Leaderboard

This is pretty fricken cool.

I really need to find a McAlister amp for the collection.... 😉

I'm going to exhume by dormant HF account and post a comment saying that having experienced a JR Audio amp, I deem it to be equal in every way to a ca. 2008 McAlister product.

Someone asked about JR Audio on “that other site” in the Audeze CRBN thread and someone else intervened in typical shill fashion waxing lyrical about them and how his “electrical engineer friend” or some such says they are marvellous. I wanted to intervene but had already deleted my account and only lurk there occasionally as a guest. Fortunately Paradoxper intervened and straightened the whole thing out, but not without some resistance. Looks like getting the truth to people has become a real uphill struggle in some places.

So what is the big show we can go to meow?

Yesterday I Had The Blues - The Music of Billie Holiday José James

I have said it before and I will say it again, when you book an Airbnb for a "trendy good vibe nature friendly bungalow" don't rely on the Airbnb pics- 😁

I want to join a Hunchback-only clan that runs in, fires off their AC-20s, then runs away.

Should've been more, but even with only a single championship he can still happily lay claim to being one of the cleanest drivers on the grid. I'll always prefer that over someone who races dirty to get more wins.

Since they haven't built a strip club next to the Gaylord yet, it's a no for me. Right or wrong I've apparently put my life on hold the last 16 months. I can hang on a little longer. Maybe I can start planning Red Neck Jam.

Oh, wow. So anyone who has listened to my show has at some point heard me rant about Planet Dog records which was the record label arm of the infamous Megadog series of nightclub events. There was a time in the mid 1990s when Megadog was the most happening thing in the UK, and the UK in the mid 90s was popping TF off. Planet Dog helped launch the careers of Eat Static and Banco De Gaia, two artists that have been staples in both on my radio show and my personal listening for decades. One of the lesser know Planet Dog acts is somewhat awkwardly titled Children of the Bong. CotB put out one album, which is absolutely brilliant, completely of its time, and a decidedly lo-fi affair. They also released a few singles, some compilation-only tracks, and then promptly disappeared. Well, apparently they're back. The just re-released their album in digital format, though I am unsure if it's been remastered. It has some bonus tracks, but AFAICT they are nothing newly available. That is, the bonus songs were already on plenty of releases. That said, I stumbled on to a really good blog piece about them. They cover the thought process and studio work on the tracks from the album. As someone who spends entirely too much time thinking about electronic music from the first half of the 1990s, this is absolute catnip for me. Later this evening I'm going to put on my copy of the album (and by that, I mean load up FLACs in Foobar) and read along as I listen to it. Bonus: check out the gear in the vintage photos of Banco's studio:

Here is something that has been cooking for a while but I've been just too busy to do anything about it. So JR Audio out of China have been building our amp designs for a while now and I started to hear horror stories almost immediately. They naturally have no right to use our designs and work in their crappy products but since when has that stopped anybody... I have been looking for one of these amps for a while now as I want to rip it apart and well... one owner contacted me. I'm going to ask him to come here and tell his story which is quite the tale. Let's just say Caveat emptor... So here is the amp and it arrived dead which will soon be clear. It is the KGSSHV version and well... it doesn't resemble my amp in any way... 🙄 One funny thing is that the Stax socket is made from nylon so the quality starts there. 😉 Nothing remarkable here but that voltage marking is directly lifted from my amps. Completely identical... Here is where I started laughing, this thing uses clone versions of old PCB's I made back in the day. The amplifier board (as can be seen by the date which they also copied) was in some of the older KGSSHV mini amp but this one is quite a bit bigger. Same goes for the PSU which was in the first KGSSHV minis but this one is 2.5cm wider and 1cm taller. All the components are in the same spots... it's just a bit bigger. Now here is whats wrong with it, see the bridge rectifier in the middle. That larger chunk of plastic shouldn't be sticking out of it. Here is one amplifier section and I just find it hilarious that they do a direct copy of my 7 year old PCB but manage to completely fuck it up while doing it. So all of those resistors are 1/4W units and that is a big no-no. Most are well shy of that power level (though not all) but the voltage ratings for many of those resistors is well below safe levels. It also annoys me (Kevin even more) that they have removed all values off the boards and replaced them with generic labels. We have always pushed for proper markings on all boards so they can be serviced at any time. Another thing clear in that picture are the 10M90's on that small heatsink on the PSU. They have a lot of voltage sitting on the metal tab so they naturally use a silpad and metal screw. Fucking amateur hour here. Another picture of the damage and one more of the underside: One nice attention to detail... or lack thereof is no thermal paste or silpad on the PSU pass transistors. Nothing at all and since the chassis is powerder coated, it has a hard time passing heat through the thin metal below. It's a shame I don't have any of these old PCB's in stock just to show how much of a blatant rip off they are. I'm tempted to order some (as I have the Gerbers for everything) just to show off what they are up to. Now what happens to this amp, well it belongs to me so I'm going throw out the PSU and the transformer plus replace all the necessary resistor on the amplifier boards to make this safe. Then I'll just keep it for shits and giggles. I'll update the thread when I do some more work on this clusterfuck.

My guess is that it's not cancelled forever but more than they're out of the ability to pay for staff to prepare for something they don't know when they'll get to do next. I mean what do you need a sales staff for when there's no event. What do you need logistics people for when there's no logic (ok, don't go there, I'm kidding). But I bet someone still owns all of the IP associated with the brand and if the world ever unfucks itself sufficiently there'll be a new RMAF. Related aside - i can't imagine how many industries/events were and are still hanging on to the hope that they will be able to do their thing this year and get back to a position of doing things and making money. How many promotion, production, catering, event rental businesses etc. have gone under or are on the brink? [/rant]

Industry buddy of mine just posted about being sad that RMAF is cancelled forever.

Just picked up Lance at LAX returning from his short visit with friends in Italy. He comes bearing gifts- Note one was lost to the assholes in customs and their sloppy methods of inspecting luggage for weapons, human trafficking and drugs.