Category: Electronics

Monday, March 31st 2025… March is going out like a lion…

It’s a high of 48 degrees today (last day of March) with yesterday’s high of 75 degrees. Saturday afternoon, we went and saw a Fleetwood Mac tribute band at the Lyric in Blue Island. It was also a nice venue for the mobility challenged.

One thing this weekend (on a different note), that I didn’t expect was for it to be such a pain in the ass to do my taxes with software that I wanted downloaded – everything now is so cloud centric that I had to hunt for a download solution from H&R Block. I have zero confidence in cloud-based software that also protects my personal financials. I wonder how others feel about this. And no, I’m not allowing comments. It was a rhetorical question.

One other thing that I didn’t anticipate (on a separate, and different note) was that when I bought and hooked up the digital ASU/XLR cables that connect the NAD M51 to the NAD M50, my audio sounds way worse. The musical resolution is crappy, full of static, and heavy on one channel. Hopefully, my receiver isn’t dying on me because the first symptom would have been the one channel on the preamp dying. Which may mean (now that i think about it) that the amp is actually good, and the receiver is garbage.

-Rat

Thursday, March 20th 2025…

So, I got my NAD M52 Digital Music Vault (ordered from Germany – vintage 2014 tech) this week. It’s a glorified NAS (RAID 5) server that specifically supports the NAD M50 Digital Music Player (vintage 2014). I also happened across the NAD M51 (DAC and Digital Preamplifier also vintage 2014) to complete my NAD suite. We shall see how it compares with the Vault2i from both a convenience and a performance perspective.

-Rat

Friday, February 28th 2025…I never would have guessed…

So, I put in my Energy replacement (v.1989) tweeter yesterday and I noticed 2 things. First, the replacement tweeter (v.2020) that was in my other speaker has better sound and fidelity, second was it was louder so it’s more efficient! That’s why it sounds so much better. The downside to replacement tweeters (v.2020) is 2-fold, first is that the original tweeters (v.1989) have different connections, so the stock connectors won’t work, and second the wires are so short coming from the crossover that I have to be careful replacing the connectors, oh and did I mention that also there is no marked polarity on the old tweeter- wtf? Maybe I’ll ride with the new/old tweeter (v.1989) until it craps out, send the pair in for rebuild in the meantime. When it craps out, I will replace it with the new replacement (v.2020).

Oh, and either my left channel on my amp is failing, the cable is failing, or my receiver’s left channel is failing – ugh! It’s not the wiring – at least I know that. It’s always something.

-Rat

Thursday, February 27th 2025…Can’t wait!…

So, when I get home today, I am going to do 2 things – first, replace my Energy 22 Reference tweeter (I just got an extra one used via eBay) and second, pack up my other tweeters and get them ready to ship off to the guy who will recondition them. And while I’m doing that listen to some music. I need to treadmill it and sling some weights around – I have MEPS to get! (flipping MyZone). I am also doing a class centered on electronic circuits – it’s funny how much stuff I forgot. Also, it’s kind of interesting using this software called Tinkercad that can do some of the circuit analysis – it’s all virtual! It kind of floors me – yeah, I know that I should expect things like this, but I remember doing all this stuff by hand – meaning with pencil and paper. My original electronics teacher from COD was an engineer at Bell Labs and was on one of the teams that worked on a part the development of the integrated semiconductor. He was probably in his 70s at that time. He had some interesting tales.

-Rat