Harold Cooper of Sound Consultants

Landed in Vegas!





coop

Coop here

Times have been busy Not much of a chance to post, but that doesn't mean my mind is not on tuning. The opposite would be true I'm happy to say. Inbetween the shops and shows I am getting in some fun musical sight seeing.















hope everyone is having a great time

coop

Michael will like this one. Jim Stewart's recorder from Satellite Records.



coop

Harold Here

Sending pictures to Michael from what he call's "the coop tour". The Robert Cray Band was excellent last night.




coop

coop

Finishing out Chicago with Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons.

Hi Guys Coop here,

Got back from AXPONA 2015 with well over 200 new friends asking about RoomTune, and many old friends who have used and continue to used our products. I'd like to thank the Needle Doctor for a successful show and fun room to be in.






coop

While spending time with the kids and Hadden I took in some record shopping.




coop

Congratulations Grampa Coop

Did I ever ask you what your turntable, tonearm, cartridges + phono combination is?

On my TT spinning right now is Kris Kristofferson's The Silver Tongued Devil and I.

IMO probably his best album....

"The going up was worth the coming down" - The Pilgrim Chapter 33

Sonic

Sonic,

Thanks!  It's great being a grandpa, especially for the first time.

My TT front end is a JR Transrotor Dark Star with Jelco arm and Shelter cartridge.

Phono sections currently on hand are the Esoteric E-03 (solid state), the Audolici AVP-01 (fantastic tube products from Portugal) and the Audio Note M3.

I prefer the Audolici or Audio Note.  I tend to like tubes and to me both of these units have a very musical sound with great detail and depth whereas the Esoteric is more typical of US high end audio - very detailed and analytical, but a bit sterile sounding.  

Got lots of new (used) vinyl to spin when I get back home - Jazz, Blues, Rock, and some Fusion.

Take care!

Coop

Coop awaits Celine Dion at Caesars Palace as I write this.

Taking in Vegas in a big way. One of the best concerts I've ever seen! Fantastic sound and very high energy performance!

System with turntable and computer on table. Nice clean layout on the Audolici phono stage! Took all the top stuff off the I-50, Music Hall DAC on platform and Music Hall table. All MGA cords and interconnects except the obvious ones. MGA Exotic Blocks. Mini Mods on Brazilian/LTR stands.  Sounds pretty sweet after a few days of burn in! Great to hear analog again.
Coop

Now that's what I call a portable stereo Nice rig Harold

  Thanks, Rotelguy!  It's a work in progress!  Snowbirding this winter so I shipped some items, built the rest with Michael in Vegas, and now we're in Albuquerque until the end of March.  I import the Audolici from Portugal, and it has become my favorite tube line overall.  Very clean layouts, great parts quality, and fairly easy to tune, except I haven't done much to these except remove all the excess "packaging" on the I-50 amp that makes it look pretty!  More tuning on all will come when I'm back in Wisconsin in April (hope the weather is decent by then!)  The Music Hall 7.3 turntable seems like a great value for the money, carbon fibre arm and great sounding for a "plug and play" unit.  That was a display unit I picked up from my friend Roy Hall of Music Hall at the end of CES.  
Hoping to add a small sub before next year.  
Still figuring out the digital computer front end - I'm currently running Channel D Pure Music on an Apple MacBook Pro.  All my stuff is Apple, and Pure Music was optimized to run concurrently with iTunes.  It sounds pretty awesome so far, indistinguishable from the original CD, plus their customer support is great!  It's a true memory based player so it downloads the complete song into computer memory (very brief delay between each song, just like on the CD) so there is NO drive access at all when the music is playing.  I'm ignorant on other digital music programs so maybe they all work that way!  
Must organize my libraries when I get home before I rip more CD's!  As you probably know, USB is a compromised interface for music as it carries power as well, but it's what we're stuck with.  Pure Music advised me to not use USB for my external music drive as well as the USB output to the DAC.  Possible processing conflict I suppose.  SO, the plan is to get an external Thunderbolt drive for music storage (I think that's an Apple proprietary interface) which transfers data at 5-10X USB so there will be no possible slowdown or conflict.  Stay "tuned" for more updates when I get back to this system which maybe a month or so after I get home.  (Or more if my projects go like they normally do!)  Take care!

Hi Coop!

USB is nastily compromised for sure -- the power that is carried is awfully "dirty and grungy" according to some. Sonic is thinking of ways round this. For now the sound I am getting from my ASUS laptop (with Western Digital storage) to the AUNE 32/384 DAC is remarkably good but it could be lots better.

What you wrote warrants more investigation: [Coop] "It's a true memory based player so it downloads the complete song into computer memory (very brief delay between each song, just like on the CD) so there is NO drive access at all when the music is playing." and "As you probably know, USB is a compromised interface for music as it carries power as well....Pure Music advised me to not use USB for my external music drive as well as the USB output to the DAC. Possible processing conflict I suppose. SO, the plan is to get an external Thunderbolt drive for music storage (I think that's an Apple proprietary interface) which transfers data at 5-10X USB so there will be no possible slowdown or conflict."

With the inevitability of computer-based audio storage and playback not to mention how we buy music in the future, we might as well grasp the nettle.

Sonic

Hi Sonic,

Yes indeed! I have just started on this journey and have much to learn - but looking forward to each step along the way!

Cheers!

Coop

Hi Coop

A good start that has been started by you indeed. Since you are using Apple, I guess you are using ALAC, the Apple version of the lossless codec?

Sonic

Yes Apple Lossless!

Coop