2018 is about over. What did you do in Audio?

[Tbzc]

I did two important steps forward in 2018:

1. Ayon Conquistador DHT preamp ended (at least temporarily ) my quest for the optimal preamp. It brought the magic to the music, it is now really kind of a heart of the system.

2. Optimizing my digital ring: first with roon nucleus +; then with Wireworld ethernet cables, Vertere usb, EMO ethernet filter, SOTM switch with clock and finally new Metronome Kalista Dreamplay DAC. Tidal streaming sounds amazing now.

 

[christoph]

1) Got in touch with Wisnon and this had a chain effect on my Audio and personal life as i hope I made a life long friend. I can say the same for Christoph and you guys made my year really great! Thanks a lot for that!
2) Wisnon introduced me to LampizatOr and with his help i got Bal GG1 with VC and started collecting tubes like lunatic
3) Found out that balanced GG is not my cup of tea so i got GG2.5 SE and I LOVE it! Tube collecting madness continued...
4) Ordered LDMS server which I’ll get in Q1 19
5) Swapped most of my cables with FTA loom and I can not be happier
6) Leaning to point no.1 - I met many guys via Chris and Norm (in person and in matrix) with whom I love communicating about HiFi and life and this is part of this sport i love the most!!

1. You have become a very good friend
2. and 3. The shoot-outs together are always very interesting, educating and a lot of fun
4. Wow, I didn't know. Congrats on that excellent move
5. I can not thank you enough for introducing me/us to the wonderful Final Touch Audio cables
6. You are right, communicating virtually is wonderful. We could never ever exchange with people from different continents without this tech, but real life contacts are even better for me

 

[Kingsrule]

Got rid of the dCS Vivaldi stack.
It is the best audio move I have ever made.
Almost seminal for me......

 

[Alrainbow]

My list
Was lucky to find a friend who has guided me to many levels of inprovemt. Where answers come from does not matter but being lucky to find them is what's inportant over all. Knwowing why it happens is a big thing for me. Perhaps more than the importance of the improvement.
Second would be a small group of audiophiles whom have a common goal of better sound and why. We poke and annoy each other but stay the course of helping each other. A great find for me.

 

[toddrhodes]

2018 was a wild ride for me. Started out focused solely on vinyl. As I kept getting new records that were consistently awfully-produced, I soured on the hobby. Then I started focusing more on my other hobbies (cooking, bought a new enthusiast-focused car) and just put audio down for 7 months, focusing on other stuff.

Came back to it in October and was just not that into it, still. I had found a bunch of new music I liked but just couldn't get it to my room in a physical format that I didn't regret. Pressing issues, noise, warps, banged up sleeves. So I took a shot and bought an Yggdrasil DAC and a cheap CD player to feed it AES/EBU. Bought some CDs. And I really liked what I was hearing. Really.

Then I decided "I remember how much of an improvement I got stepping up from a lowend to a middle, upper-middle turntable, let's try a better CD Transport." So I did. And the heavens parted and in all seriousness, that passion for the hobby just sparked all over again. This new setup not only highlighted good stuff, it revealed some areas I could improve. So I rearranged my room. I tweaked my placement, I tweaked the subwoofer integration. And I kid you not, I am absolutely floored by this setup. It sounds both musical and yet, if I want to dig into the details, it maintains the resolution to allow me to do so.

The last two weeks of listening have been unforgettable. The kinds of times I expected when I built this room five years ago. I've gotten some validation from a fellow, picky audiophile friend who was duly impressed by what it's doing. So now I'm into tweak territory - building my own cables, trying out new/different isolation strategies, focusing on quality power cabling and outlets, and with each little change, I'm incrementally happier. And maybe it's just DOING IT that's making me happier. But IMO, it doesn't matter why. It just matters that it is. Looking forward to a solid 2019, and lots more music to come.

 

[jackelsson]

2018 has mostly seen changes outside of audio, but early in the year I upgraded my analogue rig from a TW-Acustic Raven AC to their Black Night, and also the vdH Colibri Signature Stradivarius and (finally!) the Lyra Atlas found their way to me. Also, I focused a bit more on digital by getting an Auralic streamer with a bespoke power supply in. Nice, but not yet up to the standard of my analogue source.

But otherwise audio in 2018 mainly meant getting to know in person a couple of great fellow local audiophiles which I only knew in the virtual world before. This gave me so much more than any new gear could do, so definitely my plan for 2019 is to explore this route much more, both locally and wherever in the world I may find them...

 

[gian60]

2018 was my analog year
Arrived
Vyger Atlantis
Torqueo Limited with Saec 506
AF3Premium with Basis Superarm 9

 

[spiritofmusic]

This year was a real trial on the analog side of things. After a very depressing 3-4 months bedding in a couple of dozen small and large mods to tt, arm, cart and phono, I made massive strides, and then the cherry on cake of final dialling in of things in the last 4 weeks.

"Nothing is settled until everything is settled".

Beta tester Degritter ultrasonic lp cleaner arrived, a very creditable NKOTB.

RevOPods footers/Panzerholz under my Zus was a massive find.

And a little acoustics alterations in the room proved to be v fruitful.

It was also good to hear a handful of really exemplary rooms/systems for me to gain some perspective on my sound, and reveal how much more work I still need to do.

Blue58 and Audiophile Bill have always given me frank advice and suggestions for change.

2019 is a period of relative calm, more unstressed listening, only really looking at a Rogoz rack for my tt/Stacore, some Prince Sablon pwr cord upgrades and some additional serious acoustics treatments to my room.

 

[Lee]

1) Got in touch with Wisnon and this had a chain effect on my Audio and personal life as i hope I made a life long friend. I can say the same for Christoph and you guys made my year really great! Thanks a lot for that!
2) Wisnon introduced me to LampizatOr and with his help i got Bal GG1 with VC and started collecting tubes like lunatic
3) Found out that balanced GG is not my cup of tea so i got GG2.5 SE and I LOVE it! Tube collecting madness continued...
4) Ordered LDMS server which I’ll get in Q1 19
5) Swapped most of my cables with FTA loom and I can not be happier
6) Leaning to point no.1 - I met many guys via Chris and Norm (in person and in matrix) with whom I love communicating about HiFi and life and this is part of this sport i love the most!!

I would have expected Golum to have a ring DAC.

 

[Golum]

Dear Lee, not really my favourite cup of Nespresso .
Wish you all the best in ‘19 and lots of new ARC stuff.

Cheers,
G

 

[jdza]

I think he was making a Tolkien joke. gol(l)um ,Lord of the Ring dacs

 

[Golum]

Oh, one to rule them all..

 

[Lee]

Dear Lee, not really my favourite cup of Nespresso .
Wish you all the best in ‘19 and lots of new ARC stuff.

Cheers,
G

Many thanks G! Happy New Year! I will try to have some quality Lampi coverage for you in the new year!

 

[astrotoy]

This year was one of new hardware and unrelated new software.

On the hardware side, I became a Lampi convert big time, first buying a used GG SE at mid year for a very good price (checked out by the Lampi factory before I paid for it on their inspect for free program for any used Lampi). Then after only a few months, Lampi made me an unusual offer, taking my used GG SE in trade (with credit for full retail and much more than I paid for the GG SE) for a brand new Pacific SE when one of their customers had to back out from buying the Pacific. Joined the Lampi enthusiasts group, getting good advice from a bunch of devotees.

On the software side, it was almost all tapes (all 15ips 2 track). In addition to a few commercial tapes, I discovered the world of tape trading and have traded for around 175 reels in the past 14 months. Then I found two great sources of super dubbed tapes, both featuring lots of classical that I have been looking for for ages. I ended up buying close to 150 reels from these sources, including some real treasures, all for quite reasonable prices (that is in the tape world). I am now up to over 850 15ips 2 track tape reels along with my 500 old commercial 7.5ips 1/4 stereo tapes. Most of the trades were in the world of non-classical, so I am listening to a bunch of artists I have really not heard before, along with some of my non-classical favorites.

Larry

 

[Tango]

Beta tester Degritter ultrasonic lp cleaner arrived, a very creditable NKOTB....

Spirit you should be a scout in entertainment business. That will make you a lot of money. You are very good at polishing oxidized metal into a shiny one.

Tang

 

[spiritofmusic]

Tang, thanks, but running a couple of clinics keeps me amused enough.

The real entertainment scouts ie snake oil guys in the UK are trying to sell Brexit. More and more unsuccessfully by the day.

 

[ack]

2018 was the best audio year yet for me, bringing the system to where I've been steering it for the last 20 years or so: a very high degree of timbral accuracy and articulation, with really good (if not startling) dynamics and body, often rendering a very clean and life-like sound.

At the core of it were the Spectral DMA-500AR monos - a true breakthrough design - flanked by new ML panels, power supplies and step-up transformers, and additional tweaks to analog and digital (the most important of which was my custom platter-LP interface). It was a delight to see my custom Mundorf crossovers (designed and built some 6 years ago now) perform so well, with only some small additional work in the bass section.

I expect 2019 to be a quiet year wrt hardware, unless the Spectral phono ever comes out.

 

[stehno]

My one change was based on my 3 small, passive, and dedicated Jena Labs THE Two line conditioners (1 per component). It began in June 2017 but the benefits were not fully realized until November, 2018.

Though impossible to measure sound quality, all said and done I venture I was able to extract perhaps 3 times THE Two's already excellent out-of-the-box performance. Maybe more.