Hi All,
I was wondering who of you guys/girls only listen to MP3's
with his/her tube amps.
I believe for some of you this is pure heresy but...
as I've collected more than 5000 mp3's I like the only source
currently connected to my amp is my 30gig I-pod.
That way I can listen for hours to various type/styles of music.
Anyone using a special docking-station?
Greetings,
Jim
I was wondering who of you guys/girls only listen to MP3's
with his/her tube amps.
I believe for some of you this is pure heresy but...
as I've collected more than 5000 mp3's I like the only source
currently connected to my amp is my 30gig I-pod.
That way I can listen for hours to various type/styles of music.
Anyone using a special docking-station?
Greetings,
Jim
Hi there,
I play my ipod though my tube amp all the time. You have to be really picky about the quality of mp3s though as lower quality rips sound very dull. I do not use a special dock but had a guy who makes cables make me a silver interconnect.
I used to have a 30 gig video and had some problems running it through the tube amp. ipods have the feature that when the source is disconnected it pauses the song. For some reason when hooked to the tube amp it kept pausing randomly. Also when the ipod was connected and amp turned on if you touched the metal back of the ipod you could feel current. Not sure if it was just my ipod or something with the grounding on the amp but it was kinda scary. I have a ipod touch now and it does not exhibit this strange behavior.
I play my ipod though my tube amp all the time. You have to be really picky about the quality of mp3s though as lower quality rips sound very dull. I do not use a special dock but had a guy who makes cables make me a silver interconnect.
I used to have a 30 gig video and had some problems running it through the tube amp. ipods have the feature that when the source is disconnected it pauses the song. For some reason when hooked to the tube amp it kept pausing randomly. Also when the ipod was connected and amp turned on if you touched the metal back of the ipod you could feel current. Not sure if it was just my ipod or something with the grounding on the amp but it was kinda scary. I have a ipod touch now and it does not exhibit this strange behavior.
I'll 2nd that I use my mp3 player through tubes all the time. And yeah.. quality of recording makes a huge difference. So does the DAC your player uses. Ipods DAC sucks. Zune sounds good (best DAC on the market in an MP3 player), but its interface is worse than the ipods.
Other than that I've used a sandisk e200 w/ rockbox and it's my favorite. Same sound quality as the ipod, but at least rockbox lets you manage your music and player the way YOU want to, and not the way Steve (blow) Jobs wants, or Billy Gates wants.
Sorry for the jaded nature of the post, but this MP3 player stuff is something I've just spent the past week dealing with. I really wanted the Zune to work for me because of the DAC it's got, but the software is just unusable. It does sound a little more full than the other few players Ive used, but 1/2 of my music doesn't work with it. There's no way to browse the collection through a file browser. It does everything by tags, and 1/2 my music isn't tagged!
Edit - just reread your post and noticed you have an ipod. If you're up for some experimenting, load rockbox on it! It turns a limited MP3 player into an awesome open source linux media player w/ countless options. Anything you ever wished you could do with your ipod, you will be able to do w/ rockbox on it. www.rockbox.org. (oh yeah, except itunes, if you use that)
Other than that I've used a sandisk e200 w/ rockbox and it's my favorite. Same sound quality as the ipod, but at least rockbox lets you manage your music and player the way YOU want to, and not the way Steve (blow) Jobs wants, or Billy Gates wants.
Sorry for the jaded nature of the post, but this MP3 player stuff is something I've just spent the past week dealing with. I really wanted the Zune to work for me because of the DAC it's got, but the software is just unusable. It does sound a little more full than the other few players Ive used, but 1/2 of my music doesn't work with it. There's no way to browse the collection through a file browser. It does everything by tags, and 1/2 my music isn't tagged!
Edit - just reread your post and noticed you have an ipod. If you're up for some experimenting, load rockbox on it! It turns a limited MP3 player into an awesome open source linux media player w/ countless options. Anything you ever wished you could do with your ipod, you will be able to do w/ rockbox on it. www.rockbox.org. (oh yeah, except itunes, if you use that)
I am going to check me out that rockbox as soon as I finish assembling this Ikea furniture.
I am in Canada so we have not got the zune yet. When they hit stores here I will go have a look at them.
Do you guys hook your mp3 player right to your amp or through a preamp? If you use a preamp do you use the volume on the mp3 player or on the preamp? Do you find any volume settings on either make any differences in your sound?
Shane
I am in Canada so we have not got the zune yet. When they hit stores here I will go have a look at them.
Do you guys hook your mp3 player right to your amp or through a preamp? If you use a preamp do you use the volume on the mp3 player or on the preamp? Do you find any volume settings on either make any differences in your sound?
Shane
I must admit, I use the mp3 player as my preamp. So, I use it to control the volume. If your levels are flat, I don't notice much difference in the sound at different volume levels. If you use the players eq, then louder volume seems to increase the effect of the EQ as well, to the point of distortion on my player. (but again, thats rockbox.. it doesn't really limit what you can do, so if you want to drive your levels into distortion, it will be happy to let you)
Also, thought I'd add that rockbox doesn't run on the Zune. It runs on most Ipods, and it runs on the sandisk. There's a list of supported devices on their website. If it DID run on the zune, that would be by far the best player out there.. but no one's cracked the zune yet.
Also, thought I'd add that rockbox doesn't run on the Zune. It runs on most Ipods, and it runs on the sandisk. There's a list of supported devices on their website. If it DID run on the zune, that would be by far the best player out there.. but no one's cracked the zune yet.
all of this talk about playing low quality recordings through these nice tube amps makes me wonder...... how many other people built a nice tube amp just for the coolness factor of glowing tubes and the future/retro look of the amps? 
I must admit, that's why I originally started, but now that Ive heard the thing, there's no turning back.
I must admit, that's why I originally started, but now that Ive heard the thing, there's no turning back.
I've got two tube amps. A 6AU6/6AQ5 at the office and an 832 pp at home. both use a Kuro Box as the source. The Kuro is a network attached storage device that runs linux. I have set it up to play mp3, FLAC, etc. One has a 300 GB drive and the other has a 250 GB drive. These little boxes work great.
My setup for listening to music electronically
In my basement I have a 42u rack with an 8 Xeon CPU Compaq 8500 hooked to a Compaq raid array with 14X 18.1 GB 15k rpm drives. It runs Fedora core 3 with your basic LAMP setup. For the interface I use PHPnuke with Zina (highly recommended). The server is hooked to a Gigabit 1000baseSX network that runs throughout my house. I just use a web browser to login from anywhere. Zina lets you make playlists and save as many as you like for later use. You can also download the song to your local computer or device. For listening to the stream I use winamp on a windows box or Xmms on linux. I generally just run it from my laptop to my preamp using the same cable I use for my ipod. I have not noticed any problem with high frequency noise.
and if your wondering yes, I really need to get out of the house more.
In my basement I have a 42u rack with an 8 Xeon CPU Compaq 8500 hooked to a Compaq raid array with 14X 18.1 GB 15k rpm drives. It runs Fedora core 3 with your basic LAMP setup. For the interface I use PHPnuke with Zina (highly recommended). The server is hooked to a Gigabit 1000baseSX network that runs throughout my house. I just use a web browser to login from anywhere. Zina lets you make playlists and save as many as you like for later use. You can also download the song to your local computer or device. For listening to the stream I use winamp on a windows box or Xmms on linux. I generally just run it from my laptop to my preamp using the same cable I use for my ipod. I have not noticed any problem with high frequency noise.
and if your wondering yes, I really need to get out of the house more.
wicked1 said:
I built this:
http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.php/John's_Suggested_MP3_Player
Since it lives in my stereo cabinet I only did steps 1, 2, 4, 5, and 9. I access it through a SSH using Putty from my notebook computer connected wirelessly while sitting in my livingroom. I also sometimes connect from my cell phone over the internet. I can build playlists on the fly, control the volume, etc. You could also just keep one copy of your media on a server somewhere and use a router with sound device and dd-wrt to do this.
wicked1 said:all of this talk about playing low quality recordings through these nice tube amps makes me wonder...... how many other people built a nice tube amp just for the coolness factor of glowing tubes and the future/retro look of the amps?
I must admit, that's why I originally started, but now that Ive heard the thing, there's no turning back.
I evolved in the opposite way
Built tube amps for the sound quality but all I did was
listening to "boring audiophile music".
Then started downloading MP3's I did like and enjoyed music again !!!
But still love building tube amps with all those air-force surplus tube I've got (for free
)Greetings,
Jim
kel Disgrace!!!
MP3s? What?????
only kidding. If you still enjoy the music isnt that what its about?
I have gone a different way.
I use exact audio copy to extract cd info into .wav file uncompressed. Machine is a 30 gig cowon. 30 gigs is enough to store 50 cd's at 600 Mb each.
I have yet to investigate FLAC which as you know a lossless compression algorythym.
I did read somewhere a year or so ago about some dudes upgrading the dac in an ipod but it cost Aston Martin money which kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me as all MP3 players are way overpriced.
has anyone else tried straight .wav files?
Nick
MP3s? What?????
only kidding. If you still enjoy the music isnt that what its about?
I have gone a different way.
I use exact audio copy to extract cd info into .wav file uncompressed. Machine is a 30 gig cowon. 30 gigs is enough to store 50 cd's at 600 Mb each.
I have yet to investigate FLAC which as you know a lossless compression algorythym.
I did read somewhere a year or so ago about some dudes upgrading the dac in an ipod but it cost Aston Martin money which kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me as all MP3 players are way overpriced.
has anyone else tried straight .wav files?
Nick
kuroguy said:
Same here..
Note that Wadia is introducing a dock (the iTransport) which works with the current generation of iPods (and probably some of the earlier ones as well) and outputs Spdif for use with an outboard dac.
Details here: http://www.wadia.com/
I think Creative Labs has a considerably cheaper one as well.
I have a 160GB iPod Classic which I find completely unlistenable on my system even playing Apple Lossless. I find it "tolerable" through headphones at work, the gym, and when used with the stereo in my car. It's not what I would call a high quality solution from an audio perspective. I hope the Wadia dock really works and makes the iPod into a viable media server. Retail apparently will be around $350 which is what I paid for my iPod. The iPod will also play wav files, but does not support Flac obviously, although someone will probably produce a hack of the firmware to allow this, as is the case with some of the older iPods already. FWIW I think my first gen iPod might sound a bit better than the classic at the highest data rates it supports.
I have had very good luck with an 8 Gig Sandisk. I load it with Windows media player which also serves as a huge juke box to my house system.
The Sandisk on eBay goes for about $ 100.00. With three way bookshelf speakers and about 10 to 20 watts of tube integrated amp power I get very nice tone. I use the EQ in the Sandisk to tweak the sound.
Also be sure to use a higher bit rate when ripping from your CDs. A straight mp3 from a download source won't sound as good as ripping your collection or converting your LPs with Pyro software.
It is so easy to load a fresh batch of tunes and at 8Gig I can play hours without repeats. The only way to go!
Cheers tube Fans
The Sandisk on eBay goes for about $ 100.00. With three way bookshelf speakers and about 10 to 20 watts of tube integrated amp power I get very nice tone. I use the EQ in the Sandisk to tweak the sound.
Also be sure to use a higher bit rate when ripping from your CDs. A straight mp3 from a download source won't sound as good as ripping your collection or converting your LPs with Pyro software.
It is so easy to load a fresh batch of tunes and at 8Gig I can play hours without repeats. The only way to go!
Cheers tube Fans
There's been many reports/complaints that iPod Classic doesn't sounds as good as iPod nano, previous generation iPods and iPod Touch/iPhone.
I often use my 8GB iPhone as source, and iPhone sounds better than how my previous 30GB 5th generation Video iPod and 4th gen iPod Photo did.
I import songs from CD with iTunes in Apple Lossless format, although it takes up a huge amount of space.
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