Leaderboard

Case ready pierced. All the connectors. Two circuit boards and all the bits. Pass's choice of switcher supply. $317 seems like a bargain for what you *physically* get. Now yes - the distortion looks lousy and power is low. But Pass's philosophy is that linear distortion is not the be all and end all. And the distortion increases politely with power level. I have no idea what it will sound like - but if you go for it, you'll need efficient speakers to make sense of a handful of watts. (note that the power supply is uni-polar, so there is an output capacitor of 3300uF. That is something that I have not seen since the 1960's in things like the Quad 303, and is a typically quirky Pass thing)

Bumble Bee Butts deserve to be a calendar: Moar hear

This coming Friday is the birthday of this handsome fella: I totally haven't spent the evening going through YouTube videos of him giving lectures to find quips to sample for my show.

A recent tour thru the STAX HQ posted on a Chinese website: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/L2VLqiNk-a_wE5eA5VbRhA The text is Chinese, not Japanese Kanji. You can translate by copying and pasting the URL at either Google or Bing websites: http://itools.com/tool/google-translate-web-page-translator https://www.bing.com/translator/

The original Stax SRX schematic that the ESX was based on actually showed two heater supplies, but Singlepower's Mikhail Rothenberg was too ignorant to realize the reason for that (the input tube cathodes and heaters need to sit at zero or positive voltage whereas the output tube cathodes and heaters need to sit near B-), so he tied them together at ground. The excessive voltage between heater at ground and cathode at roughly -400 volts broke through the insulation layer between heater and cathode damaging the tube resulting in the problems described.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes!! I started using "not my birthday" on forums (and soshul media) years ago to slow identify theft, Its different everywhere!! My birthday is now: "The second Tuesday of May, whatever number that happens to be."

Happy birthday!!!

He cared enough to take pictures of the break room teapots. A+ for effort.

So, this appears to be a variation on his "Zen" amp that was first published in AudioXpress a number of years ago, basically a single MOSFET amplifying device into a current source, so single-ended class A, phase inverting, around 20% efficient, 14 dB gain (5x) and 2 watts our at 1% distortion, so either efficient speakers or headphones, although maybe not enough voltage output for something like a Susvara or HE6.

Happy Birthday, Ari!

Happy Birthday!

One of my favorites among their "lesser" works.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, me amigo de Canon y cerveza!

Happy belated Birthday Ari!

Happy belated, then, Ari! May the pants be with you. No, seriously, I never want to see you without pants again. (party favour noise)

The zener provides over voltage protection for the 4N25 optocoupler when adjusting the offset. A 12V zener is used on the Carbon and works there OK. That value was carried over on the GG PCB, but was found close to being too low when setting the offset in that circuit. So Kevin advised using 18V as a replacement to give a little more headroom.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!!

Happy Tuesday in May! It's good to see you around.

The esx exceeded cathode to filament voltage by 200 volts resulted in leaking output tubes that sat at minus 150 or more which raised the bias voltage enough to damage the headphones. 20 volts offset is not a problem.

Happy Birthday Ari! it's been a while Am I doing this right?

back to OMA

Thanks guys! I had a great birthday with Yumi and other friends. Started with brunch, then golf, and finished with bubbles, wine, and a trip to a new steakhouse here. Will be back in the Bay Area at the end of June!

So happy everyone enjoyed themselves! The lady with the Focal Utopias was at her second meet and vows to return next year WITH the Utopias this time so stay tuned!! I had a ball and just wished I had had time to hear more of the systems. BTW, I did get the HifiMan Supermini working perfectly today. Turns out I needed to install a firmware update that fixed all the problems we experienced yesterday. Listening to it right now and it even plays my Sennheiser HD580 and 650 louder than I care to listen!! Listening to it through my HifiMan HE400i's and the sound is amazing for the tiny little player that it is!! Keep the first Sunday in May open next year. Hopefully we'll be doing it again. Many thanks to Grover Neville with Schiit Audio who co-sponsored the event and also to his partner in crime Evan Grimm with Audeze! They brought a lot of great equipment for us to enjoy. Also present were Tom B from Beezar Audio who brought his stupid good amps, and Purk who not only brought his own equipment, but equipment provided by Justin Wilson of Headamp and Arthur Power of Violectric and Matrix!! Also others too numerous to mention who made this such a great meet! Can't wait until next year!! John

More R2R obsessiveness with a polite British guy.

The winter appears to be finally over so I picked up the new Beemer from winter storage. The Klim Badlands Pro is really hot in traffic, even with all the vents open. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Can't find the right bolts and screws as usual :/ next up are the heatsinks Oh yeah and I forgot, happy belated birthday to Kevin!

Did you just leak the new upgraded stator? Liking the size and the gold plated asymmetrical design

Went to put the bike into winter storage and saw this sweet classic w/ sidecar being put in. Had to take a few shots of mine, before luggage and crash bars are added in storage. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just made an offer and it was accepted for this beast. 2013 BMW K1600 GTL Rode for a couple of hours Saturday. Unbelievable. 6th gear at 10mph, hit the throttle and instant acceleration. You would think big and clumsy. Nope. Very flickable. Just as important, my favorite rider (Karyl) approves

A lot of this amp is an example of how not to wire any electrostatic amp. There is so much fail in there but lets start off on the big stuff, how the caps are mounted... Never do something like that!!! Uninsulated spades on all of the AC input wiring when they clearly should be insulated. Input wiring runs right under the transformer when it should be kept as far away from it as is possible. Last but not least, the output wiring. Twisting it like that is bad idea as it adds to the output capacitance of the amp.