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Ate at one of Stephanie Izard's restaurants tonight with Debbie, two of her sisters and her brother-in-law. Restaurant is Girl and the Goat. Chef Izard is a James Beard award winner and Iron Chef. All of the following were shared plates and we ate too fast to get pics of the onion focaccia with house made giardinera and house made Caesar dressing. Roasted beet salad Wood fired oysters Squash blossom crab Rangoon (best we'd ever had) Goat chorizo flatbread Roasted shishito peppers Beef tongue with masa chips ( dedicated to my Dad who loved beef tongue. Tonight's was tender and delicious) Tempura soft shell crab with corn Escargot ravioli. So bloody delicious. Pig Face! (It's under the egg. And fucking awesome!) Blueberry bourbon baba Caramel corn and malt balls. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Like x 1,000,000. Looks awesome. I am just having a boring burger. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Around 4 minutes in, this is amazing.

Twice cooked pork belly

Well, if the dust covers are not done right, they can affect the sound. In the early days, I made my dust covers as tight as the diaphragm, and those indeed affected the sound, especially the bass. On the newer headphones I make, I crumple the Mylar and only give it a light stretch to make the dust covers. And they don't make any difference in sound. I happen to own a pair of Martin Logan. I feel that the integration of their ESL and the subwoofer is not that great. I very much perfer my DIY Full range ESL.

Thanks gyus. Cheers *Loins of cod, blood sausage, chorizo, peppers, onion olives and a bed potatoes :-)

Now here is something fun... a new electrostatic set from Russia. I do read the Russian forums a bit and I've been following the semi-DIY stuff going on over there. Seeing that this one had matured I decided buy one. Here is the website for anybody interested: http://phenomenon.su/ I ordered it directly and this set was custom made for me. They have two versions available and I picked the Libratum as I prefer circular transducers. Cost was less than 2k$ with shipping here. As you might tell from the pics, the build quality is super impressive and makes most other headphones look like toys. I for one like the Russian utilitarian style where it is all about the function but they can just be described as pretty. Comfort is also pretty good though the non adjustable headpad might be a tad shorter as it touches the arc for me and the hard metal pokes through it. The earpads are super nice, thick leather and attach to the baffle with magnets. The phones are heavy but not a problem for me. Smaller heads might have some issue here as adjustment is limited. So an overview of the design, these are copper mesh stators attached to pcb's with PCB material holding the diaphragm in place. Not sure how thick it is but it might be 2um as the top end is slightly rolled off. I ordered the set with dust covers on both sides but these are just woven material and caused some issues. The resistance on the diaphragm is high so they take a while to charge up but this is something I'll likely improve. More on that later... The housing a single piece with the driver all the way at the back and a thick baffle next to the ear. The screws on the outside go all the way through the set and have heatshrink on them or the drivers might short out. Small nuts hold them underneath the earpads. Take those all out and you can pull the baffle out of the shell to expose the drivers. Thankfully there was adhesive here so I could add solid dust covers with ease. Any claims that these "reduce clarity" are just nonsense. There was another adhesive ring on the back of the driver so I added a second cover there but forgot to take a picture of it. So how about the sound...well first off the major issue I had with the set. So this thing uses a super high resistance coating on the diaphragm which shouldn't be an issue but it isn't hydrophobic...i.e. it changes with humidity. Now this with the lack of a solid dust cover next to the ear is just trouble. The volume level of the set drifted like mad with use as the humidity next to the ears affected the charge. It got so bad that it just went into a mess of distortion. Leave them sitting on their own for a while and the volume would rise again. Simple solution to that...add a solid screen between the ear and the diaphragm so the humidity there isn't an issue. I will likely clean off the diaphragm in the future and add my own coating as it is simply superior to this. Another small gripe I have with the design is the cable. Well it is a Stax extension cable which is excellent but there is no strain relief at all. The cable is firmly anchored in place but it could use some heatshrink or something to take the strain. Now for the sound...well after a number of small scale 'stats I've had here over the years this is a welcome change. This is nothing like the King Sound or HE Audio Jade which were both badly made garbage and sound like lukewarm shit. While these aren't going to topple the 007's it's a damn good try using similar design elements. The sound is super balanced but just a tad rolled off in the top and bottom end. Bass lacks some impact and substance too but nothing to worry about really. The midrange is super nice but slightly "lost" as with the SR-Omega and HE90's. This ties into the soundstage which is projected slightly front of the head and is just a little bit hazy. They lack the super focus of something like the SR-007 but for some that would be a welcome change.

Those look really nice Justin!

Are you using +/-20v? Can you run it without heat sinks at a lower voltage?

Build something fun today!

There is a long European tradition going back to the middle ages (and possibly before) in blood sausages: In England, Black Pudding (there is also white pudding, also an ancient recipe of pork meat and fat, suet, bread and oatmeal) In Germany Blutwurst In France Boudin Noir They are all subtly different. As you might tell I am something of a fan of this delicacy. I have not yet tried the Spanish variety though, but plan to when next in Spain.

Thanks!!! For me is very difficult translate food names because here we have our proper names and in general it´s very differents to mainland for example. We have stronger influences from Portugal, caribe, more our own culture.

Belated happy birthday Jose! Love the blood sausage - in the UK called Black Pudding - absolutely delicious.

That is absolutely brilliant. I just wish he'd return to his roots in stage acting too - I think he would be totally superb. But I said the same thing about Patrick Stewart when I watched him play Jean Luc Picard; I think my words were "I'd walk over hot coals to see him act in Shakespeare" - and we've now seen him six or seven times on stage, including a superb MacBeth in a studio theatre seating 200. An extract from the film version: In fact, in that same theatre we've tickets to see Ian McKellern play Lear later this year. Can hardly wait.

Happy Birthday Birgir! I wish you a Viking measure of red vodka (cake) to celebrate!

Yeah and the proof is indeed in the pudding. We've tried it both ways and know this "less transparent" malarkey is just crap.

via: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/18/knightscope_k5_falls_into_pond/

I am back to using the Oppo 105 as my do-everything workhorse. I really didn't hear that much of a difference between the Oppo and the Yggy and the Oppo just does so much more feature-wise. 90% of my listening these days is Tidal streaming and I can do it right on the Oppo and control it from Oppo's mobile/tablet apps. Is the sound quality as good as Vinyl or DSD rips? No. But I end up listening to so much music I'd never otherwise buy so I can't see myself doing anything but streaming going forward.

A couple of fatties up in the house. Jones Plus (pedals only) Fatbike (full kit including fenders, studded tires, etc.) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the name of this headphone sounds like a medical term for a vaginal birth defect?

Cheeses care of the Amish via Aimless Al and Karyl, and yak and alpaca snacks from the local ranch.

This reminds me of a trip I once took to the STD clinic.

It's OLEDged that wine and diet Coke was also involved. As for myself, today I broke into a federal bank. However, I shouldn't have to worry about facing any charges since I was only in the bank for a few minutes (it was a very short break-in) and I didn't see anything I wanted. Nothing happened in the bank. # witch hunt Hurray for Vlad of Michigan!

Alec is trying out as catcher for the local baseball travel team. This evening he took a foul tip fastball "straight on the dick", as he put it. Learned two important life lessons -- always wear a cup and don't ever expect sympathy for a nut shot, as everybody is too busy laughing their asses off at your agony. Seems more or less OK, we've applied the bag of frozen peas down the pants.

Thanks all! Dinner was a cooked chicken from Whole Foods. Perfect. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

... and, not only that, you learn lotsa spurious stuff from them..... Yep, it turns a dedicated thread into an eclectic mish-mash of triviality.. what's not to like...?

These off topics are actually quite informative

no, you can pick Kanye instead

I believe that's, "kings of off-topic". This is actually atypically close to on-topic for us.

Welcome welcome, Kings of off-topics

Happy Belated Greg! Keep that birthday ball rolling!

It might be Graim. I can't remember for sure.