The Robb Collections: Some recent changes to the den audio systems and in the home office too.

Gentle reader,

Thanks for taking the time to look at and read my humble blog. It truly thrills me to see that almost 40,000 people have done so!

Starting with the photo above. I found a SONY SACD changer at my favorite thrift store. It's the third one I've had. I decided to keep this one as it is a dedicated music player rather than a DVD player that also plays music, plus, being a changer, it can play much longer. It only has the six (5.1) channel analog outputs, no stereo only and digital and optical out for plain CDs.

The photo above shows where I put the OPPO universal player that WAS in the surround system. OPPOs are renowned for their excellent sound and picture. It plays HDCDs as well as all other formats of improved digital audio discs. I decided to sell the SONY DAT and the OPPO uses the inputs the DAT was using. I found the DAT just too complicated.

Above and below are pics of a pair of speakers I found yesterday at Salvation Army. I'd never heard of Axiom, but turns out they've been making top quality speakers for excellent prices IN Canada (not China!). I've found and read numerous rave reviews of these M3Ti speakers. Note

the puckered reflex port on the back. An Axiom patented design.

Above and below, you can see that the cabinets are tapered. This greatly reduces standing waves in the cabinets as only the baffle and back are parallel.

Above and below compares them to the POLK speakers that are the front three for the surround sound system. Right now, they are occupying the shelves that the Polks normally do.

The Axioms have aluminum woofer cones and titanium tweeter domes. Thus the "Ti" in the name.

Below came today. Pangea is a brand of bargain priced high-end audio cables that used to be exclusively sold by one catalog audio company. Now they can be found elsewhere. I got the beast below and two of the smaller blue ones via ebay. Despite the "9", they are in fact 7 gauge conductors, thus the thickness.

Below is a comparison of the 14 gauge cable that the big one replaces. I bought an adapter so that I can use the 14 gauge one with one of the disc players.

The normal sized cable that comes with most stereo equipment is 16 to 18 gauge with no shielding.

Below is the adapter attached to the AC-16 cable's IEC output end.

To show you just how BIG these new cables are, above they are plugged into the Adcom ACE-515 power conditioner. The left-most wire is a standard lamp cord. The next one is similar in size to a heavy extension cord. As you can see, they are MASSIVE!

Above, below and below that are pictures of a direct drive Technics turntable I found a couple of weeks ago at Salvation Army. It has an Ortofon cartridge which can be seen in profile in the last picture. I prefer direct drive. No belt to stretch or break. Quartz locked speed too. It's going to find a new home soon too.

Lastly, below is another OPPO (same model) that I got for ten bucks at another thrift store. Missing the cover for the USB and SD slots, but so what. It replaces the Samsung I had moved in here to replace the Sony DVD/SACD/CD player I'd had in here. Both are in new homes, thanks to ebay.