My Macs...

Walter R

Member
I’m a 67 yo retired engineer living in Chicago. My music interests range from symphonic classical music to classic rock.

My living room system consists of two MC275’s, each operating in bridged mode for 150w per channel. One’s a MkIV, the other is a MkV. They’re driving a pair of Thiel CS-1.6’s. The preamp is a McIntosh MC220, and I also have an MR85 tuner. Also connected are a Technics turntable, a SONY 300 disk CD changer, and a Grace Digital internet tuner. I recently added a cheap Amazon Bluetooth adapter that lets me play my extensive MP3 collection from a Windows computer. If anyone has a better solution, let me know. The MP3’s are on a Synology NAS. I use an auto-sensing power strip to turn on the MC275’s when the remote turns on the C220.

I also have an ARX SP-60 30-channel equalizer. I’ve used the Dayton Audio audio analyzer program with calibrated microphone to adjust for room acoustics, which mostly consists of suppressing bass tones that resonate in the room. I’d be interested in comments as to whether the equalizer introduces more distortion than it’s worth. Supposedly the equalizer circuit is removed from the audio circuit if the control is set to zero.

I recently dusted off 2 EICO HF-20’s that I’ve owned for 15 years and set them up for a bedroom tube system. A filter cap just failed and I’m waiting for a replacement. It sounded good while it was working.

Walter R
 
I recently added a cheap Amazon Bluetooth adapter that lets me play my extensive MP3 collection from a Windows computer. If anyone has a better solution, let me know.
You may want to upgrade to the Audioengine D2 (no affiliation). It's a 24-bit/96kHz DAC which allows you to transmit and control a digital audio signal from your computer and receive it as either a digital or DAC converted analog signal at your McIntosh system. The D2's transmitter accepts digital music from your PC via a USB or OPT connection, then sends it wirelessly to the DAC/receiver where it is transformed into a high-quality analog audio signal. The great thing about this is that it allows you to bypass your computer's simple built-in sound card, and uses a WiFi network directly for a much improved sound than what you could ever expect to receive from a Bluetooth network.
 
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You may want to upgrade to the Audioengine D2 (no affiliation). It's a 24-bit/96kHz DAC which allows you to transmit and control a digital audio signal from your computer and receive it as either a digital or DAC converted analog signal at your McIntosh system. The D2's transmitter accepts digital music from your PC via a USB or OPT connection, then sends it wirelessly to the DAC/receiver where it is transformed into a high-quality analog audio signal. The great thing about this is that it allows you to bypass your computer's simple built-in sound card, and uses a WiFi network directly to your computer for a much improved sound than what you could ever expect to receive from a Bluetooth network.
Just ordered one on Amazon, it’ll be here tomorrow. Thanks for the advice!
 
Yeah, the mp3’s sound much better with the Audioengine D2 compared to Bluetooth. Only problem was the D2 didn’t like being on a USB hub, but I got around that by moving something else. Thanks again!
 
Yeah, the mp3’s sound much better with the Audioengine D2 compared to Bluetooth. Only problem was the D2 didn’t like being on a USB hub, but I got around that by moving something else. Thanks again!
You're welcome! Experimentation is key to getting the Audioengine D2 to working properly with your system. For instance, my D2 while sitting on my computer initially, had choppy playback. I actually had to get a longer USB cord and space the D2 about 4 feet away from the computer in order for it to receive a clear WiFi signal. Signal is nice and clear now!

If you think the MP3's sound good on the D2, then have a listen to how a quality streaming service like Spotify, Tidal, etc. sound on it. It may just blow you away! Normal Spotify, for example, has compressed audio at a bitrate of 160 kbps on desktop computers. The Premium service has a “high quality” option of 320 kbps audio on desktop. There's an upcoming Spotify HiFi which has high-fidelity (lossless) audio with an even higher bitrate of 1,411 kbps. You'll have to pay for Premium and HiFi, but you may find it well worth it.
 
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Great system. I just went Mac recently myself. As far as Tidal...just signed up for the military hifi plan for 12 bucks a month. I love what I hear---esp on Master releases. I will be ditching Spotify.
 
Yeah, the mp3’s sound much better with the Audioengine D2 compared to Bluetooth. Only problem was the D2 didn’t like being on a USB hub, but I got around that by moving something else. Thanks again!
You might consider eventually replacing the CD changer with ripped content that is equally accessible. I retired the last of my spinning transports years ago.

It is a beautiful thing when you can instantly select any content (mp3, CD quality, 24 bit resolution) for playback without having to shuffle shiny disks. For me, it also provides a central library shared by multiple systems. Life is good. :)
 
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As far as Tidal...just signed up for the military hifi plan for 12 bucks a month. I love what I hear---esp on Master releases. I will be ditching Spotify.
I personally can't hear the difference between the two services, but that may be due to my ears being quite old, LOL! Anyway, I've subscribed for the year plan at $99 which is a great deal!
 
You might consider eventually replacing the CD changer with ripped content that is equally accessible. I retired the last of my spinning transports years ago.

It is a beautiful thing when you can instantly select any content (mp3, CD quality, 24 bit resolution) for playback without having to shuffle shiny disks. For me, it also provides a central library shared by multiple systems. Life is good. :)
I’ve already ripped the CDs in the changer, but haven’t disconnected it yet.
 
You converted 44/16 CDs to 24/320? Curious.

I just ripped them to lossless 44/16 FLAC. Same quality as original. Since disk space is cheap, why choose a lossy format?

Ditto on ripping to FLAC.

I am also curious about choosing mp3 format.
 
It’s what I’ve been using. I’ve got 120,000 MP3 files going back many years. FLAC wasn’t supported by Windows until Windows 10. I’ll look into it.
 
My living room system consists of two MC275’s, each operating in bridged mode for 150w per channel. One’s a MkIV, the other is a MkV.
Well with these new amps they are really 90wpc, so your bridging will put you at 180wpc.
 
I’ve got 120,000 MP3 files going back many years. FLAC wasn’t supported by Windows until Windows 10. I’ll look into it.
Well, if you were married to using Windows, there was always the lossless WMA format. As for me, I never used Windows for digital playback. I use Win7 to store the content and run LMS, but use flexible streamers (microRendu and Raspberry PI/Allo DigiOne) that support virtually all common audio formats for playback which are not OS specific. Both of them are actually Linux based.

Instant access is a wonderful thing, but you don't have to sacrifice audio quality in the doing.
 
I bought the MC275’s separately on the e-place about 7 years ago for less than 1/2 the price of new. They both had problems, but they turned out to be tube problems and it was easy for me to fix them. One kept blowing fuses, which turned out to be a bad KT-88, the other kept making popping sounds which turned out to be a bad 12AX7.
 
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