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Of course Mikey has the highest proof listening room in Washington State!

Last night.. The rest of the room is coming together (booze) And testing.. w/ Frank Dean Peter And Da Count Sound is doing okay.. lots of tweeking to do.

Oh crap... Looks like I'm going to be busy

Also pondering what we can learn from literature ...

So my birthday present is finally here, the SRM-T8000. I just quickly plucked it into my computer rig with the Denafrips Ares as a source: Here I can compare directly against the Carbon CC and the as yet unrealesed new KGSSHV, budget edition. Think of this one as the 727 if Stax had any sense. Anyway, back to the T8000. The packaging is classic Stax and no complaints there. I do have some complaints about the casework though, the front panel looks awesome but who decided what to do with the rest of it? Seriously that sparckly silver paint is just horrible. Reminds me of some super cheap Chinese amps. Yeah... not great. I had a quick peek inside to change the voltage to 240V and the procedure in the other thread is correct. This is the same old Stax color setup with a small change (one connector is reversed) to try and trick people. Some notes about the interior: -The person who designed this needs to find something else to do as not a single fuck was given as to how this thing is put together. Boards on top of boards with no reason to be there. I love the volume control where you have three PCB's (one blank) sitting on top of the pot. WHY!!!??? All of this could have been done on the back panel... Also wires everywhere. Bloody Stax living in the 70's... -The volume control (which they try to hide) is a plain old Alps RK27. It's almost impossible to see but I moved the "shield" a bit and there was the classic Alps sticker. For 6K$ I'd expect more... -The PSU is certainly unregulated and the same as in the 727/007t. Same 220uf/400V Elna caps. -Looks like the tubes are running at DC 6.3V. 4700uf/10V filter caps but I'll measure it later. -The amp is certainly just a 727 with the feedback in place and tube input stage. Ohhh and for the tube rollers, not a chance to roll this amp so better just like the stock EH tubes. Either that or somebody builds a special tester for this amp and sells tubes for it. Now for some impressions. I'm a bit pressed for time now so I just grabbed the first headphones that I saw. These are my own DIY units and I've been using them a lot lately as I've been tuning them. The drivers are old SR-X Mk3 units so similar sound signature, the best highs you can find with glorious midrange and extended but super tight bass. I'll go into the living room and grab some of the others over the weekend. Now what can I say about the amp...well I expected more. The top end is the worst part, it's rather uneven and unrefined. Grating even and slightly shouty in nature. Seems to be the Stax house sound these days but it also makes me dread trying the amp with 009's and L700's. I'm listening as I type this and I cringe from time to time, the upper midrange and treble is so bad. The phones are sure as shit not to blame... Now the midrange is ok minus the glare but it also lacks the expansive nature that the really powerful amps give it. It feels closed in... The bass...well it is nothing to write about really. Nowhere near T2/Carbon levels of power but this really isn't the best set to try for bass performance. I'll dig out the modded 007Mk2's to test that when I have time. Here it is all a bit flat and lifeless. Conclusion time I guess, at least for now. There are things I like about this amp, the front panel is pretty and it comes with properly wired XLR sockets but there is a lot I don't like. I fucking hate the blue power led...Stax should be green or orange. On top of everything above I also think this thing is horribly overpriced as it is just a fixed 727 which isn't a particularly great amp to begin with. To charge 6k$ for this...is just not cool. More listening to come... -

So many reasons for awesomeness

First run with the Weber, Slow n Sear and tip top temp. St. Louis ribs seemed a safe choice. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I grabbed the 007Mk2's from the "Stax shrine" in the living room (that's what my friends call the wall of Stax) and well...this is not good. I've been throwing anything and everything at them and they... they sound quite frankly bad on this amp. Everything from voices upwards sounds compressed and strident which is not normal. Doesn't matter the type of music, recordings et al...they all sound bad. Now that I have the 007's I can test the bass and it is very much lacking. Where the Carbon and T2 hit hard this one is just lackluster. Onward to some more listening...

So, after a 6 hour slow cook, decent results for a first try. I had to mess with temp quite a bit, and eventually removed the TTT and continued with just the slow n sear. We also discovered that St. Louis ribs may not have been the best choice. But in the end we had good bark, a decent smoke ring and smoke flavor. Not a bad first outing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I suspected other listening rooms in Washington skew more towards "Herbal/Organic"

Giant biscuit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah JLC do do very nice looking watches, and like I've mentioned I'm also going to get a JLC Reverso. It'll be a Grande Reverso Night Day Automatic shown in more photos below. Yes I know, I'm a dreamer, but this dream will become a reality, eventually.

love this new machine (2017 13" MBP) super fast and shockingly compact coming off a 2011 MBP 15. Worth every penny of the $1800 they want tor it. Getting used to the lack of variety of ports and the dongle bullshit but all things considered a great machine.

This is 'Merica'... We don't let common sense get in the way of naming our sports! Curling? Why the 'F' not! When I grew up in Alaska (toward the end of the last ice age), a kid wouldn't be caught dead playing soccer. It was as tainted an activity as band, chorus and ROTC joined together. I'd have been better off coming out than admitting to playing soccer! I didn't get it then and I don't get it now. It's well known that I'm not really a sports guy but I'm very happy to see this turn in attitude toward what seems to be a great sport. A sport parents can allow their kids to play without the concerns of the other football. I also believe that a sport beloved worldwide can only promote better relations with our global neighbors. Now please resume with the entertaining team loyalties smack downs.

one comment about the tubes, have tried many tubes on testbench, 12au7,12ax7,12at7,7308 etc you need a mu of at least 33 and a transconductance of at least 12500

Chelsea? with just one Champions League on their shelves? The one and only possible religion is Real Madrid, with Barça as a worthy aspirant to deserve some cult status

Sorry Steve. The phone capitalizes what it wants to and I usually don't argue with it. Likely got capitalized because I searched for it on my phone an hour ago. PS. I do love pizza. And my mom.

Lana Del Rey -- Lust For Life It's a shtick, but a very high-quality shtick so who cares?

Test Tone @ Home live right now: http://mixlr.com/illuminator/chat

It would be fun to create a modern T2 in a chassis not much larger than the T8000 just to fuck with Stax. Naturally SS output as it is just better. Also I just wanted to add it here that the PSU caps in the T8000 are indeed 220uf/400V, same exact units as used in all the other Stax amps. The heaters are run at 6.3V but I need to measure it to me certain. The PSU feeding them has 10V caps it is very plausible...

How about a “dual section” tube input similar to the T2?

Refuse to use the S word. Know we have some fans of the true religion, however misguided because they don't support Chelsea. Open for memes and banter!

I like how Mikey has recreated the feel of his favorite part of the Novato Costco on the left of the room.

W-O-W!

You could always try browsing https://imgur.com/r/macsetups ( as opposed to https://imgur.com/r/battlestations ) until you found one you liked the look of or just tell the Mac Store you'd like to spend an obscene amount of money ....

I use an ultra-wide monitor at work and I love it. I highly recommend it over multi-monitor unless you actually have a use case that requires multiple monitors. I use a 34" ultra-wide, but if you wanted to do TOTL then this Dell 38" is state-of-the-art. http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-38-curved-monitor-u3818dw/apd/210-amrc/monitors-monitor-accessories

First off, it's a pig. Debbie's brother lives in St. Louis. He raised it from a pup.

Hahaha. Whoops. PS: You'd probably be the best judge of that?

I guess those European inches must be quite a bit bigger than the American inches.

I too love thin watches, and don't really like thick ones, but this JLC Automatic isn't a lot thicker than the manual of that model. With that said, I've accepted the offer for the JLC I had, and have made the exchange payment, so won't be backing out.

I have unexpectedly acquired an absolutely massive desk (9" by 4") for my new office. It is our old dining room table, which is itself now adjudged by the professionals to be too small for the new dining room. Sitting in the middle of this thing with one iMac -- even the big one -- is going to look quite ridiculous. This seems to call for a multi-monitor setup a la Colin but I'm not sure how best to pull that off in the current Mac universe? Or I guess there's a two-chair option -- computing at one end, listening at the other with all the gear on top instead of in a rack? Could fit a pretty big turntable ... What says the collective?

OK, maybe I found a sport I can get behind! I have always been a great fan of ball control. Yesterdays oligarchs are today's campaign advisors.

I would say something about Franco and fascism, but being owned by a Russian oligarch doesn't really lend itself to occupying the moral high ground. Thank you for Morata, though. We were lethal on the counter last season already with Pedro, Willian and Hazard and I think adding him will take it to the next level. Enjoy the following clip, Jim!

Listening now for the third time.

I wanted to compare the dual input tubes (like in the T2) against the single. I'd build the dual first first though.

Did a bit of a harvest on the garden before hitting the road. Soon will be eating Cucumbers and Tomatoes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Justin ran saint flats on your Calfee back at the first lake ride.

The VAS and output stage are from the 717. Resistor pullup on the vas stage. The 727 had a current source that replaced the resistors and really was better once you fix the local feedback. I'm sure that the stax mafia can make retrofit current source boards birgir's thoughts on the sound are exactly the same as mine, the high end is rough and screechy also all the extra connections on each of the plugin boards including the servo are going to get noisy over the years. very cheap connectors, not the augat that I use. also kind of wonder if they really are rated for voltage

raising the plate voltage to 150 puts the tube in a more linear transconducance region. use stn9360 or 2sa1486 and there is plenty of clearance. in other news, going to 24V instead of 15V for the jfet input based versions of everything also makes the front end amplifier slightly more linear

Still testing.. Wynton And Herbie

RIP Daliah Lavi - actress, singer, passed away at 74 years of age on May 4, 2017. This clip from the original 1967 Casino Royale was just about the sexiest thing I'd ever seen during my young, formative years: I have no idea if she was particularly talented otherwise. But the fact that I came across this news on a somewhat random web-search, & seeing that she had passed away recently with little, if any (that I saw) fanfare made me a little melancholy.

The worrying part is its brains are somewhere between China and Siberia.

You need to black out those pesky windows. One cannot have reflections undermining overall screen resolution. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For offspring.