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Got up early to enjoy spectacular September weather.

Commissioning a new PC, DELL Optiplex 7090. My son Rob came down and helped out, putting an addition 1G SSD in there, moving bookmarks across, and putting one of the spinning rust drives out the other PC in there will all the legacy files. It is physically tiny, in spite of the fact that it has an i7 processor. It even turns out it has a backup battery in the power supply. Anyway, it goes FAST! I've gone for LibreOffice to keep as far away from the Gates evil empire as possible, and eM Client email software.

A surprisingly tasty "Chocolate" Chip Ice Cream sandwich Given it was almost everything "free".

So Colin and I heard from someone (@grawk, perhaps) that Costco had some OK-ish steaks. Slim pickins, but we found some that didn't look too terribly bad. Wagyu cap, seasoned with salt overnight and left on a wire rack in fridge, then hit with ground peppercorn before hitting the Weber. It didn't suck.

A cheese omelet, toasted baguette and an Earl Beige.

Not the Girl Holly Macve 2021 Strong Chris Isaac vibe - that is a good thing. Example:

I am using one of Mjolnir Audio’s Carbon and so am a stranger to this issue you are facing with the 007s. The 007s Mk2, in particular, have been accused of having recessed mids. I will confess that I faced that issue with my previous amps. Hence I was very pleasantly surprised when I started using the Carbon almost 2 years back. The 007s sound much more balanced now.

(Freedom) Chips!

Yes. Birgir is a great guy to deal with. No overselling and his recommendations are always appropriate to your use case. And so patient. I discussed with him on and off for about a year before I picked up the Carbon.

Pretty nice Dremel skills, by the way 😂

I’m using one of his modified SRM-717s and I’m actually really happy with it and the advice he gave me (especially considering it was initially going to be paired to an L700 and not the 007 mk2s as I was initially looking for an electrostatic alternative to my Audeze planar magnetics, not to actually replacing them, which is what I ended up doing because to my ears they didn’t sound as good as the Stax). But then as I got into it more and from what I have read here and elsewhere and discussing the situation with him I know I can do better and that is what I’m aiming to do. Fortunately I have started working again after a year of being stuck home so buying a carbon or a carbon CC is now much more than just a pipe dream and however good the X9000 may be the amplifier is my next upgrade. Hopefully by Christmas 🎄

Maybe they chose the best two sections out of four!

It's been a long week so not a lot of time to sit down and listen to the CRBN but when I've done so, they always deliver. No issues at all like the first set had and they are very comfy for a couple of hours or so. I'll try to sit down for a few hours straight but they are so light and the earpads so supple that I don't foresee any issues. It did take me a while to get used to the more diffused sound stage as I thought they were off balance a few times. Just the different presentation playing with my head... I'll take some more time until my final impressions but how about some teardown pics instead. Now do remember that this set was headed my way and Audeze knew I would tear it apart... so they were nice enough to not fully adhere the earpads. That's why they have the paper backing on them. First shot showing the gorgeous carbon shells. Earpads off showing the baffle and the nylon screws which secure the baffle to the back. The 3M adhesive they are using for the earpads is very strong so these are no easy headphones to get into. The earpads are very thick and some of the nicest I've ever seen so I don't foresee having to replace them anytime soon. Another shot showing the (phenolic?) baffle. Now remove the screws and the set comes apart, the baffle screws through the earcups and into the back piece. There is quite a bit of foam behind the drivers but it is very open. Audeze were shooting for a fairly high damping design so this makes sense. Here is the frame with the foam in place. That small dot falls off easily which is good, that means no adhesive in place to make a reflective surface inside the foam. The back cover is a very nice piece and I like the use of fine mesh to keep most things out of the cups Now remove the foam from the picture above and we have the back of the driver. They have gone for connections through the structure to the different elements unlike say Stax who take it all to one point. Nothing wrong with either way of doing things. Here you can also see the construction of the cable which is woven and it feel like it's two triple strands from the Stax plug, up through the cable split and into each cup. I do wonder how much capacitance braiding the cables like this does add to the system (a flat cable always be superior in that regard) but its similar to what Sennheiser do on the HE-1 and Mr. Speakers on the Voce. Far cry better than the crap Hifiman call a cable... on a 18k$ set of headphones though. Another shot the driver free of the earcup. Same thick woven material used for the dust covers front and back. Side profile showing just how thin the driver sandwich is and also its MRI safe roots are evident. Not a whole lot of metal in that, similar to what Sennheiser did with the HE series back in the day. The HE60 was just two pieces of extruded plastic, painted gold and then the mylar stretched onto the frame. Kinda funny to see this approach compared to what Stax are doing with the SR-X, ever more complicated stator designs whose benefits are not quite clear. Last but not least, the very nice plug on these. That is aluminum and then molded plastic... very nice indeed.

In her day she was an incredible ratter. We had a rats nest under the shed. They set up home because our neighbour had an aviary, and the rats were after the roosting birds. I bought a rat trap - a huge back breaking sort. Baited it with chocolate and waited. Next morning, trap tripped, chocolate gone, no rat. I eventually bent the mechanism to operate on a hair trigger, if you sneezed it would trip. Next morning bait gone, trap tripped, no rat. Those buggers are clever - they must have used a stick to trip the trap. I had no idea that rats were tool users. The guy next door tried a humane trap; all he caught was a hedgehog. Then Cleo got on the case. Worked her way through the lot of them. Of course they fight back, so she'd come in really proud with tail high looking a bit battered, and outside a half eaten rat. She got all five of them. She was a quite small cat, but a scourge of rats! And voles, and mice, and birds etc etc. Many brought back alive as a trophy to try to teach the higher primate chimp owner how to kill a small animal.

I'm sure we could do a comparison like that.

Amazon bookshelf customer reviews are fun