The lounge room system is getting a work out on this day, Winter Solstice 2025. I switch on the subwoofer as a treat for Gusgus techno extra oomph. 
Has anyone else experienced unresolved drop outs with their Yamaha musiccaste streamer? The WXC50 preamp in the bedroom system entirely refused to connect to tidal or airplay or Bluetooth today! Naffing thing, my patience is non existent today as severe back pain dominates my existence. 
A squash training injury that comes and goes, fortunately I know it’ll vanish in a few days. 
So refusing to troubleshoot the bedroom system, I am deeply grateful for a trinity of systems and with ice gel pack handy I retire to the main system. 
Yes I know, I’m waffling, forgive me, I am distracting myself. 
Spiritually I am moved, Gusgus magnifies my love and the htpc supplies bit perfection tidal to this Yamaha integrated that has never needed to drop out!

Oh the glory of simplicity, plug n play my wifi’d networked donkey. 
Chicken soup and a warm sleeping bag, I shall permit myself a sniffle too, occasional agony is not even touched by mixing Panadol, Jack Daniel’s, anti inflammatory and good old fashioned medicinal weed, whilst wedging the aforementioned ice gel pack into the lumbar crevice. 
Leave me alone, no no no no no…

yes. 
Curry in the slow pot, need I say more?

Music is bliss. 

Edited June 21, 2025Jun 21 by warweary
Poetic license

What new horror is this? PSA Squash TV freezes. I consider rising to examine the htpc, but Lord, it’s so damned far away. Let’s wait see if the issue resolves…

wtf, Gusgus finishes and an even more bass heavy techno album auto-continues on Tidal and the Vaf platform2 subwoofers’ autolimiter fails whilst the subs voice coil maxes to some random unexplored algorithmically supplied bass heavy track. 
I reach for the walking stick, press down upon it with a snarl, and with effort that would make a world champion powerlifter regurgitate I rise to lurch across the lounge to switch the sub off! 
I raise a fist in defiance of this universe of pain. 
I suffer therefore I exist!

Streamers do my head in, convenient but a huge PITA.

 

When I stream nowadays I use my phone and bluetooth it to the stereo. Much more reliable and for my purposes sounds just fine.

Two weeks of agony with back pain has vanished! Yippy, followed by woop and right on into three weeks of influenza, for a grand total of 5 weeks without hitting a single squash ball. Naff me, but the trinity of systems are getting a work out whilst I am convalescing.

 

The aforementioned musiccast drop outs are utterly unsolvable in the active sense. The only solution is a passive one, of leave it alone for a day or two and it resolves itself. Like what the f?

 

I have been adding more favourites into Tidal lately, Massive Attack, Portishead, Sting, Zen Buddhist temple music or chants, Rocco HVB, Nina Simone.  Have found that 24/96 is the sweet spot for our wifi, in that there is never (not yet) any stuttering in 24/96, whilst there is always song start stuttering at 24/192.  Yes that's right folks, I've settled on Tidal as my music streaming service, no more free trialing of all the others.

 

Figured out that the Vaf Platform subwoofer issue was that when I ypao'd the lounge system upon setting up the Yamaha 803, I hadn't set the dials on the sub to the ypao manuals advisement, so the Yammy was feeding too high a signal to the poor wee sub, causing thus the nasty sounds.

 

The bedroom system is whispering to me in the night whilst I'm sleeping.  "David, David, you want to mount the evo 1's to the walls' extremities, at near ceiling height, pointing them at the pillow your head rests upon.  David, David, buy some floating corner shelves, you'll sleep better."

 

 

 

A big thank you to Mike at Vaf Research for his advice about how the vaf evo 1 loudspeaker is not suitable to be wall mounted as the rear of its cabinet wasn't designed to facilitate that. It is often very good to have options reduced!  Will I be motivated enough to bother with mounting shelves to the wall studs and plonking the evo's upon them at 7 feet high?

 

The trinity of system has become a quadruplet!

 

We've had two rooms painted and along the way we've cleaned up those rooms and that's given me headspace and inspiration to set up a 4th system to attached to wife's computer. So wife now has the cambridge audio one connected to the yamaha ns bp301's, over a simple stereo 3.5mm to rca pair cable from the sound out of her dell pc. Actually works simply and decently for her needs.  That was a bit of synchronicity as I had checked the cambridge audio one was still working after a sna'er expressed interest in purchasing it. But despite that back in feb the CA One was perfectly functional bluetooth and cd player, and all it's digital & analogue inputs working, only a few days ago as I was preparing to box it for sale & transport, by testing it first, the damn bluetooth and cd player utterly stopped working.  No amount of fiddling, or factory reset would get them working. However the amplifier section and other inputs are all still operational, so that put me of the mind to hook it up to wifes pc.

 

Later I pulled my first ever hifi loudspeakers out of storage, the paradigm 3se bookshelvers to hook up to my home office system and sit atop the vaf sw2's. Which sounds quite brilliant, open, airy and commanding across the whole frequency range.  I've always liked those paradigms, had many great listening sessions with them, and have always stored them carefully, so they still look and sound decent.

 

My back has flared up again with all the painting preparation, and so yet again I am unable to play squash. sigh.

 

More time for music!

You know How I Feel, Nina Simone.

 

 

iPhone app decibel x, is free though of course near immediately offers a paid subscription for an extra service, but ‘‘twas interesting to discover that this range of db is pleasant. 
 

 

Continuing to distract myself from back pain with tinkering upgradeitis of the trinity of systems.

 

Peter Graves of audio principe has terminated a 3m pair of chord company clearway x cables with bananas for me, so that’s attached to the i66’s and 803. Seemed to add a little top end sparkle, nicely.

 

Whilst fiddling in control panel I recalled that jriver has a driver function within windows, given the severe imbalance of the left n right channels I thought to use jriver to address that.

 

Pulling out my trusty laser measurer I was informed the left speaker is 3.629 m from my left ear and the right speaker is 3.169 m from my right ear! Converted that to feet and plugged the measurements into jrivers dsp, setup windows to use the jriver wdm, set jriver to auto boot on startup, turned it all off and restarted.

A little while later I set jriver to use the matrix mini-I as output, and just like that the sound image not only locked to centre, but opened up wider and cleaner too.

 

Now tidal and Disney plus sound so much better.

Am currently trying a few small changes in the equaliser dsp option of jriver.

I recall reading from one of those American futurists that hybrid thinking was approaching rapidly, I.e., human + ai collaborating to achieve a goal. Well yep all day I been doing that within Microsoft edge’s copilot. 
Copilot has been walking me through using jriver PEQ settings, whilst I been informing copilot of the parameters of my hifi, room layout, cables, equipment, room treatment, listening preferences and whatever else cropped up in the conversation. 

 

It works! 
The sound image is now centred, has width, and depth. The image is seat independent in our two seats. 

Quite amazing, that journey with the ai through the utter complexity of jriver, made so very much easier. 
And the jriver wdm will auto startup in the background so my lovely wife doesn’t need to see any extra button pressing or settings - it’s naffing simply opaque to her yet still fully functional. 
 

Test track, No Sanctuary Here. 

 

 

The recent wall and ceiling painting done in this pc room has encouraged me, nay, required me to thoroughly remove just about every naffing thing from this setup, and then put it all back together, so it's looking decently neat these days.

 

With my ears less than 1 metre from the drivers it's quite hilarious how dynamic and loud this desktop hifi can go.

 

A few days ago I asked copilot how many watts is required to output my typical listening levels at 3 metres in the main system, was literally less than 1 watt.

I was surprised, but recalled that Phil Vaf had mentioned 300 watts in the Platform 2 is unnecessary but what the industry wants.

Why oh why has our great hifi industry focused on approaching kilo watts, when comfortable listening is less than 1 watt?

Consumers understand big numbers! Oh and headroom, yeh, i know.

This desktop system has less spaciousness than the lounge system, but it is right in my face. It's the go to system for gaming and for getting away from the noise of the world, the sound scape just dominates ones eyes and ears, leaving room for nothing else.  That's a comforting place sometimes.

 

 

Continuing my theme of improving sound without new electronics, yesterday wife and I picked out new block out, thermal and sound damping curtains. 4 metres wide by 2.1 drop, of this deep navy blue colour and a turtle shell pattern. 

After spending half a day on that project I loved the outcome and realised twas time to clean the main window the curtain covers. 

Sorry, this shows the pattern but the colour is inaccurate. 
Wife agrees the lounge room now feels more like a cinema and I’ve noticed that with the curtains closed the outside noises are indeed more muted… which satisfies my audiophillia. 

Onwards and upwards with the tinkering upgradeitis. 

Next on the list is the vaf platform2 subwoofer which needs a repair job. 
 

 

Who said ya can't visualise where the volume knob of unmarked amps are set?

 

Dropped the platform2 subwoofer off to Mike at Vaf today, had a listen to the i93 mkV and the dcx gen 6 which has a horn.  Heard "Peppery Man" by Natalie Merchant on both those pairs and she sounds great.

 

Eventually I got home with a new foster dog, Cosi the Beagle.

 

Cosi is not interested in listening to Natalie on the office system, far preferring to bury his toys in the back yard, make acquaintance with the neighbourly dog and sniff a million different things.

 

arck arck arck arck, beep beep beep beep, rumble rumble rumble rumble, multiplied by continuous infinity...

From 7 am every naffing morning, right through to about 4pm for weeks on end.

Construction work going on here in mount barker in our previously quiet street as the entire road and verge is being ripped up for new services to be laid underground for the new suburb 1 kilometer away!

Yes that's right these 1970's houses have been here so long a new suburb requires new sewerage and electrictal lines be laid for the literally tens of thousands of people building here in mt barker, every one needs to defecate!

arck arck arck, beep beep beep, rumble rumble rumble.

 

Oh the humanity, I put on Zen Buddhist chants to fill the sound scape with more pleasant sounds.

Council advised 10 weeks of work... that was 4 months ago and it takes 3 weeks for the work to progress a mere three house blocks... so no council persons you was telling utter fibs, and the revised update from council is now - work continuing into 2026.

 

sigh.

noise cancelling headphones sold several years ago!!! 

 

edit - I wonder if I could use that for a loudspeaker enclosure?

Edited September 17, 2025Sep 17 by warweary
wonder

As I await the vaf platform 2 plate amplifier replacement my tinkering upgradeitis is in full seeking mode.  I peruse multiple sites for new amps and loudspeakers and quietly think, "something better will come along", and of course it will when the platform 2 arrives!

One great relief I have learned over the years is that the easiest way to get over wanting to spend money on "upgrading" is to simply have a genuine and solid listen to what I have right naffing now.

 

So today I compared the lounge system with the pc-office room system, for those that don't display signatures when reading sna, the systems are :

lounge = htpc, jriver, usb out to matrix audio mini i pro, to yamaha rn803 d to vaf i66 mk2, listening position 3 metres from speakers. Jriver has some equalising & balance adjustments due to my off centre sitting position.

pc room = gaming pc, jriver, chord optichord out to yamaha wxa-50 to vaf evo 1 and vaf sw2 pair, listening position today was about 1.5 m from the loudspeakers, without any changes to equalising or balance.

 

Early in the session I discovered how very much easier it was to reach 85-90 db loudness in the office pc listening position, as measured by decibel X on an iphone 13.  The office system is tonally warmer and also literally makes the walls shake at those kinds of loudnesses with tracks like "butter" by hvob. The relentless dub dub just sets up the vibrations and loads the room exactly like one experiences at a live venue, music dependent of course.

 

Switching to the lounge system i noted how 75 db felt different to 75 db in the office, somehow the lounge had a spaciousness to it, like being more enveloped somehow.  It's more like the lounge room itself was rock solid, not vibrating at all - which makes sense since it's treated with a london 10 kit of primacoustic and subwoofer corner traps, the lounge room seems to not impress itself upon the music, whereas the office room does - at these extreme listening levels for my tired old ears.  I noted that Peppery man on the i66 lounge system had an unpleasant harshness to the female vocal, whereas the offices' evo 1's had none of that at all, even despite being 5-10 db louder at the listening position.

 

Playing "Butter" in the lounge was the first time in the trials today where I preferred the lounge to the office space, the lounge system held focus and tightness significantly better for that one track.  However, the other three tracks, namely, Peppery Man by Natalie Mechant, "No Sanctuary Here" by Chris Jones, and "Feeling Good" by Nina Simone all were just a smidgen bit more enjoyable in the office space.

I was a little surprised given that perceived loudness is such an often clear indicator of preference, and "Butter" was way louder in the office than the lounge... my intuition is that the office room vibrations detracted too much with that dub dub, whereas the other tracks didn't set up resonances even though they played louder in the office.  The harshness of female vocal on the i66's compared to the evo's was surprising today too, something only revealed at the loudnesses used today and never noticed before.  

 

Road/sewerage/service construction/destruction continues just outside my drive way today and all that is of course way naffing louder than any music I can play without access to kilowatts and pa systems.

 

Another day I'll do a two room comparison at 50-60 db, when the construction crew is 100 metres further down the street.

The repaired platform 2 Vaf sub is in situ. 
Only took from 1030 through to 1400 to pick it up and return home and break down the hifi, add the sub, and rebuild it all, then fiddle the dials and let the Yamaha 803 ypao software do its thing. 
In a voice of that old cartoon “This time we didn’t forget the gravy.”

I say, this time I didn’t forget to follow the manuals setup instruction, step by naffing step, both the Dayton plate amps instructions and the yammy instructions… which of course meant it all just worked first time without fuss. 
Bass seems crisper than I recall, vocals clearer too. Wife did not complain about loudness, though the volume dial was higher than normal, which I take as satisfactory approval. 

About 10 pm I turned the integrated off and the platform 2 started humming. Humming and hiss is the bane of our hifi existence! So today I’ll purchase a 12 volt trigger cable to connect between the Yamaha 803 and the sub and hope that solves the no input hum issue. 

Vaf did a solid job fitting the new plate amp which looks swish. 

You can see the matt black adaptor around the shinier black plate amp which holds the amp in the same place the original larger plate amp was. I’m glad that looks tidy even though it is facing down and out of sight. 

A piece of paper taped over the plate amps’ power status blue led hides the unnecessary and distracting light from shinning upon the floor… yes I’m fussy. 
 

All in all a good first day with this newly repaired toy. 

Sigh, I’m a silly billy, the new plate amp doesn’t have a 12 volt trigger. 

Turns out the “solution” is to put the Yamaha 803 into standby rather than off, standby = no sub hum, off = sub hum. Ffs. 
 

Another solution presents, swap the subwoofer rca cable for a different one, and that works, no hum in any circumstance now - so far. 

Edited September 27, 2025Sep 27 by warweary

Have you tried experimenting with different sock thicknesses? Different sock thicknesses, materials and weaves must make some difference to frequency response?

Seriously though, enjoy this thread, entertaining and informative for me. I really hope that the works outside your place are finished as soon as possible. 

Well Godot, those pictured socks are so preferred I purchased three pairs! They are the thickest most plush bamboo socks available in Mt Barker. 
One cannot concentrate on the music with cold feet, thus they add warmth to the hifi. 

Today our street is blissfully quiet, so much so I am open to trying a new artist on tidal.  Album : Any Random Kindness by Haelos. Has that trip hop mellow groove I like. 

Feet got too warm in Ugg boots and aforementioned socks, so I make a Jack Daniel’s n coke with plenty of ice to cool the mood. 

Full Circle album is a ripper by Haelos. 

Another thing I did yesterday with the hifi was to get the Sennheiser HD598’s operational over the lounge system, via the creative audio sound blaster zxr sound cards’ headphone out and command unit. Had to install software for that, which turned out pretty useful for late night listening. 
I was surprised at the clarity of the zxr as a headphone amp into 6.3 mm sockets. 

Zxr daughter board also does the optical output for the yammy and is indistinguishable in quality from the matrix audio mini i pro, which again is all pretty good. 

Well that’s an interesting change, swapped the paradigm 3se out of the bedroom system and replaced them with the much newer and much smaller Yamaha ns bp301.

 

Seems loudspeaker tech has indeed come along way in 3 decades. I don’t feel like the change from a 200mm 1980’s woofer to a 130mm of today has lost any bass at all, if anything just tightened it up. 
But like the revel m16, these little Yamahas are giving a superior beside me sound effect that I do not recall the paradigms ever achieving in this room. 
 

The other genuinely great news is that the soundstage is no longer lop sided to the right, but is both centered and separated, whereas the paradigms just didn’t want the left channel to be as forward as the right. 

How pleasantly surprising. 
Tinkering upgradeitis has been satisfied at no extra cost again. 
 

Also in the news, seems the platform 2 hum was just a finicky rca cable as it has disappeared after cable replacement and management. 

Last night I re-realised the lounge htpc outputs video only at 1080p, as that was the tv capacity when I set it all up. 
So time to move to a 4K passively cooled graphics card for the htpc. I open up the silverstone case to check for size and discover that the zxr sound card was installed in the x16 slot, which is quite silly of the builder as the zxr only needs x1, whereas a gpu is best using x16 in this rig. 

Swapped the zxr over to make room for the ordered a GT1030 passive cooled gpu. 

 

Edited October 2, 2025Oct 2 by warweary

And what a rabbit hole that gt 1030 addition made to the htpc, down, down down the rabbit hole into the dark deep black hole of time and space that is I.T. troubleshooting.

 

Short story - just because the graphics card can output anything up to 4096X2160, that doesn't mean that movie streaming services like hbomax and netflix will display in 4k or uhd even with movies they provide at that format on ones membership. no no no, not that simple.

I give you the word : codec.

I give you the concept, digital rights management, put those two together and they trump computational capability.

 

So after one does the run around solving those two issues, discovering and then solving, yadda yadda yadda yar, one runs up against the silliest of concepts, well to me anyways.

hdmi handshake.

oh yes, if the hdmi handshake don't work, just like a business meeting without a decent handshake, nope negotiations are going to stall at "would you like a glass of water".

What size glass? I prefer 60 degree temperature water, not 50, not 120, not 59.98, 60, precisely, neither shaken nor stirred, just poured straight up. No friggin ice. I want a glass precisely 58 mm tall, 24 mm diameter, no, don't have that, don't want the water thanks, goodbye.

Thanks copilot for taking your time to just tell me what to do next, I hate you.

 

I hate 4k letterboxing for House of Dragon. I hate overscanning a tv series after the hdmi handshake has set for House of dragons ridiculous 2:1 formatting. Go get stuffed. The director wants to show me more of their vision, by dramatically reducing the image size actually displayed? Fool, might as well snort Grange Hermitage through my garden hose.

 

Yes, I got it fixed... lol, plugged in the friggin xbox one x and that works so much simpler and crisper... but yes, got the htpc operational too, fiddly little be- i, tchy.

Oh did I mention turning on HDR on the htpc caused hbomax to entirely stop displaying any picture whatsoever? I hate you black hole of time and space indeed. I got distracted on that one with the internet upgrade occuring simultaneously and confusing me as to the issue, no wasn't the internet upgrade that caused the vanishing picture - despite that both copilot and hbomax and the support at the internet service provider thought it would be, instead was just that the damned graphics card doesn't do hdr, but does do 4k, silly me, only took 5 hours to solve that one, by unchecking that one tiny little checkbox buried in windows 10 display settings... click, but still no 4k on hbomax on the htpc! naff off.

 

 

But hey, youtube plays in 4k stonically beautiful, because, i suppose, there aint any drm, nor any stupid cinematically silly naffing format the director thinks suits his visionary artistic license.

 

Rant on, I say my audiophile friends, rant on.

cough, hdmi handshake, more like a naffing arm bar by a grumpy and drunken viking beserker, who just heard I shagged his eldest daughter and have no intention of marrying her.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2025Oct 10 by warweary
poetic license

With the utter murderous back pain I've been experiencing, and my inability to do my normal things, like squash, cycling, gardening and all the fun movements of life, I have gone back to gaming... which of course has involved updating the gaming pc.  Black friday saw me purchase a new 5060 ti 16 gb graphics card from centrecom online, and like so often, that led to another purchase, which was an Aorus FO48U Gaming monitor second hand off facebook marketplace.

 

Man, those OLED monitors are the bomb for colours and frames per second!  A clear difference.

 

Elite Dangerous is my go to game, a space ship simulator and the blacks of the void are blacker than ever.  ED has always been beautiful, but this is next level stuff.

Only time will tell if 48 inches is too big for a desktop monitor, but in place it's only slightly bigger than the 40 inch hisense 4k I was using, so I think it's a useful little upgrade in picture quality and frames per second / responsiveness.

 

So I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the new plate amplifier for the Vaf platform2 subwoofer and have developed a solid opinion.

Yep.

It’s louder, faster, deep, and more imposing. Ominous is the word that comes to mind sometimes.

Yes it’s got that auto turn on/off “tsk” that’s about 1/10th of a second which is a bit disconcerting, but wife n I have grown used to that. And I permit myself a smile knowing when the movie playing hasn’t or has used the sub for a while with that “tsk” highlighting such things- as if the subs genuine effects aren’t enough!

So kudos to vaf for giving my 14 year old sub drivers a new lease of life, cheers to the guys @ Vaf.