Leaderboard

The Cherry is lighter than the speakers, but will darken quickly next to the window. I have a vented front plate coming for the top space. The cooling fan sits in that space, and is really quiet.

Second coat of finish. I still have rack rails to install, to hold the gear. The holes are vents, which will get black mesh behind them.

There are still missing parts but so far so good, transistors will be all mounted directly on the heatsinks. This is gonna be a dual chassis setup with custom cut heatsinks. I have some balanced headphone protector boards, not sure it’s worth adding the extra wirings... still waiting for Kevin’s ZF/SS switch board anyway.

Buy audio components with competently designed power supplies. A $3 inductor does way more than any of these cables or conditioners.

ZBadass!

Another email account? Another 90 Free days of Tidal! https://slickdeals.net/f/14137343-tidal-90-day-free-trial-premium-or-hifi-plan?src=frontpage

Ars Technica made a video about the F-15 cockpit controls, which led to a sidebar by the author about Boeing in the 2000s: https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/06/human-interface-come-on-a-tour-of-an-f-15c-fighter-jet-cockpit/?comments=1&start=80 Which led to an article about the McDonnell-Douglas / Boeing merger: https://www.msn.com/en-za/money/news/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis/ar-BBYzJXz TL;DR mistakes were made. Another tragic story of corporate aggression, cost-cutting, and greed. I'm against continually escalating airline ticket prices, but compromising safety to cut costs led to inevitable disasters.

Like many people here, I use the hospital grade cords... They work great.

This. All of this. I used to build my own power cables too, but mostly just for fun and I don't think I ever spent more than $20 or $30 in parts which still felt silly.

The question is, did you have one of these?

Not necessarily reading, but some good stuff in there

OK - I sprung for a Chinese one from an eBay seller for sixty quid and free shipping. We'll see. It'll take a couple of weeks to get here. Chinese can often be quite good with what they say it is worth on the customs form, so it sneaks past customs.

The Entech meter has of course been improved upon by the Chinese https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07NY21XG2?pf_rd_r=1BCER1ZTYCX3V67DZW7G&pf_rd_p=e632fea2-678f-4848-9a97-bcecda59cb4e . There is an image of the circuit board; trivial it is not. At least the Chinese one shows a value in millivolts of noise, and does not have a random knob. So there is at least a pretense of it being an objective measurement rather than Entech's random number. Looking further it covers 10kHz to 10MHz, much wider than Entech's, and is multi-standard - so you can plug it into both 120V 60Hz and 240V 50Hz.

I wonder how MAGA rallies sounded on that system?

I always wanted to cover that song (Suicide is Painless).

Love the jacket-over-shoulder, vested look Steve! I had a pair of pants in the 70's that was in essence a patchwork of....patches of pants of REALLY ugly design. Thank goodness there are no pictures, I remember hating them even as a young kid.... I recall reds, stripes, plaids, etc. STILL working out the issues from wearing those! 😃

I used to make my own power cables also, but the reason had nothing to do with the sound. It was to have them exactly the length I needed. Now I have a whole box of different length power cords that does come in handy.

I remember listening to the vinyl recordings my parents had of the 2000 year old man comedy bit

Life can be difficult growing up with a "hipness" level far exceeding those around you! 🤪

It never gets old. This one ages like fine wine.

$135 for an IEC power cord is a lot of snake oil. I've built a few Bob Crump Asylum power cables, and honestly can't tell any difference between them and generic hd 14ga IEC cables. For a CD player, very little current so even 16ga would be just fine.

Been there, but yeah not in a while

I was first introduced to Carl Reiner as Alan Brady, on the Dick Van Dyke show. Little did I know then how much joy and laughter he would bring to the world. Certainly one of the greats, R.I.P. Sir.

I'm really wanting some striped bell bottoms.

I like it a lot. For the size and (relatively low) price, it performs quite admirably. My current reference is a custom all-in-one unit using the Purifi amp modules (this is a new company started by the gent who created the Hypex and NCore designs). The manufacturer of this custom unit - Mivera Audio - puts his own input buffers in front of the Purifi modules, and then adds a DAC and a lightning dock. It uses an iPhone as a streamer/Roon endpoint, and has some of the best sound I've heard; the transparency is eerie at times. The Brooklyn amp gets me a pretty high % of that sound, actually excavating deeper in the bass. Compared to the Mivera, the transparency is a bit less, resulting in a slightly larger/bit more diffuse sound - the Mivera is just SO precise in image and instrument placement. But this is a pretty close second place to that. I also need to do some comparisons to a heavily-modded EVS dual-mono ICE-Edge amp, which is also right up there based on memory. Tonally, no complaints, it seems very well-balanced. The deep bass is not overdone, so it doesn't take over. And the highs seem very extended and smooth without any glare (caveat: my age is getting up there, and my hearing above ~16kHz has been degrading over time). So overall a very nice amp, really love the small form factor and how much is there for the size and price.

Bohlander-Graebner ribbon super tweeters and Dayton Audio full range drivers, both from Parts Express. Luvdunhill did all the calculations for interior volume, port and he built the crossovers. They sound amazing! I liked the way I grooved the Cherry baffles, so decided to make the new rack a similar look. There's a little more about the speaker build on pages 13 and 14 of this thread.

Ha. Thanks all for your help. In the end I went with a Magrette Regattare Tiki for a decent price in comparison to the other final choices. New Zealand Post, US Customs, and the local Post Office did everything they could to get it to me by 2024, but it arrived a couple days ago. A little too big, a little too heavy, but uncomplicated.

Here's the code I used for the rotary encoder and the Uno board: #include "Wire.h" // Set up the Variables int state, prevstate = 0; int nextEncoderState[4] = { 2, 0, 3, 1 }; int prevEncoderState[4] = { 1, 3, 0, 2 }; const byte attSetAddr = 0x38; const byte attResetAddr = 0x3E; const int offVolume = 100; const int relayLatchTime = 3; // time in milliseconds int newVol = offVolume ; void setup() { delay(1000); Wire.beginTransmission(attResetAddr); Wire.send(0); Wire.send(0xFF); Wire.endTransmission(); delay(relayLatchTime); Wire.beginTransmission(attResetAddr); Wire.send(0); Wire.send(0x00); Wire.endTransmission(); delay(relayLatchTime); // Set up for the encoder pinMode(5, INPUT); pinMode(6, OUTPUT); pinMode(7, INPUT); digitalWrite(5, HIGH); digitalWrite(6, LOW); digitalWrite(7, HIGH); } void SetVolume(int newVol) { int sendVal; // now set sendVal = (byte)newVol ; Wire.begin(); Wire.beginTransmission(attSetAddr); Wire.send(0); Wire.send(sendVal); Wire.endTransmission(); delay(relayLatchTime) ; Wire.begin(); Wire.beginTransmission(attSetAddr); Wire.send(0); Wire.send(0x00); Wire.endTransmission(); delay(relayLatchTime); // now reset sendVal = 0xFF ^ (byte)newVol; Wire.beginTransmission(attResetAddr); Wire.send(0); Wire.send(sendVal); Wire.endTransmission(); delay(relayLatchTime); Wire.beginTransmission(attResetAddr); Wire.send(0); Wire.send(0x00); Wire.endTransmission(); delay(relayLatchTime); } void loop() { state = (digitalRead(7) << 1) | digitalRead(5); if (state != prevstate) { if (state == nextEncoderState[prevstate]) { newVol = newVol + 1; if (newVol > 255) newVol = 255; SetVolume(255-newVol); } else if (state == prevEncoderState[prevstate]) { newVol = newVol - 1; if (newVol < offVolume) newVol = offVolume; SetVolume(255-newVol); } prevstate = state; } } EDIT: Quick thanks to Max and the Arduino site where I got some of the code segments

In 2011 I bought everything needed for a D.I.Y. T2 ( except the chassis and the 4-gang attenuator or pot for level control) and had every intention of building the thing... but then I became disabled and unable to build it.... though I still fantasized that I would build it- somehow. Well, that clearly is never going to happen, and due to the situation I find myself in, I need to get the money back that I spent on these parts. I offered them to Birgir (Spritzer) but he doesn't need them; he suggested I offer them here. I have attached my T2 Bill of Materials with part numbers, prices and etc. Have a look and if you are interested, make an offer. FYI I will only sell this as a lot. All transistors obtained from sources other than Mouser/Digikey/Allied have been characterised ( breakdown voltage and curves measured ) to make sure there are no fakes. t2parts-milosz.xls

Johnny Mandel, Oscar-winning composer behind M*A*S*H theme, dies aged 94 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/30/johnny-mandel-oscar-winning-composer-mash-theme-dies-aged-94

RIP Reiner Sr. What is Mel Brooks going to do without his bestie? 🙁 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global/2020/feb/20/love-and-free-food-mel-brooks-and-carl-reiner-share-the-secrets-of-their-70-year-friendship