Archive - Nuts About Hi-Fi Blog


Nordost Cables – A Customer Review

“I could not resist the rare opportunity to try Nordost cables in my system. I figured I would start with a Blue Heaven Power Cable for this amplifier, and it did not disappoint. I have used that same amp with cables costing 10x to 60x more, and they did not have nearly the impact as this Blue Heaven cable did. In fact, the performance immediately drove me to purchase more Nordost Blue Heaven cables. I now have speaker, HDMI, digital and multiple power cables. My streaming system has Purple Flare Power Cables and Blue Heaven Digital Cables. How is it possible that cables in these price points can outshine reference products from another company I asked myself?”

– James –

A Magnificent Focal Sopra 3 Speaker Installation

Yesterday we installed a beautiful pair of Focal Sopra 3 speakers for a great customer and friend Bill Galloway.

Bill and I have been working together on his listening system over the past 15 years or so. Each year we have performed at least one component upgrade. Bill obviously loves his music and it has been both fun and interesting hearing these upgrades and getting his feedback.

We are using our Aesthetix Mimas for the preamp and amplifier, our Clear Audio turntable and a Meridian Audio music library running currently with their Sooloos software. Nordost interconnects, cabling and line conditioning tie this beautiful system together. The Sopra 3’s along with our JL Audio F112 subwoofer fill this room with a spacious, realistic music presence that anyone could appreciate and enjoy.

Bill recently retired so he now has plenty of time to enjoy his listening room and share it with friends and family.

Thanks again Bill for everything and allowing us to share this post.

Local Magazine Features Nuts About Hi-Fi

West Sound Home & Garden magazine just did a wonderful feature story on us and the state-of-the-art, entire home, audio / video installation we’ve been designing and installing for the past couple of years. We’re providing a few snippets from the article, but you should read the whole thing. You’ll get the full picture of what we can do to make your audio/video dreams come true. Here’s a link to the article:

Serious About Home Entertainment

A few samples from the article:

The audio/video components also include hard drives large enough to store literally thousands of movies and music in their full, uncompressed, original formats.

The heart of their home would center around music and home entertainment to bring friends and family together for fun and memory-making. They wanted entertainment of all kinds: a billiard table, golf-simulation games, music and movies both indoors and out. To make that particular part of the dream come true, they hired Jim Lee and his crew at Nuts About Hi-Fi.

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From start to finish, this project took two years. Lee, Krawoski and Huson spent around 20 hours talking, demonstrating and designing with their clients. The project fills three closets with equipment racks to manage the seven-zone, surround-sound system and screens. No room in the home was left out of the plan, including the garage. The zones can operate as a whole-house system or as individual rooms.

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Once the system is installed, the equipment is balanced to the acoustics of each room. The Nuts About HiFi team live for the moment when they finally crank up the sound system for their clients. These two broke into wonderous smiles and danced to the music.

Cozy fire pit enhanced with custom-designed barrel speakers. The subwoofer satellite-speaker system provides a very warm, full-range music presentation even when played at a low volume.

Spring Cleaning For Your Stereo System

“In the Spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of… Audio Gear!?!”

May Tennyson forgive my blatant bastardization of his poetic masterpiece, but its true: as Winter turns to Spring, flowers begin to bloom, animals awaken from hibernation and guys start prepping their toys for the warm months. All across America, lawnmowers are gassed and lubed, boats are lowered into lakes and rivers, hot rods are tuned and detailed until they shine like mirrors; in other words, it’s time for Spring Cleaning and your Stereo System is the best place to start! Tweaking your system means being a “Do it yourselfer” and, like car guys, you should derive pleasure from maintaining, improving and hot-rodding your gear. There’s a special satisfaction that comes from Sweat Equity and this is particularly true in the case of system optimization.

Although many connoisseurs assume a Stereo System requires little or nothing in the way of maintenance, nothing could be further from the truth. Mechanical vibrations and electrical impulses loosen nuts and bolts, while dust, dirt and pollutants contaminate every connection in your system. Records, cartridges, laser pickups, etc are equally vulnerable. Since these changes occur gradually, you might not notice the degradation in performance on a day-to-day basis but trust us: once you’re given your system a serious “Spring Cleaning,” you’ll hear everything you’ve been missing. And remember: THIS IS FUN!!! Enjoy spending some “Quality Time” with your system…

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