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I've got a prescription for antibiotics so everything should be fine

Is that in the mail Greg? THANKS... ) Cheers Team - and many thanks for the wishes. Had a mellow work day and about to start my mellow birthday evening. Many wishes from around the world today.. After much labor I have picked the following as my Birthday Dram for the next year. Hope to share it as much as I can... Cheers (hugs) Mikey

Dropped off an item at a local UPS service center and was asked "is it packed well enough to survive an 8-ft drop onto concrete?" I replied, "I've never intentionally dropped anything from 8 feet onto concrete that I intend to keep/use after the fact. Are you planning on dropping my package from 8 feet on to concrete?"

Meat

I am in the market for a set of speakers. I have very quickly become overwhelmed and could use suggestions. The room these will go in is ~14' x 31' with 9 foot ceilings. It is open to a room that is 14' x 20', so effectively the room is 14' x 51'. For various reasons, they probably need to be placed along the short wall, That wall has windows over most of it, and a large radiator under the window. This means that the speakers cannot be closer than about 18" to the wall. Additionally, the corners are not accessible, so corner horns won't work. I plan on driving these with a push-pull 300B tube amp (~30W Class A). These amps can drive about anything (they are not SETs) but flatter impedance is certainly better. However, I also have 100W sand amps to use if need be. I don't generally listen particularly loudly, so hitting 90db is all I'll really need most of the time. Music wise, I grew up listening to punk rock, and now listen mostly to music created by other people who grew up listening to the same, or similar. So Will Oldham, Cat Power, Sonic Youth, VUs. Classical and Jazz are not a concern apart from occasional piano music. I am also not concerned with reproducing reality in my living room. I am a post modernist, so ruler flat I don't care about. Clarity, warmth, and presence I do. Imaging I can take or leave. I am unlikely to try to sit in the sweet spot and instead tend to be milling around while listening to speakers. If I wanted to sit still, I'd put on phones. Used is much preferred to new. Budget is whatever it needs to be, but if I can stick around $3500 I'd be happy. I'll go higher for the right speaker. My preference is to buy something and keep it for 20 years. I almost bought some used B&W matrix 802s and consider them an OK option. The pair happened to have a driver issue which was a deal breaker. I seem to like old B&Ws, but dislike anything since the switch to Nautilus. I also historically like Dynaudio, though they get a little spendy in the size I'll need. Other name that seems to keep popping up is ATC but I am unsure where to give them a listen, or if I can get a pair in my budget. Appearance matters. The B&Ws are horribly ugly, but were so much under my budget I was willing to live with it. Generally, the more understated the better. These are ugly. These are better. Finally, grill cloth will get destroyed by Thursten, so less cloth, and drivers that are far from the ground is a good thing.

Fuck you, man.

Esotar2, and yes, they are still as delightful as always. (My speakers are the Special Twenty-Fives, but they're not exactly efficient..."power hungry" comes to mind, which is why I drive them with a Musical Fidelity A300^CR.)

Happy Birthday Mikey!

Doug, I hear you about the Dynaudios. The best small speaker I ever built was a simple two-way based on the 21w54 woofer .Absolutely the best 8" woofer I ever heard. Simple 2nd order crossover and some Dynaudio tweeter I've forgotten the model number of. Quite efficient, but had some real balls. Ran just fine off a small push-pull 6V6 amp. So unless things have changed a lot in the speaker world in the last couple of decades I'd be looking hard at the Dynaudios. You might want to consider vintage JBL's, Tannoy's, Altecs, or Klipsch. If you do it right it's actually a profitable investment. A few years ago I had a pair of Klipsch "Belles" ( furniture grade LaScalas). I bought them cheap because of some fairly minor cosmetic issues. I refinished the cabinets, used them for a year or so ( my listening room wasn't really big enough to take advantage of them), and then sold them on Ebay for substantially more than what I paid for them. Another alternative is your own cabinets filled with TAD components. You won't lose money here either. I don't own any speakers at the moment, ( kind of done with the horn thing) but I'm beginning to think about some vintage high-end JBL's or Tannoy's.

Finished binge-watching HBO's "Olive Kitteridge". Superb performances all around, but Frances McDormand is simply perfect. More than a bit depressing themes though. So we had to chase it down with this week's ep of "The Graham Norton Show".

Happy Birthday Mikey! Obvious advice is obvious on your special day, or any day

Happy Birthday, brother Mikey! Will raise an extra tot of rhum in your honor tonight.

Happy birthday you malty maestro!

Mappy Hirthday Bikey!!!!

http://youtu.be/QrGrOK8oZG8

Happy Birthday Mikey! Since I can't afford the read stuff... the cake maker seems to have misspelled your name.

Happy birthday, Mikey!!!! This occasion deserves a toast to yours with some special Scotch. I'll see later what I can do

Happy Birthday, Mikey! :prettyprincess: Hopefully you have some whisky your age to drink. Enjoy!

Have a relaxing day. http://youtu.be/38UlEzCgxoQ

One picture says it all- Just started to recover from a full day of a fencing tournament. This was the third and final for the three novice fencer series tournament. Lance's total was nineteen wins and one loss. It was a good if not nerve wracking day. Cheers all!

With this being the BHSE thread, I guess I shouldn't really be posting photos of my audio rack, or mentioning anything about it, but my BHSE is placed on that rack so I thought it would be OK to show it on this thread. While I came up with the idea of having the legs at the outside of the shelves and the frame being made of mild steel and welded, someone else might've done something like this before me, but I've never seen any racks similar to the one I have. I decided to have the frame made of mild steel then welded because my source is around 33kg, and because that rack will hold many times that weight, I'm not worried about it collapsing. You are more than welcome to use the design of my audio rack guzziguy, but you might want to wait until Tuesday when I'll be getting my new audio rack where I'll be posting some photos. I won't have the plyboard at that time because I need to have the rack to get the exact measurement of the inside of the angled steel. I'm just waiting for the powder coating to be done but this new rack is a similar shape to the rack you've posted, but the legs are on the outside of the shelves like with the one I have, and the frame again is made of mild steel, the 5 shelves are also a different distance apart. With this new rack though, I've decided to get some 1mm metal sheets which will go under the plyboard shelves, this is just to give extra support. I'll be placing a strip of foam rubber on the inside of the angled steel, then putting the 1mm metal shelves on that foam rubber which might stop any unwanted vibration. The photos are of my audio rack with and without the wenge shelves, the shelves just fit inside the angled steel. I took those photos sometime ago so I've had my living room decorated since.

3 hours, per the google search above. Not sure what else you wanted, but it's clearly there.

I actually contemplated buying another backpack and packing it up with all the new stuff.