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Finding music, enjoying music

I’m always on the hunt for new music and new places to find the goods. In no particular order, here are my favorite stops around www for tunage.

Spotify DJ
https://support.spotify.com/us/article/dj/

Reddit spotify playlists
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpotifyPlaylists/

Plug in your playlist, get matched with other people https://playlost.fm

Save your playlists incase your preferred music service folds, or you wanna switch and copy playlists over https://soundiiz.com/

Roon is some spendy software ($14/mo or $800 lifetime), but it does a great job of cataloging and streaming all your music files at home, your digital music library: all those mp3 and flac. https://roon.app/en/

If you have a home collection, Media Monkey does a great job of picking up where iTunes got stupid https://www.mediamonkey.com/

If you just wanna play a track or two, you can’t go wrong with foobar2000 https://www.foobar2000.org/

If you don’t want to shell out the $800 above, but still want to stream your music, Subsonic is a long time no brainer: it just works http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

Slightly more expensive than $0, Plex also is worth a look. I dabble with its music features from time to time, it’s pretty, but just doesn’t scratch my itch quite right. $5/mo or $120 lifetime https://www.plex.tv/

Plex came from a for-profit splinter off home theater software XBMC, now MLK own as Kodi. https://kodi.tv/

NPR New Music Friday https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/606254804/new-music-friday

NPR Tiny Desk Concerts https://www.npr.org/series/tiny-desk-concerts/

What are your top 5 Blue Note albums?
byu/DrKewlKat inJazz

Streaming services

Most platforms offer Family Plans. If you can find a couple buddies to split a plan with you, it’s the cheapest way to get ad free. I’ve spent time with Pandora, Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Tidal. Only a short dabble with Amazon Music, they offer many tracks free, but it doesn’t take long to find something you want that’s behind that paywall.

Lossless is becoming a thing. If you have expensive gear ($1000+ home system, $500+ headphones) you’ll want to learn about it. Big dollar amounts! It works out nice because if you aren’t in audio at that level, you probably won’t notice an appreciable difference between “high-def” vs lossless music quality. Lossless streamers, at this moment are: Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited. If you have Bluetooth anywhere in your audio stream, it’s not lossless.

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Upgrading Elekit TU-8500

Red capacitors, yellow op-amps

Read an article (wallofsound.ca) about parts that could be upgraded on the Elekit Tu-8500. I am specifically interested in the Phono Pre-amp part.

I’ll be replacing four film capacitors (C11-C12, C15-C16), and two op-amps (IC1-IC2 2068DD).

Elekit TU-8500 English manual 02 revisedDownload

I am an audio enthusiast, but I don’t have words like the youtube audio reviewers that I’ve seen. I think this thing sounds great, and after I complete these upgrades and turn it on, I’m sure it will also sound great. I just don’t have enough practice with words, or critical listening, to nail down what kind of changes I experience because of these upgrades. I love to tinker! And rather than buying an Ortofon 2M Bronze for $400, I thought I’d throw $100 and a tinker project at it.

Bill Of Materials

  • 2x Mundorf Supreme 0.47µF 600VDC film capacitors $16ea, matched. soniccraft.com
  • 2x Mundor MCap EVO Oil 0.47µF 450VDC film capacitor $9ea. soniccraft.com
  • 2x Texas Instruments OPA2227P Operational Amplifier/op-amps, $10ea. mouser.com

(To type a “mu” google “ascii code mu” and you’ll find #230. Hold down alt, then hit 2-3-0, let up alt, boom: mu µ)

First thing you’re going to do is take apart the pre-amp. I followed the directions backwards, leaving out a few steps. All you need to do is get the board out of the chassis. Using a solder wick, or something similar, remove the solder from the underside of the capacitors. Give them a wiggle and they should fall out.

I was happy to find Elekit had included larger holes for this upgrade right into the board: so thoughtful. Even these capacitors I was using are larger than the bigger holes. Bend them about a bit and stick ’em in there. I added some shrink wrap to the exposed leads, but it probably isn’t necessary. The white EVO Oil caps fit in perfectly no fuss no muss.

Upgrade is complete, plugged back in, works great. I feel like it has a larger dynamic range? I was hearing some thumps on this album that I don’t think I’d ever heard before. Getting up close to the speaker, nothing was lost in the high end either. So?: success.

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Speedsters

I’ve made several speakers through my little DIY career. This is the first pair of speakers that I’m making entirely from someone else’s actual plans – rather than only shooting for an internal sealed volume.

I chose “Speedsters,” a design by speaker DIYer Paul Carmody. From all the reviews I’ve read, people have loved them; and are surprised with their sound despite small size.

I’ve been starting out projects with a Sketchup drawing, and these Speedsters are no exception. I’ve been getting much better at it, and I think it falls squarely under the Measure Twice Cut Once dogma.

The built up boxes. I used 3/4in MDF, and managed to put some dado counter sinks in the side. Pro-tip here: leave the outside edge just a little proud (hanging over a bit). Then you can come by with a flush-cut router bit and make them perfect.

Above you can see the rest of the gallery pics. Cross-over, the varnish job, and final product. I had some little name plates made from some outfit on Etsy, they turned out great. I used 1/4 cut wine corks to screw the cross-overs down to the enclosure and hold them off a bit. And you can see the padding I put in there too.

Overall I’m super impressed with these little guys. They’re sitting on my desk at the moment as near-field computer speakers. I had a woofer hooked up earlier, but turns out they don’t need it. The tweeter is amazing, and I’m hearing new levels of depth in all my music that I hadn’t heard before. While they were a bit spendy to build, I gotta say, I’m really impressed with the quality they crank out.

I’ve heard these $90 isolation stands make a noticeable difference. So a pair of those, and upgrading the amp/dac to a PS Audio Sprout 100 is next on my list!