What stereo(s) do you listen to? What do you want? - Page 145

TY, havent listed in depth yet. Trying to decide which amp pairs best. Leaning for tubes, although I have a Naim Nait 3 which loves 2 way designs.

IMO- SF excel with SS amps. Tubes often exacerbate an already softer character. I have owened the Concertos, Grand Pianos, Signums, EA 2 and the Gunarri Homage and I never found a better mate than a solid SS. I have mostly used Bryston, Clayton, Pass and a couple "Class D" amps.

Amps like Cary, Opera and Manly just did not sound very good. However, Bryston with a Cary tube preamp was nice.

Good luck and enjoy the search...

I'll report back on the bake off between the unison S4 T and the NAIM NAIT 3

I have a Unison Research tube amp here that seems to work really well with the SF. Seems to produce a lusher sound but it took a while to notice a difference. The Naim actually sounds really good but the Naim sound is pretty distinct and probably not a good comparison of tube vs solid state.

I have a Linn LK140 I'm going to try them with for a better comparison.

By the way, the Nait 3 is a remarkable little amp. Its never failed to match a set of speakers well. I've tried about 6 different speakers with it and have always liked the result. Its such a great sounding unit, 20+ years old and stands up to a quality tube amp that 4 x its price without hesitation.

Anyone here into headphone repair or know anything about it? I've got a pair of Audio-Technica A500's and the headphone cable's gone to shit. AT wants almost $50 to repair it. There's got to be a cheaper method than that. Suggestions?

DIY? It's not rocket science. The problem with recabling it 3rd party is that any company that does so will want to charge you $$$ for their $1/m teflon silver-copper triple braided cable with $0.1/m pretty braid mesh sleeve on it and a $7 connector on the end.

I dont know the internals of that particular unit, but does it have a connector of some form at the headphone end? Or do you have to feed the cable in and solder/fiddle with it?

Personally, I've been thru like 4 sets of phones over the last 20 years and tried to repair 3 with no luck. I'd just pay it or get something different.

Well, the cable attached into the headphone base, so I just can't pull it out and plug a new one in. I suspect there's some soldering involved here. For reference, here's a pic:

That's what I suspected. If there is soldering, forget it. These may be different internally but with my Sennheiser's that were broken had these incredibly thin wires that you couldnt possibly solder without the skills. By the time I got to the problem area I broke the wire anyway so there was no hope of repair.

Personally, not worth the effort unless you're really motivated for a project. Fair chance you'll damage them trying to fix them.

BTW, what is that thing on the left?

no idea. pulled the pic off of google. i suspect its an amp of some sort.

ok, so other people obviously do this sort of work. a cable, in and of itself, is cheap, so if I can find someone to do the labor for cheap then maybe i could cut down on costs. suggestions?

btw - if anyone needs good COMFORTABLE headphones, these things are fucking awesome. of course, you look like you just joined up in the Mickey Mouse club, but sacrifices have to be made.

The transparent plastic thing is a Headroom Airhead headphone amp. What's wrong with the headphone cable, Rambo?

The sound gets all shitty when I plug it in. I've tried it on a few different computers now. You have to fiddle with the cable endlessly to even attempt to get proper sound. And then even with that, it'll fuck up again at the slightest movement.