decompositions

Nice work. But it can certainly be hard work, depending on the condition of the vinyl.

I haven't done any for a long time: don't have the hearing or the energy. But I do have own-rips that I prefer to clean CD/download versions, even where it is not a question of poor remasters. ...

Where it does not approach painful, I actually like to hear traces of vinyl imperfection. I became used to hearing those small things, sometimes for decades. They are part of my experience of that record.

I never believed in hi-res. But hey, I thought I might be inviting the bats for dinner at some time!

haven't heard any of the other donald amps, but initial impressions in comparison to starlett after spending a night with it - even airier feeling, more sense of space between things and really excellent sense of layering and seperation that I appreciate a lot. also feels punchier/quicker on stuff like snare drums especially, the word "taut" comes to mind, but not in a bad way to say that decays feel dampened.

really neat machines, but totally understandable how they fell off - I had to buy a lot of random tapes on ebay because I couldn't find any tapes locally even at the antique stores, found way more 8 track tapes than I would have expected though

How much weight we talking

I bought a box of 12 of them and its around 10 pounds, I guess it makes sense since rolled up tape reels would be dense

I'm addicted.

I ended up getting an ASUS BW-16D1HT bd drive with an external enclosure - definitely overkill but should hopefully take less time to rip than the slim external drives do, that seems to be the only real complaint with those

Plextor or go bust.

I have a handful of external drives, and the Pioneer BDR-S13J-X in an enclosure may be my favorite.

FiiO has some powered monitors to go with their desktop Android streamers.

cool, never seen the fiio stuff - and yeah I more meant I hadn't seen any chinese hifi companies trying to do speakers for western markets, just ran out of characters

Edifier? It's more focused on speakers, but it also makes BT headphones, and, IIRC, bought STAX

I could definitely see that. Does your Torpedo 3 have all the "upgrades" or is it the OG version with no CCS and the Edcor output transformers?

it's the "maxed out" version with CCS, mundorf caps, and cinemag transformers. I didn't like most of the cheaper tube gear I heard when I was younger, but I've been pleasantly surprised with this one. I listen to some stuff where it's either a bit abrasive or just was recorded badly (ex. some metal, DIY punk), so that's where it's really shined for me as far as easing up what I heard as "nasty treble"

Glad you like it!