the corresponding de-emphasis facility? I have an old test CD with pre-emphasis on some tracks. Perhaps I should do some measurements with it. -- Eiron.

think in the course of a thread on here a while back I stated that I had a description of how the implimentation of RDS in the UK and Germany differs. Someone asked for a copy (Mr C?) I've now found it so if said person or persons would like to contact me off gropu I will scan and forward it.

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm out of ideas.... We've had recommended a Bose column speaker, and have handled and heard one. It was good. But the MAUI 28 seems a vastly cheaper alternative with good reviews. The only snag is, we've not been able to find any supplier who actually has one - we want to see how robust it is and to hear what it sounds like before committing to a...