By Juan C. Ayllon It's no secret that I've been a bit nervous with our toddler grandchild, who's crawling and learning to pull himself up on things, spending more time at our home. And towards that end, I recently acquired a long, living edge board to use as a shelf C-clamped to a pair of weight lifting racks just behind my media stand to help give several components extra distance from his hands, should he manage to meander by my hi-fi system in a momentary lapse of supervision. More specifically, I found a two-inch thick slab of living edge poplar that was 50" long and 19" wide at Born Again Barns and Lumber in Antioch, IL that had a little dirt on it, but had potential and, at $40, what's a little extra elbow grease spent cleaning it off? At home, I brushed off excess dirt with gloves, then power sanded it, wiped it clean and applied a coat of tung oil, letting it dry in the garage overnight. Today, I C-clamped it to the weightlifting racks, placed my turntable isolation platform to the right, along with my VPI Prime Scout, and gave it a spin. It works and looks terrific!
And while I wait for my Lampizator DAC to return (it's being upgraded from a Lite 7 to a Big 7 Mk 2 DAC at the factory), when I want to do some digital streaming, I play Qobuz over my MacBook Air directly to my PrimaLuna Prologue 3 preamplifier to great effect. Although it's not as refined as running my dedicated Lampizator Komputer DSD music server through my DAC, it's surprisingly transparent and natural sounding. What's not to like about that?
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Juan C. AyllonA writer, artist, educator and owner of Prairie Audio Man Cave, he lives with his wife, Isabel (AKA Belle), and their Goldendoodle, Liam, enjoys listening to high fidelity music and all things hi-fi at their home in the greater Chicagoland area.. Archives
March 2024
Categories |