Jimbos Audio ramblings

[Pigmy Pony]

Not much new happening in the music room at the moment but I did have a session listening to a range of 2M Black stylus after my new 2M suspension collapsed.
I went back to my FGS 2M Black stylus and to be frank I was underwhelmed, it did not have any verve or dynamic impact and sounded a bit dull compared to the standard stylus. I have a worn (800-1000 Hour) stylus which I use as a back up and it sounds very good indeed still with plenty of detail and no discernible distortion or wear evident. Actually sounded great.

I had a play with the digital set up and a small HRT DAC which actually sounded very good until my digital boredom threshold kicked in. Always interesting to try something new though.

234EE649-EED4-4FBA-865B-9BDCD24FE8FB by y, on Flickr

I have not really been listening to the system that much in recent weeks as I have a new toy to play with. Recently my beautiful SONY OLED TV decided to throw up a screen malfunction where a row of pixels turned bright green and were permanently displayed on the screen. John Lewis sent out an engineer and the TV was condemned as it would have required screen replacement which was 90% cost of the TV so that was the end of my SONY. I have always bought SONY TVs as they have always been great up until now. This TV failed after 20 months! I have other TVs from SONY that are still going after 15years!

So decided to make a change and bought an LG OLED TV which has turned out to be a great choice. I would say the picture is actually better than the SONY now I have calibrated it and the sound is very close. I believe LG supply the OLED screens to SONY so not surprised they make a good job of their own technology. Anyway I am very chuffed with it and it was £500 cheaper than the equivalent SONY!

Music is therefore taking a bit of a back seat at the moment whilst I play with the new toy!

I'm betting you were just unlucky with your Sony telly. 20 months is piss poor. But I'm glad the LG is doing it for you. We have one, a 'C' series 55". We bought it used, 12 months old for a third of the list price, and 3 years later still as good as new.

I'm a bit curious about your comment re. the FGS 2MB, I thought they were meant to be the dog's danglies - my 2M Black needs a new stylus soon and I had considered the FGS re-tip. Maybe I should just replace with standard, which I know and like. If it ain't broke...

[Macca]

my 55'' LG is coming up to 5 years old not had any issues with it.

If it fails will move up to 65'' I think. Will mean removing a shelf so I can fit it in the alcove but no big deal.

Previous set was a Sony, it did 11 years before the HDMI sockets both failed. Turned out it was just a blown fuse. It still soldiers on in a mate's son's bedroom.

Got a Sony Trinitron CRT computer monitor, still works perfectly. No idea how old that is since I bought it used but I would guess thirty years at least. I've had it more than 20.

All this is 'Made in Japan' Sony ofc, none of this Malaysia or China stuff.

[Pigmy Pony]

If it fails will move up to 65'' I think. Will mean removing a shelf so I can fit it in the alcove but no big deal.

Or just buy next door, knock through and get one of these.

[Macca]

That will always be the dream.

Would need to remove the first floor too though. I suppose I could do without that, it only gets used for sleeping.

[Jimbo]

Interesting that Disney and most of Hollywood film studies are now moving away from SONY and replacing everything with LG!

Take a look at this 10 mins into the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbiVpjWAKwg&t=721s

[Jimbo]

I'm betting you were just unlucky with your Sony telly. 20 months is piss poor. But I'm glad the LG is doing it for you. We have one, a 'C' series 55". We bought it used, 12 months old for a third of the list price, and 3 years later still as good as new.

I'm a bit curious about your comment re. the FGS 2MB, I thought they were meant to be the dog's danglies - my 2M Black needs a new stylus soon and I had considered the FGS re-tip. Maybe I should just replace with standard, which I know and like. If it ain't broke...

Hi Steve,

I did like the FGS 2M retip which had a wider soundstage and a bit more going on in the lower frequencies but the standard 2M stylus runs rings round it in extracting detail/resolution and pin point imaging. As I am getting older I am appreciating what the 2M does in the higher frequencies as this is where alll the detail occurs but this is sometimes at the expense of some tonal qualities which is where the FGS wins!

[Pigmy Pony]

Thanks for the info James. All things considered, including my almost non-existent HF hearing, the standard 2MB is probably the best fit for me. And at about £370 for a replacement stylus I think that's pretty good VFM.

[Jimbo]

Thanks for the info James. All things considered, including my almost non-existent HF hearing, the standard 2MB is probably the best fit for me. And at about £370 for a replacement stylus I think that's pretty good VFM.

I think this would be the best way to go.

[Jimbo]

I am spending the day ensuring the system is up to scratch and set up just so as I have another guest visiting tomorrow. He usually listens to digital and is a massive live gig fan so he often listens to the raw real thing rather than a recording. This will be a very tough act to follow but I have a few choice recordings that may live up to expectation.

Most concerning is that I can get all my digital gear to talk to each other nicely as last time I had a guest it did not want to play ball for 30 mins as the DDC has internal switching which is activated when connecting a DAC and can get knocked off easily which means all I get is music from the laptop.

Vinyl is so much more straightforward. Pull a record out, pop it on and lower the stylus. Which has me pondering the state of digital playback currently. I was reading an amusing ding dong regarding the ever convoluted shenanigans of some digital set ups which consist no longer of a CD player straight into an amp but rather a music server connected to a string of gear....DAC + linear PSU, DDC + Linear PSU etc and then I realised that was my set up!

Are we forever thinking that there is some way around digital in order to make it more listenable by adding yet more and more boxes and complications. Looking back at the direction digital audio has taken and lessons supposedly learned there have been so many ways to try an extract those bits perfectly without loosing any to produce audio nirvana.

Alas I feel there will yet another miraculous discovery that until now has not been found which will result in us getting closer to the recording and closer to the original analogue sound. But it will need some computational trickery similar to what has happened in digital photography where once the image has been captured by the sensor the computer algorithms take over and the image is given a digital (computational photography) make over which produces a fantastic picture which you would be hard pressed to achieve with just a camera. This is the approach phones are taking and will soon make camera photography a small niche hobby practised by a tiny few.

How many times have we heard in reviews and on forums folk messing with digital equipment and they mention the words "it sounds more like analogue". I will only be convinced when it does sound like analogue and not "more" like analogue. I feel this is still someway off and I think it will be achieved by some added computer wizardry rather than galvanic isolation, re clocking and bit perfect files?

[Macca]

Already on the market, just download the software to your laptop: