Leaderboard

Finished... Back plates before I mounted them...

Had a great time! Nice to finally meet Collin. Justin and Brent were awesome as always. Doug's T5 was excellent and on the same level as my L3. I had no time to listen to Mr. Speaker Ether Stats. We went to Brazilian steakhouse yet again. Matt missed out on a great meal unfortunately.

Spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday replacing the deteriorating wood decking with composite. Thanks to my bro-in-laws for doing 80% of the work, the deck lives again. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bearded Justin is disconcerting.

I usually stagger after the joints... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Colin's IV (which is a common base topology) is a good alternative for a current out DAC. It is similar to Jocko's circuit, or Nelson Pass', and it can be made differential without too much trouble. For a voltage out DAC, a simple emitter or source follower works great as a buffer. Even a diamond buffer is a good alternative, and it can be made DC couple-able with the help of a servo (unlike some off the shelf diamond buffers.) Or any of Pass' recent buffers are good options. There is this myth of tubes as being pleasant sounding, and tooby. The reality is that tubes are very linear amplifiers with excellent bandwidth, and the bulk of the added distortion and limited bandwidth attributed to them has to do with the topologies and the surrounding components used. Similarly, the myth of DAC digital glare probably has more to do with the opamps used in the IV than the DAC chips themselves.

Well to be fair, it was actually much darker than the picture shows and I had spent the last twenty minutes navigating through a fog of ganja smoke.

And what did Colin Have?

Had a weekend in Atlanta and got to hang with Colin and Justin and Purk. Had a few snacks. **BRENT**

Have a great one Shell! Cheers!

I can definitely do a I/V converter with a discrete cfa amplifier with the current input directly feeding the emitters of a complementary input stge.

It's even prettier in person. So...when can I get one?

Indeed!

Not a bad Sunday. My standing table top group solved case 7 of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, than then I puttered around on some projects at home. A nice cigar and a couple drinks post dinner, and now time for a good walk, and then some good ol' "TeeVee," when I get back home. I think I'll start watching the new season of The Americans.

I have a working II+. I pull it out every few years to play Microsoft Olympic Decathlon.

I ain't no Optimus Prime!

We wanted to show our house guest some So Cal culture and it was down to the Getty Museum or... so naturally we chose Venice Beach. Luckily Al was able to join us.

Burger with everything* *Colin not included

The only reason I didn't make it to BBQ with Nate. Pre-birthday celebration at The Pass. Fantastic!

Whenever I pronounce Soekris I think of this ...

When can I invest in some Nascent Audio products!?

Old school

The modern version of T2! That is awesome. The old sands are too hard to find nowadays

Composite is the shiznit. Nice job!

The Yoders and MAKs etc. are just a bit too oo-rah (in design terms). I think a Memphis is likely to garner higher WAF as part of an artfully California Eclectic patio arrangement. Then just need a cashmere half-zip and huge honking rib of beef.

I'm a Stax newbie. Actually my first Stax purchase was in 1969! I'm also insane I think. So in the last few weeks, 009, Stax amp, (big mistake didn't know about this amazing DIY community) now Birgir Carbon superb!! But I'm going to pull the trigger on this one, how could you not??

I was going ask why Wolverine was at the Headamp desk. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

Nice one Kerry!

Love the glossy chassis! Now tell us how it sounds

The ultimate DIY? Absolutely magnificent! Nascent Audio. Sounds promising.

It's beautiful!

That is a real labour of love, and super gorgeous

Simply the most beautiful amp I have ever seen.

Awesome!

That thing is awesome Kerry!

I like the top cover.

Stunning work.

Very nice.

Hawtness! Wow that is beautiful Kerry

Magnetic Fields are still on my list of bands I need to see live before I die. He always puts together a great ensemble and does interesting things with arrangements. Me: I finally saw one of my favourite discoveries from Prog magazine -- The Fierce and the Dead -- in their one American appearance. So glad I went, they are crazy tight, and phenomenal live. All four of them (two guitarists, drummer, and lead bassist) are superb musicians on their chosen instrument. I got to meet all four of them and their label runner, all lovely people. I've been in heaven all day, just like after the Hiromi show. Going to have to forego Slowdive though. 's'too bad, as the album is really good.

Probably not "new" for a lot of folks around here but I stumbled upon Best Coast on Sirius recently.

you could do a really nice tube output stage with 6c33. But you need 4 of them for balanced. Output impedance of 30 ohms. But that is way past goofy, at least 200 watts power consumption by the time you are done. And its huge. Or 10 tubes in parallel (40 tubes total) like the big Conrad Johnson preamp which also gets you under 50 ohms. The Conrad Johnson thing has the benefit of very low noise. you could do transformers and use the patent from audio precision to bias the transformer in such a way as to completely remove all second harmonics, you would be surprised at the amount of distortion that even the best low level transformers have. my favorite is a pure class A output stage.

Such as? Not trolling -- just like to learn!

Alone and Gluten-Free

Dammit Colin Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

Pot meet kettle?

I can confirm the heatsink does in fact barely fit. Waiting on more parts and still deciding what to do about the power supply...

Also, no one is allowed to let Brent consume biscuits.

Slowdive -- S/T (2017)

Second that. Some nice write-ups based on actual testing of different cable types, including USB: http://archimago.blogspot.se/2015/06/musings-audio-cables-summary-non.html Summed up; if your DAC is asynchronous (i.e. the computer is not doing the clocking), every cable which meets USB2.0 requirements will perform identically.