Busy December Weekend

I attended important social events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  I was getting over the stress of construction issues with my back yard workshop.  And I got car washed and did a long overdue quick mowing of front lawn.

So I wasn't expecting to get anything done on Audio last weekend.  But I did, I could check off at least 4 items on my Audio to-do list.

Sometimes it just takes a little push to get somethings started.  On Friday night, after coming home from Christmas Party at work, I finally got around to comparing the chassis noise level from Oppo BDP-95 disc player and Denon 5900, both playing the Santana Supernatural SACD I've been listening to for last couple weeks.  The Denon was way quieter (see later post).  That was #1.  I had been intending to do this test for about 10 months, ever since I got the Oppo.

Having hooked up Denon again, I decided, why not try listening to it again.  That was a revelation, I've decided to use Denon as my living room player, and move Oppo to kitchen to become my central video disc player (which was what I originally intended when I bought it anyway).  That was #2.

Then I decided to do some listening in bedroom.  On Sunday I decided to hook up the PS Audio Power Plant Premier I had got a few months back.  I finally did get it hooked up, not without some typical unexpected difficulties.  That was #3.

This wasn't what I planned, but in the process of hooking up Power Plant I broke my Parasound HCA-1000A amp.  (Probably just needs fuse replacement.)  So I hooked up the HCA-1500A amp I bought for the bedroom, but which had been used (until recently) in the Living Room, and had been just sitting around since I got the Aragon amplifier for the living room.  That was #4.  I had to re-adjust bass level by ear because I couldn't re-measure the gain level of the now-broken HCA-1000A.  The bedroom system now sounds much better, and there had been a background hum from the old deteriorating amplifier which is now gone.

The result was both living room and bedroom systems have been significantly improved.  The bedroom now has a bit of the layered depth I get with living room system.