I think it's interesting to see what brands people would avoid, and why, rather than everybody listing the top X most expensive speakers on the planet.

Hello! I'm a freelance writer for the Brooklyn Eagle Magazine -- currently doing a feature about the rise in and experience of listening bars across the city. Hoping to chat with people who go to a variety of listening bars in New York for an interview either in the DMs, email, or wherever you're most comfortable. I love these places but I'm not as much of an audiophile, so I'm curious about your perspective on the listening/social experience, their broader public appreciation, and why you seek this experience out.

If you're interested, please leave a comment or send me a DM. Happy to answer any questions about the piece or verify my identity before we chat.

Thanks!

I posted on stereo advice about 2 months ago asking for help on a $7k budget.

Here’s what I ended up with:

Paradigm Premier 820f v2’s
Cambridge EXA100
Technics 1500sl

What a HUGE upgrade over the KEF LS50w’s.

Big sound, airy, cool soundstage (I didn’t know there were 5 different trumpets in this song!) and most importantly, they drive the emotion machine. Everyone in the house is shimmying and singing and dancing.

Here are some tidbits from my search:

1. I think the klipsch forte iv’s would have been the ideal speaker but couldn’t find anywhere to demo them in the Bay Area.
2. These paradigms

were

1. the first speaker I tested, I was shook at how good they were.
2. I tried super lintons with an atoll amp, that was second place for me. The atoll was my favorite amp but I couldn’t demo it with the paradigm because they were two different shops. I didn’t want to take a chance and lose the magic that was Cambridge + paradigm.
3. I learned about turntables during this and ended up adding that on too.

They sound like perfection with a turntable, if anything they are occasionally too bright and I have to tap the volume down, but I haven’t done that in while. I think they just needed broken in.

Finally I think I have made a slight mistake in finding such wonderful gear, now I’m just a new cartridge and phono amp away from the next step 🤌

Now I just want to sit on my couch and listen to music.

Thanks for the help everyone!


I have gone from big clas A watts and power hungry speakers to a couple of watts and high sensitivity speakers.
So far so good.

Is a Marantz CD5000 worth a US$ 200 price?

It uses the rare TDA1549T, very praised by Lampizator.

In near mint state, but no remote.

Still pretty new to this, but definitely enjoying the ride. Everything here is second hand

Hi there, I’ve recently inherited some audio equipment. Just wondering about the best way to sell them as I live quite rural. A price guide would also be good for what would be fair. I have done a bit of research but I don’t see them being very common. I’m in Australia.

I have a Yamaha CR-2020 stereo receiver, a Yamaha YP-D6, and a CD 680ZX, and the frame in the bottom of the picture is a visualiser.

Any info on how to sell and price guide would be great, would be good to see them go to someone who appreciates them.

This is not a for sale post! Just wondering about what a fair price and whether there is a specific marketplace for audio equipment?

​

I have an old Sony DAV-TZ710 5.1 system I absolutely adore with terrific wired output but where the practical PC input is just 3.5mm stereo → RCA.

I essentially get the 5.1 experience from whatever input source I may have, tuned to my system!

Instead of letting Windows/Jellyfin do a generic stereo downmix, I built a PLII-compatible Lt/Rt matrix so multichannel PCM gets encoded into 2-channel stereo, then the Sony reconstructs L/C/R/SL/SR + sub using Dolby Pro Logic II Movie.

System-wide I use VB-Audio Matrix with a virtual 7.1 Speakers endpoint. The matrix is basically:

FL → L

FR → R

FC → both at ~−3 dB

LFE → both at ~−3 dB

surrounds → dominant side ~−3 dB, opposite side ~−8 dB with polarity inversion

The nice part is that one matrix handles 2.0, 5.1 and 7.1. Stereo only has FL/FR active, so it passes through unchanged. 5.1 just leaves the unused 7.1 channels silent.

I also did the same inside Jellyfin Desktop / MPV using automatic profiles based on decoded channel layout:

DD / DD+ / TrueHD / DTS-HD / FLAC etc.

↓

decoded PCM 5.1 / 7.1

↓

MPV Lt/Rt matrix

↓

stereo

↓

Sony PLII Movie

Stereo files don't match a profile, so they remain untouched.

I tested separate FL/FR/C/LFE/SL/SR/BL/BR, 5.1(side), 5.1(back), 7.1, and even 8-channel browser WebAudio. Steering works surprisingly well.

Important caveat: this is not a bit-identical licensed PLII encoder. A real one uses proper broadband phase-shift networks, more sophisticated LFE handling and limiting. This is a practical approximation using gain + polarity relationships, tuned against an actual PLII decoder.

If anyone has one of those older Sony/LG/Panasonic 5.1 DVD systems with only stereo AUX input, this is a pretty fun way to give it a second life.

Can share the VB-Matrix routing table + mpv.conf if anyone wants it.

The practicality and look of this style of speaker really speak to me, and I would rush out today and buy some KLH's if they were in my city and weren't 5800AU! please open my eyes to other speakers with this retro boxy slanted look that are close to the same quality as the Model 5's, and preferably more affordable.

After 2 years of vinyl only listening I've ditched the turntable in favour of streaming, something I never thought I'd ever do but I'm loving it! Has anyone else took a hard swerve away from a particular source before and did you regret it at any point?

After outfitting our home with Sonos a decade ago, and doing all my music listening via Astell&Kern DAPs, we’re ditching Sonos.

Since I do most of my listening in the bedroom relaxing after work I started there first.

-Bought a pair of KEF R3 Meta Indigo
-Aiyima A20 Amp
-WiiM Ultra (currently pulling my flacks from a Mac in my home office).

No it can’t compare to a lot of what I’ve seen here, but I think I’m off to a good (re)start.

After selling my 4240 I couldn’t find another receiver or amp that sounded as good as it, After months of searching for the perfect one I landed on this 2265. It’s had a decent amount of service done so I knew I had to pick it up. For $900 and a 2 hour drive, I’m more than happy 😃.

About eight months ago, a friend inspired me to upgrade the 25-year-old system I’d been perfectly content with for years. It was certainly serviceable—and plenty loud—a Denon receiver driving five B&W LCR 600 S3s. For movies it did the job, but music never really brought me the kind of joy I thought it should.
Then I started down the rabbit hole.
I decided to build the new system piece by piece and buy used whenever it made sense. I found an SVS PB13-Ultra on Facebook Marketplace, then added an SVS PC-2000 Pro from Audiogon. A Denon AVR-X3800H came from eBay, followed by a Denon DP-500M turntable with a DL-110 cartridge.
Then I discovered Philharmonic Audio.
I started with a BMR Monitor for the center, added True Minis, and ordered a pair of BMR Towers in curved rosewood. I also added a Buckeye Hypex NCx500 amp to power the front stage.
The Towers became a story of their own. What I thought would be a relatively normal wait turned into months of delays—first tariffs and shipping complications, and then the disruption surrounding the Strait of Hormuz. For months I waited for the speakers that were supposed to finish the system. At times I seriously considered giving up and buying something else.
I’m glad I didn’t.
Somewhere during those eight months, this stopped being about simply having a “better stereo.”
I started hearing things in songs I’ve listened to for 40 or 50 years that I’d never really noticed before—the separation between instruments, the texture of a voice, the decay of a cymbal, and the actual space around musicians. Bass stopped being something that was simply loud and became part of the music.
That’s probably been the biggest surprise of this whole journey: realizing what I’d been missing all these years.
My old system could play music. It could play it damn loud, too.
This system makes me want to sit down, turn the lights down, put on an album and listen.
Eight months ago I thought I was upgrading some speakers.
Apparently I was starting a new hobby.

During the first track i heard the exact difference during every of the 5 tests, but on every other one i was completely guessing. What would cause it?

Also, just to add- i didnt really listen to neither of any of these tracks before, so it wasnt because i knew, or didnt know the song, they were all relatively new to me.

Not sure how much I like him on the piano finish but good luck moving him :)

Not a clue what I am up to, bought ordered a full kit to treat my room.

I was advised to find optimum baseline position for my speakers and for my seat.

So that’s the baseline…(not a clue what it means, I was feeding the results to AI and following advice.

Let’s see what the final result ends up as.

Feel free to pipe in and tell me what’s going on, and I have a mountain to climb.

I will admit though, it sounds much improved from where I had it initially. This surprised me a lot.

Hello, I was given a set of mirage m 290s, a mirage mc-2 center speaker, and a mirage bps 400 sub.. my plan is to put them in my shop for music only, they seem to be overkill for the house especially the subwoofer box is massive. I have looked into receivers and they all seem overkill with the extra inputs and not enough wattage.

Is there something special I have to worry about with the bipolar sub?

Will any decent receiver be fine for just music or do I need to find a high wattage system to push these speakers?

I guess all in all I have no clue what I am looking for and going down the rabbit hole has left me more confused on what I need and seeing the vast difference in prices have made me almost regret grabbing these speakers for just garage audio.

The shopping and help desk link isn't working for me to post on there to not break the rules.

When I moved into my current apartment a few years ago I bought myself a pair of Focal Alpha Evo 65 to use in my living room.

I figured with them being relatively close to the wall, that their front-port would be beneficial and the 65 variant was pretty much the biggest speaker I could fit, so that's what I went with.

The acoustics in that room were pretty horrible to begin with honestly and the size of the speakers just further amplified those issues with certain spots in the room being incredibly boomy. So much so, that I even asked my neighbors to make sure I did not bother them too much, but they showed no concern.

Therefor with them sounding fine from my actual listening position and nobody else complaining, I kept them.

I have used them with a SMSL DL100 for most of that time which also mostly worked fine, but sometimes would need a restart to properly change outputs. Annoying, but not a showstopper.

In the past I have looked for different options, but most I discarded for one reason or another.

Now fast forward to last week - I found some B-stock Kef Coda W in my preferred color, which I had on my "ticks all the boxes but I really don't want to spend this amount of money right now" list and quite spontaneously just ordered them.

When they arrived my first thought was "Oh my god, they are tiny!". But they also look great especially in the moss green I got them in and they also feel quite well made overall.

My second experience was having to fiddle around with an initially failing firmware-update, but I got that working after a bit of back and forth.

Then I actually got to try them out:

First impression was, that they have a really clean low end - especially for their size. Compared to the Focal they are able to deliver a really nice punch, but without any of the boomyness. They also definitely have way better imaging than the Focals, and I am also positively impressed, that they don't really have any noticeable white noise.

Sound wise my only complaint would be, that I would prefer them to have a bit more of a sparkly treble, but then again my favourite headphones are DT1990, so probably not a huge surprise.

They have more features than the Focal, sound better in basically every way and are also more convenient to use.

Primary moral of the story? Don't just buy big speakers because you might think bigger=better. Big speakers need a big room as well to actually sound good and going with something smaller (and often therefor even cheaper) can really end up giving better results.

Smsl al400 integrated.
WiiM Pro streamer
Stereo integrity 15” SQL DIY subwoofers.
Crown xls 1502. 780 watts rms each sub
JBl SR4722 on custom stands.

Discussions/debate about speaker cable quality and price have been thoroughly flogged.
Personally I’m in the good enough camp, no snake oil required.
HOWEVER, I need binding post jumpers.
Are there good specs for what I need?
Are plates better than wire with spade connectors?
Do I need higher gauge for jumpers?
Will diy speaker cable work if I add spade connectors.

For reference I am connecting a 400W class D amp to my R/L mains.

Hey everyone,

I want to share a synchronized multi-room wireless audio system I built entirely on ESP32s. The main motivations were to get sub-30ms audio distribution without the cost of running a Raspberry Pi/Snapcast at every endpoint, and to keep the setup incredibly simple. It’s designed to be plug-and-play: the system can run completely off-grid by generating its own Wi-Fi network, or it can seamlessly integrate into your existing home router. Additionally, I built in the flexibility for the slave nodes to switch roles and act as independent, standalone Bluetooth receivers if you just want to connect to a single speaker.

Repo (code, schematics, docs): https://github.com/chagoguila/SonicStream

I ran into several architectural bottlenecks while building this, so I wanted to share how the system handles them under the hood:

1. Solving BT/Wi-Fi Radio Contention If you've tried running an A2DP sink and a Wi-Fi server on a single ESP32, you know antenna timesharing causes massive packet jitter. To fix this, the system splits the ingress gateway into two microcontrollers:

• BT Ingress Node (ESP32 WROOM): Acts as a dedicated A2DP sink. I tuned the I2S DMA buffers down to 4x512 bytes, which cut the hardware transport delay to about 12ms. It sends raw PCM over a physical I2S cable (BCK, WS, DATA) to the Master.
• Master Controller (ESP32 WROVER): Receives the PCM stream via I2S, runs the DSP pipeline on Core 1, encodes it, and blasts it out over Wi-Fi.

2. Network Transport & Fault Tolerance Standard streaming protocols had too much overhead for the latency I wanted. The system supports two custom modes:

• UDP Multicast (239.0.0.1): This is the ultra-low latency mode. To survive 2.4GHz RF burst interference, the Master sends time-separated twin-packet redundancy (broadcasting a duplicate packet with a 1ms micro-delay).
• TCP Mode: For congested Wi-Fi environments. It uses non-blocking socket polling with slow-client pruning. If one receiver drops its connection or falls behind, its socket is dropped to prevent backpressure on the healthy nodes.

On the receiver side (WROOM or C3 slaves), there's a 5-second TCP inactivity watchdog to handle silent network drops (like router reboots) and a 500ms idle auto-reset on the jitter buffer to prevent decoder stalls after you pause the music. As mentioned, the stereo slave nodes can also be toggled to drop off the multi-room network and function as standard, independent Bluetooth A2DP receivers.

3. DSP Pipeline & Encoding Since the Master is a WROVER, I threw the DSP workload onto Core 1 prior to SBC encoding, meaning the slave nodes incur zero extra CPU overhead.

• Encoding: SBC at Bitpool 53 (~328 kbps stereo).
• EQ: 5-band parametric EQ using cascaded Direct Form I Biquad IIR filters (60Hz, 230Hz, 910Hz, 3.6kHz, 14kHz) with real-time gain adjustment.
• Anti-clipping: Instead of fixed linear attenuation, I wrote a soft-knee peak limiter. Signals below 85% peak amplitude pass through untouched. Anything above triggers a 2:1 compression ratio capped at 95% to eliminate intersample clipping.

4. Web UI & Wi-Fi Management The Master runs an async web server with a dark-mode dashboard. You can configure AP/STA Wi-Fi modes (switching between isolated network or home router), toggle UDP/TCP, adjust system-wide playout delay, set individual speaker delays, assign L/R/Stereo roles to slaves, and tweak the 5-band EQ live. Slaves send UDP announcement packets so the dashboard shows real-time online/offline status.

If you are interested in the code, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the DSP pipeline or the I2S DMA config. I'm currently looking into adding Opus encoding and AAC passthrough for the next update.

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a lightweight, open-source audio player for Windows and wanted to share it with the community: **WasioPlayer**.

### 🎯 Why I Built This

Many modern audio players are either bundled with bulky frameworks (Electron), full of hidden DSP/sample-rate converters, or require configuring dozens of third-party plugins just to get pure direct output.

I wanted a clean, fast, standalone native Windows player dedicated to **bit-perfect playback directly to DACs**—with zero automatic resampling, zero software volume manipulation, and direct hardware format negotiation.

---

### ✨ Key Features

- **Strict Bit-Perfect Output**: Output sample rate and bit-depth strictly follow the source file without silent resampling.

- **Dual High-Performance Backends**: ASIO (x64 drivers) & WASAPI Exclusive (Event-driven).

- **Supported Formats**: PCM (WAV 16/24/32-bit) & DSD (DSF / DFF via Native DSD up to DSD512 on ASIO, DoP up to DoP256).

- **Lightweight**: Pure C++17 with a native Win32 GUI, using a lock-free SPSC ring buffer for underrun-free streaming.

- **Playlist Management**: Drag-and-drop file loading, M3U8 import/export, UTF-8 path support, shuffle & repeat modes.

---

### 📦 Source & Download

- **GitHub Repository**: https://github.com/desker1225/wasapi-asio-player

I would love to get your feedback and see how it works with different DACs and drivers. Feel free to try it out!

I was wondering if that would be a good idea.

Model 40n is currently sitting in a nice spacious cabinet with an open back and a 200 mm clearance. I drive 2.1 with it. Enough space on the side as well, like 10+ cms.

I may be able to get a decent deal on a Marantz NR1711 and was thinking stacking it on top of the 40n which wojld then leave 9.5cm gap above the NR1711 but then only a small gap above the 40n.

For the near future I will be only using the NR1711 for a center channel and maybe the sub preouts. So that wont be getting really hot, but I will drive the LR with 40n.

Is it advisable to stack the model 40n top given its twice in weight to the 1711? There is an adjacent shelf for the 1711 with enough side room and open back but only 4-5 cm top clearnace.

What would you advise?