r/BudgetAudiophile

I've finally built a rack for my AT-LP60 turntable and Wiim Amp Pro, so I can place one above the other.

I used the legendary IKEA APTITLIG butcher's block, a set of hairpin legs from Amazon, and 3 mm foam pads between the hairpin legs and the butcher's block (thanks u/Enough-Potential-430 for the inspiration). We sanded the butcher's block (thanks to my wife for helping!) and finished it with furniture wax.

This is unpolished.This is 0.5inch plywood on the inside, and 0.6inch walnut on the outside. The speaker here is a placeholder, I've got a better one for this..This is local artisan handicraft work on the front, and bit on the top and sides.. How does this look?

Thanks to all for the valuable insights in my previous post! I've scored a fantastic deal on a pre-owned LS50 Ver 1 (2014) speaker system for $500.

Next, I need your expert advice on choosing an amplifier that will make these speakers shine. With a budget of $500 and a Wiim Ultra already in place for pre-amp and streaming,

I'm seen quite many of You pairing them with the Fosi V3 mono or Fosi ZA3. What's your take on these options? Do they really sing well? I listen mostly jazz, classic, r&b and pop.

Hey guys, as an absolute beginner, I need some help with selecting the best amp for my new setup :)

I bought some MB Quarts 1000 for 100€ and thanks to a recommendation from the lovely u/NTPC4
also got a Fosi Audio ZD3 DAC.

Now that I got the new stuff I noticed some of my problems from my old setup persist, so it‘s also time to replace my old Grundig Fine Arts R1 amp.

I am looking at some used amps and there is three options for ~150€ each:

Onkyo Integra A 8650
Sony TA-F222 ES
Yamaha RX-797

which one of these do you think is best or is the best fit? Anything I should look out for when getting a new amp in general?

Original post https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetAudiophile/s/KJ0wNF2XPv

I ended up picking up the speakers on the Fourth of July and on the way home got into a huge car wreck on the highway and the car is totaled but I only ended up with a bruised and a bit cut up hand luckily. The speakers got scratched up a bit and some of the lacquer chipped near the bottom as well as the metal floor stands bent really bad, but my friend helped me bend them back using a vice and a mallet. They are in use at my setup now and I enjoy the sound very much! All of the minor stuff isn’t really noticeable until you are up close but I might re paint the scratches and chipped area as well as replace the grille eventually. Also turns out the grilles were not stained! Idk how they look like that in the photo.

subwoofer reveal

I found these Dahlquist M903 bookshelf speakers at my local Savers for $30. The rubber surrounds were still in great shape, both drivers work perfectly, and after giving the cabinets and black grille cloth a good cleaning they cleaned up surprisingly well.

I haven't been able to find a ton of information about the M903 specifically, so I'm curious what the community thinks. How do these compare to other bookshelf speakers from the era? Was $30 a good pickup, or would you have passed on them?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Hi, this is all new to me and here is how my budget audiophile journey began:

I was pretty much born with a pair of headphones and thought I had heard all that my music had to offer until the first time I heard vinyl.

I started out with the console player peeking out in the back left of the photo.

I found it at a thrift store a few months ago.

Basically for free, labelled untested.

It has a bsr c129r turntable that runs on a mechanical system that sits underneath the tray and a rubber wheel makes contact to drive the record.

When I got it home, it functioned but was far from perfect.

So I gave it a bit of elbow grease (cleaning, lubing, etc) and replaced the tonearm wires (because I broke them taking it apart.)

It was still pretty scratchy when the knobs were being used and the speakers weren't balanced.

I cleaned and crimped the speaker connections since they were relatively easy to access but I chose to just "work in" the knobs to try to grind away whatever was breaking contact.

It worked pretty well and I was happy with how everything was functioning/sounding.

I played all sorts of records on it. New, used, classic orchestra to Wu-Tang.

Then I decided to play around with the stylus since I wasn't sure the age/condition of the one it came with.

It was a Philips ST17D. I ended up breaking the headshell plastic which led to further investigation and I noticed the ceramic loop was all messed up too so I ordered a new headshell, an Arista 1669D.

The replacement st17d stylus was pretty low quality and didn't have the same fit as the stock one in the headshell and no matter what I did it sounded worse than the original unknown hour/condition one.

I tried swapping the needle and little rubber bit over to the original plastic piece, still couldn't get it to sound right.

Somehow during all of this I ended up with two new tonar tips (different plastic mount altogether). I was looking at them (they don't connect to the plastic via rubber but with metal crimps) and figured why not take one of those off and get it onto my original st17d plastic.

So, that's what I did and after a bit if trial and error things were sounding pretty awesome.

Feeling confident in my set up but still weary about the tracking weight (I was able to get it down to 4.5 grams by fiddling with the spring at the back of the tonearm) I went and bought a Kanye album.

I couldn't get half the tracks to play. But I was playing other rock/rap/hip hop/pop/heavy bass tracks without issue.

Apparently modern bass tracks are inherently incompatible with my console player's system/design. It's alleged that the tonearm/needle, if bumped/jumped even the slightest, simply causes the tone arm to shoot straight up.

Which it does in practice with hands but on heavy bass tracks it just jumps/gets bouncy and mimics skipping/skating.

I had already cut the tonearm spring down to reduce the tracking weight so even with it backed off to the max I was still only tracking at 5.5 grams. (Apparently these units are like 5-7 iirc)

So I rigged a metal cribbage peg on top of the headshell and everything weighed in at 8 grams.

I played a few tracks at that weight/with that set up.

Something about things that weren't supposed to have crossed paths, y'know?

And, the console holds up pretty good if there's no autotune.

I even grabbed a pair of Quest speakers from the thrift store to pair with the console.

Now it's 4 speakers with the Quests perpendicular and about 4ft higher than the console speakers.

It really opens the stage and compliments the high end.

But I wanted a dedicated set up that wouldn't be gauging my growing collection.

I ended up piecing together a traditional 2.1 set up with a thorens td160 mkii (VMs 20e), Kenwood 3090 (a bit underpowered but good for my space) and celestion Ditton 33s.

When I finally got it all going I thought "holy crap, this is amazing."

I used this system steady for a few weeks, across the same range as the console player.

Then I decided to give the console player another listen. I thought "holy crap, this is amazing." Especially with the quests.

I compared tracks system to system and even from my laptop through the Kenwood via DAC and via laptop to aux.

Then I listened to a record with headphones.

I came to the conclusion that headphones are best, any good tuned system is 2nd, audio through DAC is 3rd and straight aux/streaming is last. In terms of straight sound quality/detail. I have no experience in streaming FLAC or anything.

But a 2.1 system wins the overall best experience. To me, so far.

What I found interesting was that I didn't detect any audio loss when a record was played on the heavy bsr then on the lighter thorens.

And the bass from the celestions was just mind blowing to me initially.

They are my first pair of actual speakers.

And I don't mean the big boomies but even the low level listening bass.

Then my brother and I started piecing together a system for him.

We ended up with a pioneer pl500, a JVC r-x300 and mission 731 speakers.

I'm waiting for a needle for the pl500 and the JVC hasn't shown up yet but I picked up the mission 731s the other day.

I rigged them up to channel B on the 3090 and got to comparing them to my celestions.

Vinyl and through DAC.

When I first heard the 731s I thought "holy crap, this is amazing."

The 731s, the old British 6x9ish speakers in the console player and the celestions all sound different, yes, but at the same time, all amazing.

This has me wondering if my ears are just not made for this? Or maybe the best system is the one we don't always listen to? Or they're all good and like anything else we could go forever chasing perfection?

I'm looking forward to side by siding the pioneer-jvc-mission system with the thorens-kenwood-celestions and doing some mix and matching.

And I have a few things I'm considering doing to my two existing systems:

1. upgrading the speakers in the cabinet, doing some dyno mat/polyfill and potentially putting a ported bottom on the cabinet (right now it's just an open bottom)

2. checking more into the capacitors and stuff on the celestions to see if I'm leaving any sound "on the table"

3. replacing/upgrading the VMs 20e. Do I stay original or try out a modern replacement? I've heard it said changing the stylus alone is 80% of a cartridge swap. I've also heard that getting into the super fine needles kinda creates more problems than they're worth.

Other than that, it's a pretty sweet hobby and it got me more interested in music but I can't find a reason to get more equipment over more records.

TL;Dr: guy "discovers" vinyl, gets old shitty record player, abuses precious vinyl, upgrades to avoid PAMV (People Against the Mistreatment of Vinyl) lawsuits, becomes content through content.

PS: I do have beef with modern artists skimping out on tracks.

PPS: like most Internet posts this is a pointless product of boredom but I do hope someone gets something out of this. My takeaways are: records aren't as delicate as they're made out to be and almost anything can be made to sound good, if not, good enough.

$10 - NAD Compact Disc Player C 521i,

Marketplace find - works perfectly for my needs.

So with my current setup I’m using ones that came with a micro-hifi system my Yamaha rx-396 my oppo DV-971H and a SMSL-SU1 dac and want smaller speakers as my room isn’t that big and I also want speaker stands to pair them with and I want to keep the budget to under 500 I’m using some that came with a Sony micro hifi system and was looking at some q acoustics 3020i and 3020c which is a bit over 500 but still something interesting so if there was anything similar or a overall balanced speaker for less than 500 new or used would be greatly appreciated.

Saw this, it’s a cassette/8track player. Is it good? I love cassettes

Hi, my friend is selling his speakers - Canton GLE 409. Is this a good model? I can buy them for about 160 eur from him. What amplifier is good for them?

Hello,

I am looking for something like this, but with an IR remote to control the volume. Is there anything you can recommend? I just need aux in and passive out.

Planning to get a wiim amp at some point, but we're probably moving overseas soon so I just want something ultra cheap to get through the next 6 months or so.

Been using my edifier s1000 mk2 for over a week now and they just sound incredible

Bass is super fast too and surprising tight for not having a dedicated subwoofer also the mids are very clean and the highs are never harsh

Here is my 80’s Fisher Studio Standard CA-857, JVC TD-W201 through my Sharp 3 way speakers from my 90’s all in one system.

The Tuner doesn’t hold station memory anymore… oh well. Sounds good enough while working or grilling.

Honestly if I’m just getting into putting components together I’d use the amp and cassette deck. At low volumes it sounds good. The amp has RCA’s for phono, CD and video the other inputs are some proprietary connectors.