Owner Impressions, Delivery Times and Things to Do While You Wait

floresjc · « **Reply #160 on:** 23 Aug 2009, 12:02 pm »

Swerd -

Certainly. You'll be happy to hear that I had to get that Organ Blaster CD you demo'd on the ST. Only like 6 or 7 bucks at Amazon. I think more than anything I'm excited about hearing that one cd on the system, and particularly, the last track. Also pretty excited to go through my collection and see which songs still rate favorites after unveiling them on a high end system. I'm hoping most of mine make it unscathed, but I doubt they will.

R Swerdlow · « **Reply #161 on:** 23 Aug 2009, 02:27 pm »

Quote from: floresjc on 23 Aug 2009, 12:02 pm

Certainly. You'll be happy to hear that I had to get that Organ Blaster CD you demo'd on the ST. Only like 6 or 7 bucks at Amazon. I think more than anything I'm excited about hearing that one cd on the system, and particularly, the last track. Also pretty excited to go through my collection and see which songs still rate favorites after unveiling them on a high end system. I'm hoping most of mine make it unscathed, but I doubt they will.

You'll be surprised how some CDs you thought you knew well sound much better than you ever thought possible. Yes there will also be a few duds, but in balance, I found more fun and pleasure with those that sound better than the few disappointments.

Your time there must be getting short. I remember very well, as I was eagerly waiting to get out of the Navy, the day when I had under 100 days left. In the slang of the day, I became a "double-digit midget", an official short-timer. By now you must be so short that you can walk under a door without opening it. When you have to stand on a dime so you can piss over a nickle, then you know you're already one foot out the door

.

vintagebob · « **Reply #162 on:** 23 Aug 2009, 02:57 pm »

Quote from: floresjc on 23 Aug 2009, 03:37 am

Everyone -

All of my AVA gear arrived except the double 240/3, and the Telarc CD's are enroute. The HT3's from FedEx are a total loss, and its a long messy story, but I'm going to go with HT2-TL's instead (still very thrilled.) I chose to do a pair just like the dark curly walnut Jim has posted on the forum, adding a claro walnut baffle instead of the satin black. Its going to look great!

Bummer! I'm sorry to hear about the HT-3s?!

I lusted after the Curly Walnut but I didn't think it would work in my space. You'll enjoy those bad boys!

I remember being "Short". It was almost as good as being "Gone"!

floresjc · « **Reply #163 on:** 23 Aug 2009, 04:24 pm »

I'm getting pretty short. I'll be at home, enjoying a nice steak with my wife in 23 days. With any luck, Jim will finish up the order in time for it to arrive a few days after I do, so that I use my leave time to set up several hundred pounds of gear. My replacement leaves the States Monday night, so I'll be eager to have him get here and do a turnover. This has been an experience of a lifetime, in some ways I'm sad to leave, and in other ways I just can't wait to get out of here.

I think one major change in my listening habits will be the rediscovery of the classical genre I have neglected for several years. All too often, I just wasn't in the mood to sit and listen to a symphony, rather just play some rock or whatever. Plus I was never all that thrilled with the quality of most recordings of classical, having played in orchestras and so forth, they just didn't do it for me. But, now that I have been turned to great labels like Telarc, I can go out and find the absolute best recordings of the greats and hear them in all their detail.

I absolutely can't wait to see curly walnut live and in person. The ones Jim showed online were just stunning, and to that I added quite a beautful piece of claro walnut I found. It should match my wife's decor nicely, she has dark chocolate accents in our living room, and the walnut should play nicely.

vintagebob · « **Reply #164 on:** 26 Aug 2009, 04:37 pm »

Jazzcat,

Did you decide on a long wall placement yet or are you waiting for your Salk's first?

jazzcat1 · « **Reply #165 on:** 26 Aug 2009, 05:47 pm »

Quote from: vintagebob on 26 Aug 2009, 04:37 pm

Jazzcat,

Did you decide on a long wall placement yet or are you waiting for your Salk's first?

Haven't decided 100% but I *think* I preferred the short wall placement. I moved a lot around this past week and weekend and don't know if I like the sound with the couch against the wall. All treatments are up but as mentioned earlier, the room is very symmetrical with short wall placement. The window is right at both primary and secondary reflection points on the long wall placement. And there are some low frequency concerns I have when seated against the wall. I am using a pair of MTM's that Ed Frias built for my downstairs HT for listening tests now. One thing I have to admit - room treatments make a night and day difference! Those speakers don't even come close to sounding the way they do in the treated room when down in the HT.

I am having some tweeter hiss issues with the new set-up which is highly annoying as I can clearly hear it 7 feet away at the listening area. Dealing (or trying to deal) with that now. But that's another thread!

vintagebob · « **Reply #166 on:** 26 Aug 2009, 05:56 pm »

I don't know if you saw my thread over in the Acoustics Circle but I tried four different placements before I got what I wanted. My system sounds good with the current configuration. The Tri-traps really helped with the boomy bass. The imaging has improved as well but the AVA amp seemed to help with that as much as the 242 panels. I just need a full set of Salk HTs to complete the system...for now. ; )

vintagebob · « **Reply #167 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 04:13 pm »

UPDATE

Last night I picked-up an Apple Airport Express to integrate into my Apple network (iMac/Time Machine) and I am now streaming music from iTunes to my Pioneer AVR via Toslink (Optical). My iPhone acts as the remote control. This is just so cool.

I wish it would do hi-rez but I'm VERY happy with the setup and the ability to search and play songs with my iPhone. The sound quality with AIFF is reasonable but not quite as good as the original CD played through the OPPO. I'll take it though!

Now I need to go back and re-rip all of my CDs to AIFF...

floresjc · « **Reply #168 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 04:35 pm »

AIFF's are lossless I believe. Just like the WAV files, although they don't have tagging like a flac or mp3. I think you are probably experiencing degradation due to the Airport express dac more than anything. If you can stream apple lossless (.alac), I would rip to that format. It accepts tagging with album art embedded, is smaller than a wav or aiff, and of course is lossless.

Edit: Nevermind about that dac thing, I totally missed the part about optical into the receiver.

Nuance · « **Reply #169 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 04:38 pm »

Quote from: floresjc on 27 Aug 2009, 04:35 pm

I think you are probably experiencing degradation due to the Airport express dac more than anything.

+1 Can you run the Airport Express through an external DAC?

JP78 · « **Reply #170 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 04:42 pm »

Quote from: Nuance on 27 Aug 2009, 04:38 pm

Quote from: floresjc on 27 Aug 2009, 04:35 pm
I think you are probably experiencing degradation due to the Airport express dac more than anything.
+1 Can you run the Airport Express through an external DAC?

yep. doing so now with exceptional results.

Nuance · « **Reply #171 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 06:14 pm »

Well there ya go, vintagebob. Get yourself a nice external up-sampling DAC when the funds become available, and you'll be back to CD quality.

P.S Yeah - rip to Apple Lossless.

mathgeek97 · « **Reply #172 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 06:56 pm »

vintagebob,
I'll second the suggestion to rip to Apple Lossless. I'm using that to stream to the Airport Express, plus it gives me all of the pretty(?) album artwork. And it plays just fine on my iPod (yes, it's unmodded, no external DAC, AMP, etc, but it's for listening when I can at work).
-Kevin

Srgtfury · « **Reply #173 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 09:27 pm »

I have been ripping to wav for a long time on my itunes imac. Now, is there a utility to convert without reripping to Apple Lossless? If I have to rerip to Apple lossless, can that file be burned to , say a car CD readable CD?

Thank you very much

Fury

Nuance · « **Reply #174 on:** 27 Aug 2009, 10:30 pm »

Quote from: Srgtfury on 27 Aug 2009, 09:27 pm

I have been ripping to wav for a long time on my itunes imac. Now, is there a utility to convert without reripping to Apple Lossless? If I have to rerip to Apple lossless, can that file be burned to , say a car CD readable CD?

Thank you very much

Fury

itunes should convert it. .wav is just fine, as it's also a lossless format, but it adds no compression so your file sizes will be larger. It's cool if you have tons of space, but if you're trying to conserve it then definitely use Apple Lossless or FLAC.

Lossless cannot be burned to CD as is, but many burning programs will convert it on the fly if you drag and drop. It just depends on the program.

floresjc · « **Reply #175 on:** 28 Aug 2009, 03:23 am »

I use an OS X music converter called XLD. Its free, simple to use, and fast. It allows you to go between virtually any two music formats available, with no loss of quality if you are going between two lossless formats (like flac to alac). There's another one out there called Max, but I've only ever used xld with great results.

http://freemacappaday.com/xld

What I do is download FLACs as they are easily found online. I can then use XLD to make them into whatever (wav, aiff, alac) so that iTunes and my ipod can play them (I choose alac). Easy enough solution. When I buy cd's I just have iTunes setup to rip straight to alac (actually, you can rip CD's on XLD too, which I do.)

vintagebob · « **Reply #176 on:** 1 Sep 2009, 04:47 am »

Quote from: stc4life on 11 Aug 2009, 03:00 pm

I'm at about day 60, so I think I should be getting close. My STRTs have a few one-off type characteristics, so I expected they would take longer than a more standard pair of STs. I sold my old speakers this weekend, so my living room is feeling a bit naked. Luckily I am out of town this weekend and work has been keeping me late, so I am not missing too many opportunities to really sit down and listen.

Any word for you yet? Your Salks HAVE to sound better than what you have right now! ; )

I'm pulling for you...

stc4life · « **Reply #177 on:** 2 Sep 2009, 02:51 am »

Quote from: vintagebob on 1 Sep 2009, 04:47 am

Quote from: stc4life on 11 Aug 2009, 03:00 pm
I'm at about day 60, so I think I should be getting close. My STRTs have a few one-off type characteristics, so I expected they would take longer than a more standard pair of STs. I sold my old speakers this weekend, so my living room is feeling a bit naked. Luckily I am out of town this weekend and work has been keeping me late, so I am not missing too many opportunities to really sit down and listen.

Any word for you yet? Your Salks HAVE to sound better than what you have right now! ; )

I'm pulling for you...

Thanks Bob.

I am hoping for next week. It turns out that Jim ran into a problem that set things back a little bit, but things are back on track now. They should be in the process of getting sealed, based on on what Jim was telling me last week. ::fingers crossed::

3 weeks with no speakers is brutal...

sedah · « **Reply #178 on:** 2 Sep 2009, 10:37 pm »

I have to admit it: I've been silently watching this thread while waiting myself... had some veneer issues (the one I wanted was hard to get) and thus the question of when (approximately) my order would be finished has been a bit too open for me to finally join the "waiting list".

So yeah, order placed on July 6th... the veneer is finally in and things are looking good. Puts me at a very long 58 days (thus far). I'm very much looking forward to seeing a post from Jim on here one day showing off the completed speakers... still a ways away from that though.

K Shep · « **Reply #179 on:** 2 Sep 2009, 10:59 pm »

Sedah,

Welcome to the Club! Which Salk speaker did you order?