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apologies for the crappy photos, the camera on my phone is terrible. Short version: they are awesome Long version: Shipment - They ship via freight and arrive on a pallet. Shipping weight is 175 pounds. Had the delivery guy put them in my garage. That night I got a little too excited and wanted to see them really bad, so I opened up one of them and stood it up. I accidentally pushed on one of the woofers when I stood it up, so started worrying I damaged them. Convinced Melody to help me bring them inside. While it is possible for one person to lift these (75lbs a speaker), they are so unwieldy I would not recommend it. Brought the single in and of course listened to it. Even with just one speaker I knew I would be pleased. The next day my helpful local audio friend Chase came over and helped me get the other one in. I had a thumb drive with a bunch of flacs and we put the speakers through their paces. Both speakers were being powered by my Denon 2112CI receiver in direct mode, I haven't had a chance to run Audyssey yet. Brief rundown: Highs: No issues here, definitely not any excessive brightness to speak of, but there is nothing at all missing either. I'm a fan, I think smooth is the word, but smooth without being dull. Smooth is a word I think of a lot with these speakers, that and fun. Midrange: Big surprise, I thought this would be where the speaker fell short, but all my standard midrange tests went perfectly. Sure, I don't get that "ryan adams is sitting in front of me" feeling I get with the ESL-63, but it comes a hell of a lot closer than I thought it would, and everything sounds perfectly realistic and smooth. Electric guitar wails like a champ. Bass: Hallelujah. The four 8" woofers in these things pressurize my room better than my seven year old SVS cylinder sub does, and they don't sound stressed at all. Every bass test I throw at these things it handles with no issues, even with just the 90 watts I'm giving them. But it does it all without sounding the least bit bloated or compressed. Chase and I listened to Tool "Forty Six and Two" and goddamn it was perfect. The bass never feels out of control. Soundstage: I pretty much have the speakers firing straight ahead, maybe just the tiniest bit of toe in. Soundstage between the speakers is perfectly lovely, but they don't seem to throw the stage too wide outside the speakers. I personally don't give a shit about soundstage, I'm more of a tone guy, but it was kind of spooky cool the way my old PSB monitors would throw a soundstage all across the width of the room. Some toe-in might fix this but I'm not too eager to experiment since everything tonally is damn near perfect for my taste. I've done a lot of TV and movie watching with these and they are great there too. In my room, there is absolutely no need for a center channel, and that was definitely not the case with my PSBs. Vocals are super easy to understand. But I'll still be buying the center channel because why the hell not? Speech will probably be even better with the center. The bass makes everything sound very epic and theatre-like. Having said that, the lowest of the lows you aren't going to get with this or probably any tower. The towers are flat to the upper 20s. I'll still be upgrading my subwoofer (to another SVS of course) at some point in the future, as home theater has become more and more important to me, and I want a flat response down to 20hz or lower for that movie rumble. I tried to avoid hyperbole in my above impressions, but rest assured I am absolutely thrilled with the speakers, I really wouldn't change a thing. I'm completely surprised and delighted with how refined and "audiophile" the sound is, while still managing to be a shitload of fun. The shitload of fun part, mainly because of the bass, is the speakers biggest "audiophile" sin. I'm so glad these speakers are sinners. Did I mention they are really really good looking? My pictures above don't do them justice. Obligatory "person who is not an audiophile" commenting about how good the speakers sound: my niece, sister, and brother-in-law were over Friday night. Brother-in-law had to hear the speakers, so we cranked them up, and my sister lit up and said "even I can tell those sound awesome." so thanks headcase for giving me the push, I anticipate enjoying these for a long time to come. Postjack International Absolute Audiophile Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence

Wait for CJ's review of "CJ's adventures in publishing: The Movie". He'd probably have things to say about the protagonist.

Stop bumping old motherfucking threads. Motherfucker.

The ruling is soft tissue bruising Phew! May be able to walk in a few days.

A week ago realized I had set aside a sizable amount in FSA due to substantial dental work last dentist (visited once and didn't like) said I needed and I never got around to. So dash to a new dentist who stated I needed almost none of it. Yea! Damn! After confirming I can't roll over a portion or bill through March, just completed today whirlwind three visits to the optometrist in six days and three visits to the dentist in five to bring the balance down to $18 and change. Feels like a victory.

If your havin search problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but page-rank aint one.

Due to number of circumstances, I had the pleasure of wrapping up our children's presents. I'm going to have to tell our daughter that her presents were wrapped by an intern elf.

Canceled Spotify yesterday in favor of Tidal.

at the thing is the Angie and Layla are totally different than the 13, 16 and Roxanne from a design standpoint. The 13,16 and Roxanne are all stage monitors and are designed to replicate live sound (think like bass or kick drum experience) and all it's physicality. The Angie and Layla are designed around the studio environment so in effect the Layla and Angie will sound more alike than the Roxanne. If you like the JH line sound house sound then just stop whining about the fact that there is something more fucking expensive out there and the (oh god help me ) I don;t have the bestest there is wha wha wha... Your shit is still great I'm pretty sure it didn't change because Jerry made some new shit. They only difference is now you don;t have the perceived TOTL. I live studio monitors so the Layla is right up my alley most "audiophile like consumer high end speakers with designed in EQ to bump the bass, warm the kids and sweeten the highs.

For CJ, some recommended reading: http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034

I guess there are some people on Head-Fi that might see this thread.

in case someone else was going to make the same mistake?

Dan, why even bother? CJ already knows everything.

So you want a workflow that allows edits and changes on your content, with a (low cost) publish step, that would in the limiting case allow you to republish / redeploy the content in its final form, easily, for just a single change.? Did you identify this as your use case? Did you pick tools that met your use case? Across the life cycle of your product? if your current toolset of choice does not allow you to do this, can you easily export ( or re-import) your content into a system that does let you do that? Otherwise have you chosen a write once / write only solution?

This thread is way too awesome and deserved a bump. Just a crazy piece. Is this real life?

McKenna is doing a little better today in terms of swelling and pain control. They are tentatively planning her follow-up surgery on Monday, 29 December. Her initial surgery was done on Wednesday the 17th. I'm done with surgery for now, but they think I'm more likely to need the rehab hospital than her, because of my crazy medical history and being 40 pounds overweight. Thanks for all the prayers, and keep them coming please!

Uh...no, you were cranky from the get-go. If you honestly believe that didn't color your interactions with everyone in this thread, then...well, good luck with that.

Tidal == good customer service. I complained on Facebook about them posting country music after the album i was listening to finished, and they helped me figure out that apparently I had accidentally hit their country playlist on the way out the previous time, and how to clean it up. This, despite how rude I had become.

Sorry about your crash, Chris. Glad that it's minor soft tissue damage.

And the lack of an objective, independently verifiable "better"? Hence being at the mercy of Marketing and others opinions? Because we can't know, for sure? (audiophillia nervosa)

The nice thing about having an older child, and older nieces and nephews.....no more wrapping! It's gift card, cash or check in an envelope these days.....

Leonardo, I can understand your frustration and that you're somewhat deceived, but the cold fact is that manufacturers, as soon as they can produce a new "improvement" and charge you for it, they'll do. You've been in this hobby long enough to know. If you're happy with the Roxannes, just enjoy them, but if you think they can be improved and you know more or less for sure that another product improves that, swap them and don't look back. One of our biggest problems as audio hobbyists is not knowing where we want to go and what we want to achieve. Not knowing that places us in that silly continuous "searching for the better". IMO it's just ignorance disguised as curiosity fuelling that.

I understand where you're coming from Leonardo. You're sharing your honest opinion as a customer on how you feel about JHA's random roadmap after a long delay on the Roxanne's. While you're feelings are genuine, you can't escape the fact that he designed a new IEM and decided it was his new flagship regardless what he said in the past, and I can't really blame him for that. I have zero care about any artificial pride in owning something labeled "flagship". I really like the sound of the Roxanne's. They fit the bill, and I would not have bought a $2,500 IEM if it were available at the time. Let's face it, IEMs are convenient and portable but limited. Trying to keep up with the current TOTL IEMs coming out will empty your wallet and leave you frustrated. Get off the runaway train and enjoy what you have brother

Ah. I guess I wasn't around much then. Well, that's a hard way to live life ...

I still don't get why you are so angry. What you are describing is a normal product cycle especially for audio that is somewhat tech driven. Cue apple and iPhone example - you know when you buy a new iPhone it will be replaced by a better model within a year. There is nothing of evidence to show jerry was being dishonest with you, i am sure he legitimately believed the Roxanne to be TOTL, but being a creative tweaker type, of course he is going to mKe something better. Go jh13.

hey we agreed again their issues are not negligible their customer service and ability to anticipate customer demand and have adequate manufacturing, quality control and supply chain infrastructure sucked for a while. I'm not the biggest Andy Regan fan (bad experience when he was with Monster at CanJam 2009) but I give him props for his turn around of most of the major issues that plagued JH. Jerry has always to a fault run creative and trusted people to run the business (at least from my perspective). It looks like this time around he's got the right people for the job (I hope)

Well, seems I won't convince anyone. In any case, I'm happy to agree to disagree. Antonio, yeah, I'll still enjoy the Roxannes just as much – sometimes I crave for something a little bit more analytical, though. JP, indeed, but I don't think that their problems are negligible. I've seen some people in here that wouldn't buy from them precisely because of that. Still, we'll see what happens in the future!

Leonardo, you're wrong. You're just pissed off because you thought you were buying the best custom IEM forever and ever and you ended up owning a midrange IEM. So what? live with your Roxannes or move on, sell them and get the new TOTL which probably will be TOTL for a few months. That's how market economy and consumerism goes. It's either joining the merry-go-round of purchasing every few months a new "best" or learning to be happy with what you got once it gives some decent performance for your needs.

I blame North Korea

There have been some posts lately about cascaded current source. With reference to JimL's srx schematic and the srx layout made by Kevin - I made a couple of small boards, surface mounted dn2540 along with some resistors and replaced the two 10m90s resistors.

So export to PDF, and then use a free online PDF to Word converter......

If towers can give you a childish smile while listening to Forty Six & 2, then they are keepers. Hard to get that song sounding just right.

So you like them, then?

Peter said it best. Life is precious.

Pizza and whisk(e)y. Ate 5 slices of Zeek's half hawaiian/half John Candy, a pour of Alexander Murray & Co. 1989 Mortlach 22yr, a pour of Macallan 12, and on my second pour of the excellent Woodinville Rye.

I finally got around to the power supply for my mini-kgst. I was able to get the +/-400V with delay, filaments, +/-15V and a +5V supply all on one board (5.9" x 6.25"). Here's what I came up with... Here's the 3D models from DipTrace. I did all of the non-standard 3D component models myself. I'm getting good at it. I ordered the wrong size caps for the HV supply . I'm going to put in another order and should have it up and running shortly. I redesigned the timer circuit because I'm using it with a solid state relay. There was a short ON burst in the older one that would turn on the relay for a small fraction of a second. This one keeps the output low until activation. I've been testing it for about a month and it seems to work well and is stable. It was a combination of reading the datasheet for the LM555, modeling some ideas in LTSpice and then testing on the bench. I'm usually careful, but made a mistake on placement of the charging capacitor. I had to move it, but got luck and it was a fairly simple surgery. I'm looking forward to getting the caps for the HV and testing it out the rest of the board. All in all I'm happy. Most parts are fairly accessible and it seems like I'll be able to get to them if need be. This board will mount under the top panel of the amp in the back. The transformer will sit on the top above the top panel directly above the supply. I'm using the Antek 100VA 350V transformer and steel case. More to come

Ok I just measured my tubes with the following parameters Vplate = 338V, Vgrid -18.4 (arbitrary, just set the first tube to around 10mA). With around 20 tubes, I got values ranging from 5mA to 12mA. Since I do not have much experience with matching tubes, I wanted to ask what you would call well matched for the KGST. How close should a pair of tubes be? 5%? 10% 20%? Would you only pair tubes of the same brand/manufacturer (see below)? If I put together pairs for the KGST, should I make pairs with 4 tubes as close to eachother as possible or is it fine to make 2 pairs such as 5mA 5.4mA and then maybe 10mA and 10.5mA? Furthermore I noticed I have some black tubes, some darkgrey ones and also some light grey ones. I thought only GE and RCA (if I remember correctly from reading) manufactured 6s4a tubes. Does anyone know if this is true? Thank you so much for your assistance.

No, but he could make it incompatible.