Fosi Audio LC30 Analog VU Meter (Black Version) - bling!

A couple of weeks back, I evaluated the Rotel RSS-900 speaker switch and in that article, I mentioned this device, the Fosi Audio LC30 VU Meter and Amp/Speaker Switcher (less than US$150 street price). Notice that I have the "Black" version (Amazon Canada link, AliExpress) which doesn't look like it's as easily available as the typical "Yellow" meter version and it also has a slightly higher MSRP at least here in Canada. I bought this one from the usual consumer channels on sale.

Let's be honest, unless we're working in the studio on a project, for playback, dancing meters are mostly about adding "bling" to the sound system and I'm totally about having fun with this! 😀 This darker "Black" color scheme in my sound room is not as bright and won't distract from watching movies. At lower brightness levels, is easy to not draw attention to itself when lights are off.

Let's talk about this box, the features, and a little about the performance.

MUSINGS: On various characters in the audiophile hobby, debates, opinions and the Hearing Test.

Hey everyone, once awhile I'll take a look at stuff YouTube offers me in the feed that might be interesting. I see that in the last few months, there has been this channel called "The HiFi Five" and in Episode 6 (November 19, 2025) they invited Dennis Burger of SoundStage! for a discussion. I found this video actually quite interesting as an illustration of objective/subjective mindsets, biases, and the personality styles that come through in communicating such ideas.

Check this out if you have time for a deeper dive with discussion to follow, related to the contents and characters:

Rotel RSS-900 Speaker Switch.

For this post, let's spend some time looking and listening to the above device. It's the Rotel RSS-900 "speaker selector", MSRP around $200. This has been on the market for awhile now, I think released back around 2004. Here's the manual for it. I was graciously lent this box by a friend to check out as this is not a kind of product I've published on in this blog.

As you know, these days, loudspeakers tends to have quite low impedances with 4Ω ratings common and often when we look at impedance curves, it's not unusual to see values down to even below 2Ω for some frequencies (EPDR's typically even further down). Coupled with the fact that if one were to run multiple speakers to the same amplifier output, as per Ohm's law of parallel circuits, we risk extremely low impedance/resistance to the point of basically shorting out the amplifier. We obviously would not want to do this!

So it is then that we should protect the amplifier with devices like this Rotel switch if we need to run multiple speakers or for A/B listening with instantaneous switching between outputs.

We can see from the manual that this device is passive, and provides switching for one "Direct" speaker output and five switched, what I'll call "Indirect" speaker outputs. It is these 5 Indirect outputs that have "impedance compensation" and based on the manual, excess capacitance should also not be an issue.

Sony SS-CS5(M1) and Sony SS-CS5M2 bookshelf speakers - measurements, comparisons, and review.

Hey guys and gals, as shown above, I have pairs of both the Sony SS-CS5 (Mark 1) and the updated Sony SS-CS5M2 (Mark 2) bookshelf speakers here at home purchased through the usual retail outlets. As you might know from discussions online and videos on YouTube, opinions can be quite polarizing regarding these speakers. I think it's a combination of the low price (with associated biases as discussed recently) and the unusual "super-tweeter", 3-driver design. In this post, let's have a look, discuss, and go over a few measurements based on what I see and hear with these transducers.

For convenience, throughout this article, I'll often use "M1" and "M2" shorthand to refer to these Sony SS-CS5 variants.