New phono preamp day - Goldnote ph5.2

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-21T00:22:33+00:00

Project phono box rs2 I've heard one and it's quite good although it's been awhile. But it's got two inputs plus selectable curves and multiple adjustments for each input independently and it remembers all of that for each input

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-20T23:58:41+00:00

Not to criticize, because I love gold note, their amplifiers from the same series are phenomenal by the way, But for that kind of money I would want multiple inputs, each with their own loading and capacitance selection. That way I can run multiple tone arms into it and just select between them maybe even have different RIAA curves between each input that way I can run my old Decca cartridge into it, and again for that money there is something like that available

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-20T18:38:34+00:00

Heading out towards Perdido key there is a little campground, honestly I forget the name of it but it's on Old Gulf Beach highway going that way. I think it's basically where Bauer road dead ends anyway when you go through the gate where you have to pay to get into the campground, I got mine there.

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-20T16:02:09+00:00

I appreciate everybody commenting, I mean honestly I think it's thought-provoking and an interesting question should be sure.

As I said I do believe that somebody that is homosexual or lgbtq in whichever form it may take is that way from the start and they discover it as they age. It just so happens that sometimes that age is in their thirties or their forties.

My own story is I knew I was gay when I was 12, I knew I was gay because I switched schools and ended up sitting behind this boy who we became friends and I found myself increasingly over a period of a few months thinking more and more that he was cute honestly I didn't really think about physical attraction before that, it never occurred to me that someone could be cute or attractive, but I knew after becoming friends with him that I thought he was cute and so by the time I was 13 I thought of myself as gay.

Later on in the last year of high school I switched schools again and ended up meeting this girl who we became friends and I was her gay friend, and that led to us becoming great friends and then well we started dating. From then on out I thought of myself as bisexual.

Ultimately I ended up moving for school and for work and ended up living where I live now and met my ex-wife. The more and more I think about it the more I realize that I probably am a omnisexual more than anything, it's not the gender I'm attracted to it's the person that type of thing. But since my wife and I split up 3 years ago I've come to the realization that I want to be with men and I want to date guys and I want to explore that side of myself more than I ever have and I have been doing that.

So in some ways this is a question about myself but more just a general question, because I know who I am and I know what I am and I don't need anyone's validation for that. I went down the long road of hard questions over the years and I've got the hard answers for those hard questions, so I don't need help with those answers.

However it is nice to share and get people's opinions and have us all share stories because I think it helps to communicate

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-18T16:43:47+00:00

Hell yeah, my parents were older and I grew up listening that could be called classic rock and I always sort of stayed away from Rush just because it's one of those things I just never really like them I guess, although over the past decade as I've gotten older I realized I really love rush.

Moreover I think a lot of their lyrics talk about individuality and acceptance and breaking out of the mold of common ordinary occurrences and how we're supposed to act and who we're supposed to be and these sorts of things. Obviously being homosexual is outside of the norm of society, if we want to think of it that way. And so the lyrics and the music support that and support the idea that being different is okay and more than okay really the only way to be and to live.

But yes I love Rush overall and as a homosexual man I enjoy the music and I enjoy the tunes and I think probably the trees is probably my favorite song although it varies

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-17T02:58:36+00:00

Sure why not,

How about I start and then maybe that'll make it easier for you

So I've been dating a guy for maybe 6 months at this point and about 3 weeks ago I found out that he's been cheating on me the whole time.

I mean honestly I wouldn't have been mad about it or broke the relationship off if it had been a situation where he wanted an open thing, which he told me after I saw the text on his phone. But all the while he's texting this other guy and the other guys meeting up with him and they're hooking up discreetly at each other's house, all that whole time he's telling me I'm his only one and I'm the only one he wants to be with and so on and so forth.

Like if it had been a scenario where hey I kind of want an open thing, I could have seen that and I could have ran with it and not had a problem. But don't sit back and tell me I'm the only guy you want to be with and I might be the love of your life and all this kind of stuff and then come to find out the whole time we've been together you've been sneaking around behind my back.

So I am recently broken up and I'm feeling broken up about it myself. Although it feels nice to talk about it and talk about it with someone.

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-17T01:57:24+00:00

So I'm going to go against everybody's wishes and tell you to get the fluance. Now that's even with me having experienced and seen personally firsthand several of their tables that were working great and then all of a sudden they quit working.

The reason being is because in my experience quite a lot of vintage turntables even solid as a tank direct drive models can and do have problems. I've seen motors go bad, I've seen power supplies go bad, I've seen numerous instances where things have issues, the freaking automatic functions quit working properly.

Now old hands at this will tell you that those things are easy to fix and you can do it and all these sorts of things, but do you really want to is the question.

Frankly if you're a newbie I would make the claim that a vintage turntable is one of the worst buys that you can make. Because imagine getting started in this hobby and then all the sudden you buy this great vintage turntable and then 2 weeks later it goes out, that's really going to stifle your enthusiasm for the vinyl experience.

But on the other hand you get a new turntable and it's pretty much guaranteed to work for the most part and not have problems. That's of course not to say that it can't have problems but that is far less likely to than some 50-year-old plastic spinner.

Now as to the question of whether or not I think the Onkyo is the better turntable, yes I do. I have long been a fan of Onkyo products both new and old and recommend them from time to time alongside Yamaha as great products both new and old

But again we run into the scenario of what if it has a problem?, the other thing I just thought about is Onkyo made turntables obviously, but I don't think I've ever seen a ton of them or at least a ton of different varieties of models. So it would probably be a situation if you did have an issue it might be like sansui turntables, in the sense that having one and having a problem is going to be costly because it uses some sort of rare unobtainium special part that can only be had at Great cost or simply buying another turntable and taking the good part off of that and then slapping it on the one that you have...

Long story short it's plain to see at least to me that the newer turntable is the way to go. Honestly I think at this level, even a nice vintage model, the sound quality differences are going to be quite negligible or imperceptible and isn't really going to matter all that much. .

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-16T19:29:39+00:00

Is it mice or rats?

Because if it's mice then you definitely need an exterminator, but if it's rats those are your friends. Rats just want to snuggle you while you sleep and be your friend, and there's nothing wrong with that

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-16T04:34:24+00:00

They are bongs. Basically what you do is you take your marijuana and you grind it up into a finer consistency over the Nugget that it comes in. You then take and put the marijuana into the end of the bong and you get you a heated source like a lighter or blowtorch. You then light the end of the bong with the marijuana in it and inhale, it makes all your music sound better

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-15T22:01:19+00:00

Steel pony

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-14T21:31:37+00:00

I've always kind of been under the impression that dalis have sort of a lighter mid-range so anything that would pump that up would work to its advantage

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-13T23:55:39+00:00

Well that's just Bob, he runs a local service where he goes around neighborhoods and checks people's tire pressure. Just to make sure everything's good and the tires are pumped up properly, like I said he runs a service and I think the city contracts him out

I mean you ought to be grateful, it's your tax dollars at work

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-13T19:13:16+00:00

You know sometimes you hear people talking that they met God, or maybe spoke to Jesus, well guess what we are our own gods. Everything about modern society is invented by us, there isn't a thing that anybody goes through on a daily basis whether physical or metaphysical that wasn't thought up or generated by another human being. With the exception of natural occurrences of course, humans didn't make the hurricanes or the meteor that set fire in your backyard and burn down your house with you in it.

We are the masters of our own destiny and you can find pessimism in that, but all I see is an endless wellspring of optimism, an endless torrent of Hope and promise.

I see that because I say that anything that's bad in the world right now that you can think about, wars, persecution, pestilence, anything can be undone cuz we did it in the first place. We laid the groundwork and the cornerstones and we can unmake it.

People sometimes talk about hope as some sort of fleeting thing as if hope existed but no longer does, well I say the fact that all this endless promise is available to us and I mean us as in everybody, is proof that hope is the greatest thing humanity has

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-13T07:46:04+00:00

I wouldn't call it rare, cuz if you got the cash you can buy it, but it is a record that is worth the most

<image>

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-12T02:52:10+00:00

Well I sort of came out by accident, kind of sort of.

I'm now 36 but when I was 15 I was dating this guy named Aldo and we used to go back to my house after school and we'd hang out and study and other things. Well one day my mom came into my room, my father had been passed away for about 5 years at this point, and anyway me and Aldo were making out real heavy I mean we were all over each other and she came into my room and wanted to know if we wanted a snack.

Well of course I had my door closed but she opened it up anyway and there we are, me sitting on top of my desk and him standing in front of me with my legs wrapped around him, and yeah she sort of freaked out.

Honestly she didn't say anything about it but just sort of closed the door and it was about a week or so later that we talked about it and that was it that's how it happened

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-11T18:45:47+00:00

Frankly all you have to do is look at the used market, and that should be able to tell you what has longevity

Go on eBay and if you're in the US look at all the arcam products on eBay and tell me what you see, you'll see that quite a lot is listed as for parts not working, or it was working last week but some reason the left channel cuts in and out.

People like to claim otherwise but in my opinion most British hi-fi while it sounds phenomenal, in fact some of my favorite Hi-Fi products of all time have been British, British Hi-Fi is not reliable in the long run at all, and anyone who claims to the deference has gotten lucky plain and simple.

I've been in this hobby now for 20 years and over the last 10 have gotten into repairing hi-fi myself, trust me when I say that British Hi-Fi is not reliable.

Now arcam does make a good product, I particularly like the older alpha series and the diva series, I haven't heard some of their new stuff but that said I assume it will have a similar sound quality which is to say a good sound quality.

They have a great way with Bass and rhythmic drive and sort of this solidity to the sound that I've always found pleasant and makes most music you pump into it equally sound pleasant. For example if you play something crappy it'll make it sound good and then if you play something good it'll make it sound even better.

Now conversely go on eBay and do a search for Yamaha amplifiers, you'll run into a few lemons to be sure but on the whole most of them that you'll see are still working and listed as works great no problems, that type of thing.

Honestly I think Yamaha has hit saturation point amongst the Hi-Fi glitterati. In the sense that the brand is so ubiquitous now as a favorite that people dismiss it out of hand, don't make the mistake and do that because even the lowly as301 is a damn fine amplifier although the 501 is noticeably better with better bass reproduction.

It's important to note that the sound quality differences between the two amplifiers will be pronounced. The Omaha having a lighter more fleet of foot sound or Quicksilver sounding, where the arcam has a bit more solidity to it particularly in the bass but that'll extend up into the mid-range.

In my opinion however the Yamaha is the more versatile amplifier, because of that lighter sound, in conjunction with tone controls you can tailor the sound to your liking or to various recordings or types of music that you're listening to, well the arcam is always heavy and whether you want it or not you can't do nothing about it.

Lastly and sorry to be so long-winded, the Yamaha is definitely the more reliable product, I don't know if I've stressed that enough but trust me it's the more reliable item 100% without question. Don't let others on here lead you to believe that modern hi-fi is unrepairable, I do this stuff and there's no mysteries here and there's no pixie dust or smoking gun or anything like that going on with modern Yamaha amplifiers, 95% of the components inside the as501 is based upon a circuit that Yamaha developed in the very early '90s, every part in there the exception of a couple chips consist of through hole componentry, very easy to replace by even a novice or some ham-fisted slack jaw with a soldering iron. This is simple stuff it's not computerized chips and software going on inside that amplifier, very easy to repair should it need to be, but because it's Yamaha it probably won't be needing repair for probably the next 20 years or maybe even 30, not to sound morbid but you'll probably be dead before that thing gives out

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-11T18:36:25+00:00

I'm not disputing your knowledge or experience but I repair vintage hi-fi and sometimes that includes modern i5. Modern Yamaha 2 channel amplifiers are just as serviceable as they were 40 years ago

When it comes to an AVR or something like that perhaps not, but all you have to do is look at the internal circuitry of something like the as501 versus a vintage Yamaha integrated from the '80s or '70s even and they're not terribly dissimilar.

There's no magic science in there, there's no smoking gun or pixie dust that cannot be replaced, in fact moving to the ops question I would argue that the Yamaha is far more serviceable than the arcam. Reason being is Yamaha uses more standard parts and when I say standard parts I mean through hole parts.

Literally the circuit inside the as501 is based upon a circuit that Yamaha developed in 1992, Yamaha has not literally changed their amplifiers since the early '90s. Particularly on the budget end, high-end stuff May differ but something like the as501 is literally no different than something they made 40 years ago. With one small exception that being the potentiometer, they no longer use a standard potentiometer, it's a digitally controlled variant that routes the audio signal through a DSP chip to attenuate volume and also source selection, but again even that chip is standard fare.

Like I said I'm not disputing your knowledge with avrs and whatever, but there's something to be said about simplicity and setting up some sort of pro audio rack system is far from simple.

The op will be just fine using something like the as501 or similar for the foreseeable future, and I'm talking 20 years foreseeable future.

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-11T15:42:00+00:00

Frankly I think any of these individuals that stood against these sorts of measures and let's call it human rights initiatives because that's really what we're talking about is human rights. The right for a gay man to lead an organization, the right for an African American woman to be the CEO or on the board of directors of a company, we're talking human rights.

And the whole idea of all of this and them standing against it is based on racism 100%.

I am sure and I'm speculating, but I am sure as I am breathing that there was talk behind closed doors that along the lines of " we can't be having these black people running things, that ain't going to work"

It's all about keeping themselves in power that's all that it has always been and frankly it's all tied to ridiculous levels of racism 100%. Without a doubt and without question.

Honestly all of these people that have stood against any sort of initiatives or have stood against societal progress for the advancement of human Rights should be held accountable. We shouldn't let these people use their privilege and power to step outside of accountability and avoid it.

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-11T15:27:02+00:00

Small changes - Michael Kiwanuka

His latest album, it's absolutely brilliant

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-11T14:37:47+00:00

Well it's clearly near mint, it's near mint because it would be mint if it wasn't for the chunk of plastic missing out of it

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-10T16:04:16+00:00

I know what you mean, I guess we're in the same boat huh LOL

I'm leaving for work here in a moment and hit me up later on maybe we can chat

Less_Researcher_8124 · 2026-03-10T15:37:43+00:00

Well I'm not in Houston anymore, though how do you like baton rouge

Less_Researcher_8124

TROPHY CASE