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There is greed indeed, but the rise in oil prices caused by war is also an objective factor, and every aspect of modern industry is influenced by it. At least it provided an irrefutable reason for the price increase.

I think it is mostly just greed but yup, 10% on almost everything. The X9000 is up to 770KYen which is just stupid.

Stax is going to raise the price of its products by 10%. Thank U Trump🤬

The Audacity from AMC, but also showing on Netflix. Took a couple episodes, but I’m now so in. Angry, snarky comedy. Aka the other Cupertino. Trailer First episode

We’ve been many times. In fact, I start one of my usual bike loops from the Hotel Winters parking lot. It is a little hidden gem for sure. Only about a 20 minute drive from where I live.

While heading to Melissa's parent's house last weekend we visited the small town of Winters CA for the first time, and stumbled across their small car show in the early evening. So out came the M Monochrom (M9M) and LLL 35mm f/1.4 Double Aspherical "11873", shot mostly at f/2 for a classic, low res look. It's a cute little town if you haven't been @TMoney

Whatever you did to post like that, don’t do it again.

Hi everyone, I have a question: how do you select an output transformer for Stax headphones? I’ve built a circuit using 2A3 tubes, but I’m having trouble with the output transformer because I don’t know how to calculate the specs—though the LL1660 is said to be suitable. I want to order a custom transformer for 2A3 and 845 tubes.

Gloria Steinem too. https://apnews.com/article/gloria-steinem-dies-724836935f6547fda60f361c15238d14 with stepson

Sad news. We saw Jason Moran accompanying Cassandra on piano at SF Jazz in 2013 and I'm pretty sure we saw her perform elsewhere before then. Gone too young. ☹️

so you need about 4 times the current just to drive the cable. so say 100ma bias. only the D&G can do this. or a 150+ watt speaker amp and a really large boost transformer. say a pair of transformers from a mc2300.

I moved the cable chat over to another thread but yeah... this is not great:

I figured it was worth its own thread to look at these aftermarket cables that have popped up. Now I don't really want to be a part of the whole cable mess but with electrostatics it is rather simple... the main component is capacitance. The cable will always add some and it determines how hard the entire system is to drive. So TLDR, more capacitance... everything is worse. The amp has to work much harder to try and push current into the top and bottom end. As a baseline, I tested a spare SR-X1 driver I had here and between the +/- inputs it is right on 40pF. We want to keep this as low as possible to keep the load low. So first off we have this ebay find, staight out of China: I was roughly 130$ shipped for the 2.5M version but I've seen them go for a lot more than that. It has the off the shelf Stax connectors on either end and they are nice enough quality. The wire is the cheapest, thinnest crap possible though. As a comparison the plan was to use a SR-X1/007S/009D cable but I only found a SRE-725 extension cable. Same length at 2.5m but is might be a tiny bit worse as the flat ribbon needs to connect to the Stax socket on the other end with wires will cross a bit doing that. Should be a small one but worth noting. I tested between the L+ and L- (I also compared against the R+ and R- but it should read the same) using a basic Uni-T capacitance meter at 1kHz. Both cables strewn out as long as they go on a wooden floor so minimal impact from that. So first off, here is the Stax SRE-725: That is 0.061nF or 61pF. Not bad and what I'd expect from the Wide PC-OCC cables. Now here we have the ebay cable... That is 0.46nF or 460pF. Yeah... that is not great is it. So as a comparison, the whole system capacitance with the Stax cable is 101pF, with the ebay cable it is 500pF. Yeah... this is utterly terrible and will make the headphones sound terrible. Now a second possible issue is how much voltage can the cable withstand. Again here we are hooked up to the L+ and L- simply because those pins are the easiest to get to with the large clips. This cable passes at 1500V with flying colors, almost 30 seconds and at almost 6 gigaohms so no issues there. I'm guessing this is actually double insulated as there is not a whole lot of wire in there.

Well, I'd heard the same story, but something I didn't know was that they recorded an album in the seventies. It was all pop songs. The album was pushed by Linda's manager at the time. They had it ready to go, but neither Linda, Emmylou or Dolly felt it was right. So they decided to shelve it. The 87 album cemented that decision in all of their minds.

There's a ton of that Chinesium everywhere. Some of them might be good, but I can afford to wait it out. I don't have a video camera or good DSLR (or a business case for content creation), so a shotgun mic is just a curiosity at the moment.

Cassandra Wilson, Star Jazz Singer, Dies at 70 - The New York Times "New Moon Daughter" has been a favorite of mine forever: No cause listed yet. Although the article says "peacefully, surrounded by family". RIP.

That is a hell of good story Steve - I'm massively jealous! We saw Emmy Lou in concert around 6 months ago in Birmingham Symphony Hall (UK). She's 79, and made it clear that was the last time she'd tour outside the US - because of her age she finds it difficult now on endless long hauls. She was superb - lost the clear as a bell high notes, but still absolutely awesome. Back in the late 70's and getting seriously into audio, standard albums that showed off the quality (or not!) of a system was Linda Ronstadt albums. And one of my favourite albums even now is Trio - Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmy Lou Harris - released in 1987 (nearly 40 years ago - eek). Like you said the quality of the harmony and the way their voices complemented each other raises goosebumps. They actually spent well over a decade after the TV show you remember, Steve, trying to follow up with an album. But their personal tour commitments got in the way until Trio was finally recorded.

I don’t know anyone who can keep up with the flood of entry level microphones aimed at content creators.

Carole suffered more angst than me when our kids went to college; Rob to Warwick and Liz to Essex. But the thing to remember when this happens is "Job done". You bring these little creatures into the world totally helpless, they progressively grow up - then they are adults, and quite rightly fly the nest. Now at 41 (Rob) and 37 (Liz) they both keep in touch regularly, and with each other. By phone and WhatsApp. Rob lives in the NE of England, and Liz is on the Gold Coast in Australia with a permanent residence Visa (so she can apply for citizenship). WhatsApp is a wonderful tool.

So, we finished the shelf install last weekend. Linda was in really good spirits. She was like a kid with a new toy when we finished. It made me feel great to make her happy! She then invited us into the living room for homemade lemonade. I started talking about music, and I think I threw her for a loop with my knowledge of musicians and music history. I told her that the first time I'd actually seen her on TV was on Dolly's show in the 70's. I was a young teenager and Dolly had Linda and Emmylou on her show. I was amazed at their harmony! They did several old country standards and it was magical. She was surprised that I even new of that appearance, and happy to hear how much I had liked it. She then gave me the greatest gift she could ever have given me. We sat and talked about music for nearly 3 hours. She told me about meeting Emmylou first, through Grahame Parsons, then her and Emmylou meeting Dolly together. We talked about Jackson Brown, and him introducing her to Glenn Fry and Don Henley. About her telling them to form their own band. We talked about her youth and her Mariachi history. I think that she enjoyed revisiting the past as much as I enjoyed listening to it. She kept being surprised at my knowledge and set a few of the stories I'd heard straight. I had one of the best times of my life!

Fresh Air: Celebrating 100 years of jazz great John Coltrane https://www.npr.org/2026/09/01/nx-s1-5951499/celebrating-100-years-of-jazz-great-john-coltrane https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fresh-air/id214089682?i=1000787230888

The more I learn about microphones, the more I realize the depths of my ignorance - I didnt' know the Deity microphones were highly controversial with YouTubers, because I had never heard of them... https://www.silverlightphotoco.com/audio-reviews/deity-v-mic-d3-pro I think I did come across the RØDE VideoMic at some point years ago: https://medium.com/@ed_22350/i-tested-both-best-shotgun-microphones-for-video-heres-the-one-thing-everyone-gets-wrong-about-fd7fcd698448 This Audio-Technica ATV-SG1 looks decent:

The transition from Swing to Bebop