People have forgotten what "audio quality" is

blackbird9 · 2025-12-20T13:47:25+0000

You need a mate who has one and give it a listen to.

blackbird9 · 2025-12-20T13:57:11+0000

What are people's thoughts on good quality class-D? Since B&O started making high quality class-D modules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICEpower), I've been intrigued as to whether they are any good. I've never got the opportunity to listen to them though. I know of a company in Cheltenham making good qualify amps using the icepower modules - Nord https://nordacoustics.co.uk/
Has anyone listened to some good quality class-D amps? Any good?

blackbird9 · 2025-12-20T13:58:48+0000

cracauer@ said:
I dunno. A major bottleneck around here is space in the house. I mostly stopped buying physical toys except computers, for good reason. I don't think I have 2 U free in any existing rack.

Decisions, decisions.

How many racks have you got at home? !!! It sounds worse than my place, and that's saying something!

Well, I guess if you've got a real home studio, that's understandable.

cracauer@ · 2025-12-20T14:08:45+0000

blackbird9 said:
How many racks have you got at home? !!! Photo requested, I've got to see this! It sounds worse than my place, and that's saying something!
Well, I guess if you've got a real home studio, that's understandable.

Most of it is not set up right now because I recently moved. I still have gear left over from sound mixing and because I used a rack rig for playing bass. A couple guitar items in racks, too, e.g. a Palmer speaker simulator \m/

My production computer setup also has a 19" mixer to join the workstation stereo output, the pulseaudio output, the gaming/multiboot machine and a laptop output. So the racks fill up all of their own

When I worked in an office I dragged in a pretty sizable mixer to use as a headphone amp. REWS was puzzled. "Might" have been overkill.

Maturin · 2025-12-20T14:10:24+0000

cracauer@ said:
A major bottleneck around here is space in the house.

Yeah, that's a real puzzler.
In theory besides not buying any new things there are two other solutions: Get a bigger house, or get rid of the junk you don't need anymore (sell/trash).

But when I look at my wife's junk (shoes

, clothes

, decoration junk), neither of those three are working.

...but setting the house on fire ain't also no solution...

...

blackbird9 · 2025-12-20T14:18:02+0000

There seems to be a cast-iron rule that 'stuff' always accumulates to fill the available space, and then some. A bit like a 'stuff' version of 'parkinsons law'. No matter what you do, however many times you "have a clearout", it always seems to come back! Even my car boot (trunk) has ended up being an overflow storage space, it's full of junk.

blackbird9 · 2025-12-20T14:21:18+0000

cracauer@ said:
When I worked in an office I dragged in a pretty sizable mixer to use as a headphone amp. REWS was puzzled. "Might" have been overkill.

cracauer@ · 2025-12-20T14:21:38+0000

blackbird9 said:
There seems to be a cast-iron rule that stuff always accumulates to fill the available space, and then some. A bit like a version of 'parkinsons law'. No matter what you do, however many times you "have a clearout", it always seems to come back! Even my car boot (trunk) has ended up being an overflow store.

Same as with disk space. In most organizations filesystems are filled to the same percentage regardless of whether you make them bigger or whatnot.

POSIX.1 · 2025-12-20T14:44:19+0000

Maturin said:
But when I look at my wife's junk (shoes , clothes , decoration junk), neither of those three are working.
...but setting the house on fire ain't also no solution......

Not that I would advise you to do so, but there are success stories among golfers:

1. Book a two-week wellness stay at a luxurious beauty farm.
2. Use the time to hire a very good divorce lawyer to do what he does best.
3. Hire a moving company to transport shoes, clothes, handbags, and decorative items to a pleasant apartment where she can enjoy her life.

After the woman (she is a golfer) returned, the story ended like this: She thanked her husband warmly and whispered in his ear, “Thank you, darling, I would never have dared to ask this of you. You make me very, very happy.”

Maturin · 2025-12-20T16:51:03+0000

POSIX.1 said:
but there are success stories among golfers:

Well, in theory this was solution 4, yes.

But to me this brings several drawbacks:
At first I would lose my golf buddy. But okay, golfers get into contact to other golfers quickly, there are plenty of golf courses around the world, so chances are very good to find a new golf buddy soon.
And it has to be a golfer. There's no question about it.
But it's not done with a golf buddy alone.
Seeing some friends being alone at our age, and I was alone long enough myself to know that's not what I want.
So, I also had to find a new life partner. That's the tricky part.
With over 50 it's very difficult, and it becomes even more difficult the older one gets. At age around 25...30 people develop standards not willing to give up. Especially me. And I am for sure not low-maintenance. I have to play a lot of golf on many courses to finally hit the jackpot. And then, when she moves in with me, first thing she says is: "There is not enough space to store all my shoes."
Other solution was I start over with some one not developed standards yet, mouldable by me, being adaptable to my standards. This was some immature girl, somewhere between 20...24. But apart from then I have a young women who wants to party all night until 4am, while I am glad when I can go to bed before 10pm, for that she either needs to have daddy issues, so I get an immature girl with issues. Or I have to have a lot of money. What will she do with my money? Of course, she blows it. On shoes!

It's easier to train a cat not hunting birds and mouses than teaching a women not collecting shoes and clothes.
So, sooner or later I end up anyway where I already am. And it would cost me at least twenty years again, just to get a partnership where I already am. Then I was over seventy, even too old for a Porsche.
Nah, I rather learn to live with five cupboards full of junk in the first place, and dream of the day when I win the lottery to buy a palace, where she gets all stories she can trash up, and I get my own private, clean, empty computer room, where no deco crap is allowed - except computer jokes, she don't get.

bakul · 2025-12-20T22:26:01+0000

Maturin said:
In theory besides not buying any new things there are two other solutions: Get a bigger house, or get rid of the junk you don't need anymore (sell/trash).
But when I look at my wife's junk (shoes , clothes , decoration junk), neither of those three are working.

Reminds me of what George Carlin said: "Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?" Here, enjoy his "stuff"!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac