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lotharsandwich wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 4:05 pm I'm interested in what people here think about speaker stands. We have some nice small-ish speakers (ELAC Debut--whatever the cheapest model is) and want them off the bookshelves where they've been living. Commercial speaker stands seem to vary wildly in price and it's unclear to me what's worthwhile for speakers like ours.

Can anyone recommend or warn against any particular model or approach?

Isadore Nabi wrote: Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:51 pm

lotharsandwich wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 4:05 pm I'm interested in what people here think about speaker stands. We have some nice small-ish speakers (ELAC Debut--whatever the cheapest model is) and want them off the bookshelves where they've been living. Commercial speaker stands seem to vary wildly in price and it's unclear to me what's worthwhile for speakers like ours.

Can anyone recommend or warn against any particular model or approach?

Buying used makes a ton (or at least ~30 lbs) of sense, although I had no luck with this route when I was in the market for speaker stands a decade ago. Details are hazy at this point, but I think part of the problem was that I have small speakers (Linn Tukans) and needed fairly tall stands to get them to the appropriate height for my listening station; 20" or 24" stands are easier to come by. I eventually ended up with these Canadian-made 28" Target HS70 guys, which I scored for around $70 less than what MusicDirect wants for the current version. Very happy with them.

In addition to filling them with sand, the other thing I've found makes a dramatically audible difference is properly coupling them to the floor. My apartment has wall-to-wall Berber, so I had to actually stand on the bottom plates to get the spikes to penetrate to the floorboards. Bass resolution improved significantly when I did that. Oh, and coupling the speakers to the top plates with Blu-Tack, but I reckon everyone already knows that.

Owen wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:02 pm You ever get your set-up just right and you put on a favorite album and it sounds like the first you heard it? God, I love that shit.

Teacher's Pet wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:03 pm Need a receiver, looking for suggestions.
It's not the main rig, it's for a turntable in the bedroom/record library.
Very low volume mellow listening, I don't need anything fancy or heavy duty.
I'm looking at tons of cool old Realistic and Radio Shack type shit on eBay but nothing's quite perfect.
There's a cool Pioneer I found but it might be overkill.

Looking for:

- used
- small form factor (about 12" wide max.)
- cheap is great
- phono stage required, nothing else needed but FM would be cool.
- only one set of speakers required
- must look cool, it's in the bedroom.

There's loads of these out there, let's hear it...

motorbike guy wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 12:32 pm So I have finally completed my 30 year goal of Active Linn Isobariks at home. I sourced a Naim NAXO active crossover built specifically for Isobariks, which is powered by an outboard Naim HiCap power supply. From the NAXO, the six separate signals go to three Linn Klout stereo power amps. Each channel in the Klouts powers the bass, mids or highs on either the left or right speaker. sounds damn good.

Both the NAXO and HiCap are 20 plus years old but both have been restored/refurbished/recapped in the last 3 years or so. The Klouts are all 20 plus years old. One has been recapped and refreshed in the last 4 years. The other two still need to be done.

Sources are my ancient Linn LP-12 turntable, and a Bluesound Node 2 streamer, (Tidal Hi Res) through which I also stream my CD library which resides on a local network hard drive in .flac format.

Its HiFi heaven over here at the MBG house.

enframed wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 12:46 pm

motorbike guy wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 12:32 pm So I have finally completed my 30 year goal of Active Linn Isobariks at home. I sourced a Naim NAXO active crossover built specifically for Isobariks, which is powered by an outboard Naim HiCap power supply. From the NAXO, the six separate signals go to three Linn Klout stereo power amps. Each channel in the Klouts powers the bass, mids or highs on either the left or right speaker. sounds damn good.

Both the NAXO and HiCap are 20 plus years old but both have been restored/refurbished/recapped in the last 3 years or so. The Klouts are all 20 plus years old. One has been recapped and refreshed in the last 4 years. The other two still need to be done.

Sources are my ancient Linn LP-12 turntable, and a Bluesound Node 2 streamer, (Tidal Hi Res) through which I also stream my CD library which resides on a local network hard drive in .flac format.

Its HiFi heaven over here at the MBG house.

Sounds rad! Congratulations.