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My daughter is at Clarkson today and tomorrow for a student competition presenting her grey water system for a sustainable campus laundry. Funny coincidence.

One of the few lasagnas (lasagnii?) that I have made. Pretty tasty

No pics as we went very quickly from pan to plate, but on her third attempt Debbie nailed Shakshuka, eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce. Perfect runny yolks and delicious sauce with a touch of harissa. So tasty.

Still in NY on college trips, and on the roads from Syracuse to Potsdam (Clarkson), we passed: Mexico Philadelphia Antwerp Seemingly predominant population: sheep, cows, horses. And earlier in the trip, we passed a sign for "Multzes Kill" NY....you are weird. After Clarkson, we go to hippie-land Burlington, Vermont for a UVM visit. Then home..... BTW: anyone ever visiting or near Syracuse NEEDS to go to Dinosaur BBQ. So freaking good! Been years since I've been in TX or other places with great BBQ, this one was awesome!

I do think that MSB have gone completely off the rails in terms of pricing and marketing bullshit. They've hit on the simple fact, more expensive is better. Nobody in their right mind would put the Woo WES, RSA A-10 and the BHSE in the same category of capable amps but people do it all the time as they cost the same. I don't know how many times I've had to field the question, "how can the 007 be better than the 009 when the latter is more expensive?". As for the MSB piece, not a chance that it uses transformers. Also the claims that it "needs" the MSB dac are also false. The DAC will output some voltage (can't find the specs but say 7.6V max like my DAC3) and handle volume/balance control duties. That makes this a bog standard electrostatic amp as there is no way around the high gain needed to drive electrostatics. Given the high output voltage of the dac (and since it is a constant you can design around) they could get away with slightly lower gain but not a whole lot. At the end of the day this is no different to me simply omitting the volume control on a Carbon so that it can be driven directly. The small little fact that they are charging 9 times as much for it makes me go WTF?? Granted, milled from solid chassis are not cheap and I'm moving into that direction as well.

My sister just shared this image on Facebook. No, she's not a member here, and was not aware of my post. Yes, we're related:

Tim would be proud. It was one of his favorite dishes to make.

The other day I had lunch with Craig and Stretch. Pity them. But not because of the food, because that was fantastic. Plus wine. We were with Stretch after all. Tonight was another fantastic dining experience. No wine because of scotch. Good bye UK!

I had seen this before, but it was fun to watch again.

I don't care who you are, or what kind of music you're into...Prince was fucking cool! He did things his way from the beginning. 57 is way too fucking young to die!

Indeed, PM me for the delivery address... In other news, never buy a 4070 that has had the earpads replaced... Do it wrong and they sound incredibly bad, next to no bass and just treble. Now I have to buy some new pads and try to get them retuned. I did get a nice package yesterday, the aforementioned 4070, Lambda Pro, Lambda Signature, Nova Signature, 404 (in rough shape though so full resto on them), SR-SC1, 404LE and a mint Alpha Pro which will not be killed.

Fuck, if true this is certainly worse than the voluntary raping that his customers receive.

^^^ I recently read This is Water and found it very inspiring as well. Me: Very interesting and well written.

Can understand the reasoning for easy access, but one door seems a bit cheapo ... why didn't you opt for a double door ? symmetry seems important!

Here are some photos of the acrylic case I had made for my 009's. I opted for it having a door just so I wouldn't have to keep removing it to get to those Earspeakers. On the back panel are some holes I asked for, those are to try and offer some kind of ventilation.

Second period last night was the best hawks have played in the series. Then another fundamental collapse in the third for the second game straight. Seabrook's give-away was unforgivable. Then Crawford saves us in lieu of offensive purgatory... long enough for Showtime to decide to put this one away. Still many things looking un-"hawk"-like, but they live to see another day.

MSB marketing is certainly weird, ultra expensive products with horrible cheap advertising.

I wonder if the new ones are less likely to turn into powder over time?

Mabry Mill in Virginia. Doha, Qatar. Click for slightly larger.

drives directly? transformer?

... purple rain....

David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. DFW is such an amazing writer. This is a great read if you are having a shitty day. http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

And because you are being a douchebag cunt. (Somebody had to say it, the exchange was way to PC for HC)

Thought I'd chime in here with my own impressions. I purchased a Yggy direct from Schitt. Have had it for about two months now. I compared it directly to the Bryston BDA-3 and the OPPO HA-1. Of course I was also able to compare it to my Neko Audio D100 Mk2, and I have a few other bits of gear around but didn't do critical comparisons to them. I was using the HA-1 balanced out for amplification and Audeze LCD-X in all cases for these comparisons. USB was used for the HA-1, Yggy, and BDA-3. Optical was used for the D100. Transport was my iMac. I found the Yggy's sound to be very clean, but also laid back or veiled. Like everything was kind of recessed. I'm surprised I haven't read this in the many reviews of the Yggy online. By comparison the OPPO HA-1's DAC (Sabre) was more dynamic and punchy, but I think a little less clean. The Bryston BDA-3 has both the dynamics and punch of the HA-1, and I also think it is slightly cleaner than the HA-1. I think the BDA-3 would sound even cleaner and more refined with a different output filter choice; using Dirac Live RCS helped bring out the absolute best with the BDA-3. None of these sound as natural and musical to me as my D100 DAC, like an analog setup, but the D100 is a bit long in the tooth now and these newer DACs have better transient response.

I think you're mistaken. It definitely did.

Hate to interrupt the geopolitical discussion, but I left my BHSE on all night yesterday by accident (read, "was pissed") and it didn't burn the house down. Thanks Kevin and Justin.

I had a pair of 57's on stands - and my wife knocked one over. It was saved from damage by the speaker cable, but the super expensive silver connectors got trashed. But those 63's were responsible for my obsession with high end audio - visited a room at the Heathrow show in the early days of Meridian when they were importers of Mark Levinson. Meridian CD player into dual mono ML pre, class A power into a pair of 63's on stands. Brothers in Arms was playing - and it sounded so completely different to what I was used to hearing. I left that room determined to aspire to that sort of sound quality. Little did I know where that go....

Their stance on DSD is well known so I wouldn't hold my breath. I must say I agree with them as DSD is just another way to sell people shit they already own

So here's a progress update on my T2 mini build. I started off with the a golden reference version of the T2 supply. Had a couple of issues. There was some 60Hz noise I was hearing (I'm guessing from the integration of the negative rail supplies), which I can probably solve for. Also, the current limiting, which works, wasn't fast enough when there was a shorting issue with the amp on the negative rail (FETs in the output section shorted to the heat sinks). It would pretty much blow out several components in the supply. I decided to go back to the original design, but as a shrunken version (206mm x 200mm). I did some small mods (added cascaded current source for the 30V supply to the opamp and added some additional spots for compensation caps. I finished this over the weekend and have spent some time listening. I've still got to tweak the PS (some small oscillations - probably because I was experimenting with the .1uF cap to the negative input of the op amp and added a .1uF cap across the voltage divider). My BK multi-meter is showing between 1mV and 0 on the AC setting. I've had some of the supplies on the scope but will need to go through all of them. This causes some very faint background noise. The amp has had it's fair share of issues, primarily with the output FETs shorting to the heat sink. I've had this once on the left channel and three times on the right. I believe it was that some thermal compound found it's way inside the collar of the thermal washers (7721-3PPS). I've cleaned these up and have had the amp on for 12 hours now with no issues. Also, the right channel DC test points are all pretty much spot on, but the left channel has an issue with the -543V test point. It is sitting at -502V (the rest of the DC test points are pretty close except for the top of the batteries that sit at +238V). I've been looking at this issue for a while, but haven't figured it out yet. I've got to focus here a bit. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I also have to finesse the battery adjustments to get rid of some occasional noise coming through the right channel as well. I have had my 404's and then later O2's on this beast. Wow, how nice It's been too long...

Indeed. Kevin has a much more Zen approach to this but then again, I'm the hothead...

Drove a RHD car for the first time. If you are anywhere in the uk, might I suggest staying indoors for the next few days? Preferably places with thick walls. Or maybe visit some out of country relatives. Or strangers. Or anyone. That was terrifying. Especially when my phone wouldn't get signal, and I did a tour of all the small towns around heathrow. At rush hour.

Post of the year/decade. I wish Stretch was at every travel team event, tattoos or not.

Last night I dreamed I attended a travel team event and we all visited a specialist whisky store, where I became overly refreshed. Next morning, I found that you fuckers had taken me to a tattooist, who photo-realistically reproduced the facade of the store on the palm of my left hand. Everybody seemed to agree that this would be a brilliant memento. Then we went to get poutine.

Sonny Bueno!

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