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I had the pleasure of joining friends in Bowling Green, KY for ChallengerFest and then Holley's MoParty this week. What a hoot and such an eclectic but cool track. It has an amusement park, water park and is basically in horse country. A trip. Anyhoo, my friend made to the finals in the Outlaw class which was pretty impressive. Unfortunately it rained today so he split the purse with the other gent...who he had beaten in qualifying. Here are a few pics of the car to give you an idea of the level of build it is. HS

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.

Got up early to enjoy spectacular September weather.

Stax serial numbers are meaningless so they offer no guide at all. There was never anything wrong with the 007A/Mk2 treble so it's just as it should be. The Mk2.5 had rather nasty treble but that was a decade ago.

You do realize you can never escape the Gates Evil Empire overwatch. That is unless you go

mm, He is pushing roughly 25psi...maybe a bit more. Running 1/8 mile at these events. It hauls the mail and he is an exceptional driver. I help out where I can...pleasure to be useful and get to hang out with folks that are running cars like these. I just fly in so it's good to have something to do other than just drinking and talking smack...LOL. HS

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.

Subtitled. Although in general, I'm agnostic, unless the dub is particularly annoying (Wasabi comes to mind). I was just lazy, and allowed the default. If you can imagine a "Battle Royale" type scenario where the players volunteer to play, for various reasons (mostly escape from financial ruin). Writer/director Dong-hyuk Hwang is a visionary. Highly stylized sets being the most obvious example in Squid Game. I will definitely be checking their other stuff out. Jung Jaeil (he of Parasite fame) provides the perfect soundtrack. Episode, "Gganbu", was particularly unnervingly emotional.

Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 16 / 1980-1985

hey joamat wanna make a couple of test boards before real money is spent?

I have a very recent 007A and they are very nice, just straight out of the box. Stax have changed the earpads a bit but otherwise they are the same.

A modded 007A is pretty close to the mk1 especially if you EQ it, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. The mk1 is perhaps a tad more resolving in the mids and smoother in the highs, but the mk2/A is more dynamic and impactful. So there are tradeoffs either way. Good mk1s are getting harder to find in great condition so getting a 007A or mk2 and modding it is generally a safer bet. Oh yeah, Edifier has a new headphone out, don't they. Wow grandma, what fat wallets you have!

Looks beefy. Do you know how much boost he is pushing? And I like it with the hood on with that center intake. Running 1/8 mile or 1/4?

4-part Ken Burns series on Muhammed Ali. "Ali boma ye" Streamable here: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/muhammad-ali/

💦

Meanwhile in CA

(Freedom) Chips!

A cheese omelet, toasted baguette and an Earl Beige.

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.

I've also been introduced to Avishai...

It was a great day. Winds for the second half of the ride were a bit painful but we all made it and thanks largely to you guys, fundraising was another huge success.

Rolling to the course.

I just found out about the Fuji X-T1 IR infrared/ultraviolet camera (law enforcement/military/medical/science). Want one just because... what was seen cannot be unseen. https://www.fujifilm.com/us/en/consumer/digitalcameras/ir-camera

You can trim the CSS's using only LV and a DMM in mA mode (assuming AMP board is not connected to anything): Connect LV+ -> AMP HV+ Connect LV- -> DMM (Common) Connect DMM.(+) -> the probe put the probe to the tail of the CSS (the Drain of the Sics (middle leg)) Now you'll have the CSS current reading directly on the meter, and the CSS can be trimmed to what ever current < 27mA you have sinks for (one might shoot a mA lower as the current grows a bit at higher voltage and heat). Trimming the output stage tail resistor to get the amp in balance and DC balance requires all voltages