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My plan this morning was to do a quick 25 mile bike ride then go for a sauna. Oddly enough I managed to do both on the bike ride-

Condolences gentlemen. The hardest part of getting older is seeing loved ones pass.

Where is our review sample? Could sound nice (for $3500), but no Whammy bar?

I face palmed so hard I think I'm gonna have to call my physician tomorrow to have my palm surgically removed from my forehead. I work full time and I attend university now, so I don't know how to find the time to even begin addressing all the logical fallacies from your two posts, but here's the gist of it: You claim to "cover[s] why he's pushing JR gear] by stating that it's "coz he likes headphones and was getting into E-stats, then started to sell them." Great. Very informative post after leading us with your initial promise of providing us with "constructive criticism to better the children for the future". Well, lets start with you presuming to understand a 3rd party's motives and intentions. I don't think you speak on his behalf here, but if you did, then this is the saddest bit of troll food I've ever seen in my life and can't fathom how this could possibly "educate children of the future". The drastically more realistic scenario here is that MyHeadFi is able to sell JR Audio with a significant enough margin because they both operate from the same country and likely struck some very significant business deal selling subpar electronic chinese parts without quality control - NOT because the owner of MyHeadfi "likes headphones". Oh boy. Sure thing, lets take the fact that this owner sent you over 50 emails to mean that he is a well intentioned business dealer selling top quality audio gear. I'm not the least bit sure how number of emails and quality of hardware sold is positively correlated, but I think if we were to follow your logic then basically every local Bestbuy or walmart here would be qualified to sell you some Beats headphones and have it compete with the best. Furthermore, if quality and email count were correlated, I must state that Vance ALSO sent me upwards of 50+ emails to me in less than a few weeks and promised me that no headphone amplifier had ever been sent back to him for repair and that they never once broke down. In the end, after all was said and done, of those emails, the bulk of them ended up being either threats or lies. He did NOT respond to my emails in a prompt manner and when he did respond, he did so in a very round-about fashion. Regardless of all this, Mjolnir Audio also sent me over 50+ emails with far more insightful and helpful bits of information when looking for alternatives. If we're to make purchasing decisions based on email counts, I think we have far better options than Vance here. So here's the other fallacy that I need to point out. You asked: "if he's such a scammer why is his customer service so damn good?... well let me answer why this question is entirely too biased based on your particular experience. He's had you hooked for multiple purchases and its in his best interest to have you see him in a favorable light. So, for one thing, all of your transactions went smooth and your gear functions properly so far - I assume. Honestly, judging by your comments, this is probably because you upgrade faster than your gear deteriorates. The biasness arises because you've never had to experience dealing with him when something went wrong. That's were the problem lies: it's one thing to judge someone's behavior when everything is all rainbows and unicorns, but what happens when the going gets rough and there is a hiccup? What happens when part of your gear starts to fail? THAT is the real judge of character right there. In the dealings I had with Vance, he refused to offer any kind of refund. Here's what he wrote to me (And also what I had to write to my statements with VISA in order to get the charges reversed): I asked Vance multiple times for a refund or an exchange with a new item. The last time I had asked, he finally caved and replied with this: "Yes, you can exchange for something else when it's returned, probably KGSS?" You should note here that the replacement item in question is for a KGSS and I wanted to exchange it for another KGSSHV, NOT his KGSS that is being sold for HALF the cost of a KGSSHV. Woooow total scam. Prior to that he was incredibly reluctant to exchange with anything at all, and when I asked for a refund, he countered by offering to "help me" by repairing the amp and selling it for me on his site's marketplace as a used item. LOL. What a crook. I therefore had to ask him what kind of loss I would take if I did so and he never replied to that email. I have the full email thread as proof, and it reads exactly like you would think communicating with a child reads like. When I told Vance about the blown rectifier and the dead unit he responded with "It should be just the fuse burnt, sometimes there's surge in the mains and the fuse burnt to protect the circuit." Vance is just generally unknowledgeable about amplifier electronics. In the end, Vance only offered to send me replacement parts to repair the item's issues and didn't want to offer service to repair the unit until after I had contacted visa with complaints. In the VISA dispute he argued his case by stating that his return policy excluded faulty items from being returned. See attached image from the dispute. Vance essentially argued that a "myheadfi.com does not accept return of a brand new item with valid warranty", which turns out to basically be the biggest pile of steaming garbage I've ever read in my life. Logically it means that any item with warranty cannot be returned, which would translate that to mean every item he sells. Does that mean that the only way to bypass this beautiful piece of logic is to wait until the warranty period expired and THEN try to return it? Lol I'm sure waiting a year to return something would work even better... Wow. This folks is what you have to look forward to when dealing with crooks. He lost the case. And with good reason.

Condolences to y'all.

Condolences to both of youse.

Sorry Mikey and Beefy 😪

Bohuslan Big Band plays Blue Note Available from Swedish public service company SVT, worldwide until 15. Dec. 2021. https://www.svtplay.se/video/31377250/jazzsommar-bohuslan-big-band-spelar-blue-note

DOMi and JD Beck

Condolences

My sincere condolences, Gentlemen. Sam

Sorry for your loss lads. Hard to lose a good friend Mikey and tough to lose a parent Beefy. My condolences.

Condolences gents.

Heartfelt condolences.

Condolences, Mikey and Beefy.

Listening to some Heavy Metal

Adia Victoria's A Southern Gothic

Thanks for the kind words and smileys. I think my favorite graffiti says it well.....

So this is what its going to look like when its done. And Hammond is willing to do the custom transformers. With a price that matches the complexity. Anyone with experience with tube rectifier power supplies driving 5 Henry inductors?

for my friend Peter

This morning I was notified that a dear friend and fellow plowedster died of complications from an infection while he was waiting for a kidney transplant. Peter Silver DDS was a gent and funny man. I shared many a dram and story with him. I met Peter at A11, my first Ardbeggeddon gathering. We ended up sitting next to each other many times. Early on he handed me a sealed bottle and asked if I would open it for him. No problem, I thought, and quickly opened it for him and handed it back. A little while later he asked me to open another, then again later in the evening. I didn't think much of it. The next morning when I sat down next to him again and he soon handed me a sealed bottle to open. This time I smiled, knowing this was a subtle and fun hazing joke to himself. I happily opened it for him along with several other bottles that day. As the evening session started, I handed a sealed bottle to him, 'Peter, could you open this for me?', I said in a very offhand manner. A big smile and chuckle came over his face. He happily opened the bottle. We were locked in... Tis a sad day. But great memories of a generous man.

Thanks! One thing I forgot to mention... what I think is so good about this signal chain - on a philosophical level at least, with no technical data to back it up - is the incredible simplicity of it. Vref -> R-2R ladder -> connectors/cables -> volume pot -> OPAMP -> MOSFET -> headphones The nature of the discrete R-2R DAC, being able to tap the R-2R ladder directly, combined with the minimalistic design of the M3, means there is just so little in the signal path. Fully DC-coupled start to finish, with a single active device providing gain, directly pushing a single output device.

I have finally completed my "return to the hobby" stack, by finishing up a recasing and upgrade of my 13-year-old M3. The design itself is 16 years old now, and it still has the same compromises from way back then..... but with a modern OPAMP, easy to drive phones and reasonable execution, I still think it sounds bloody marvellous. Highlights are a HiFi2000 galaxy case, FPE panels, ADA4627-1B OPAMPs, TKD 2CP2511 pot, 2" sinks and 110 mA output stage bias, complete electrolytic re-cap with Panasonic FR and Nichicon UHE, S11 at 27V, magnetically shielded SumR transformer (30VA, 12+12V), Cree zero-rec Schottky diodes, and a deliciously gaudy volume knob (so shiny, I had to edit out and hide my own reflection!). Sitting between the R-2R DAC and Focal Clear as my office rig, I'm a very happy camper.

Pretty painless upgrade to iOS 15 today… at least on my current gen Apple devices. I might be imagining things, but I feel like they definitely put some big dev effort in to the 120hz animations and smoothness. I have not seen it written up in any of the reviews, and without a second device side by side running iOS 14 it is impossible to tell for sure, but things feel really good on my iPad Pro. It would certainly make sense that 120hz mode would be a focus with a whole lot more 120hz Apple devices about to come online this Friday.

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.

Thank you for exposing those crooks. They always advertise their wares on a couple of facebook groups I'm on. I might start circulating a link to this page.

It's been a month but the CRBN is finally here, well this is actually the second set I've received. First set was one of two units to have an assembly issue which Audeze have now identified and fixed. I sent that one back and they sent a new one out. Now these are loaner sets but if I want to keep it, I will buy it. Just wanted to make that clear as I always own everything I tear down. The first set was setup to make it easier for me to take a peek inside so the pics I'll post later, will be of that unit. They are identical though and to say the CRBN looks gorgeous... well that would be an understatement. First thing that came to my mind when lifting out of the sturdy aluminum flight case, was a comparison to the Hifiman Shangri-la jr. Similar price range (I paid 4000$ for my set back in the day) and by comparison the Shangri-la looks like a 200$ Aliexpress special. The carbon fiber headband, the forged carbon earcups and nice thick leather earpads. Yeah, this is for sure no Hifiman product and it really puts Stax to shame with their shitty SR-009 headband design. Not that I was expecting anything less from Audeze but the attention to detail is nothing short of exemplary. Nice long strain relief on the cables as they enter the cups, the quality of the Stax plug, the sheer comfort of having these on the head (even with my melon of cranium) and the list goes on. The only issue I could find with them (and it was true of both sets) is a rather strong chemical smell as they are fresh out of the box. It doesn't bother me at all but it might bother some so best mention it. In terms of amp requirements, they are rather power hungry. It was a clear design choice to make them a bit less sensitive so the amps need to be pushed further in terms of volume level but it's nothing extreme. I had a KGSSHV in my system when the first unit arrived so I kept that to compare against the new one. It drives them just fine but the Carbon is a better choice with roughly 4 times the power. I would place the KGSSHV/KGST as the baseline for them to get excellent performance and it only gets better from there. Now it's been only been an hour or so with this second set (a few days with the first one) so it's early but first impressions are great. To keep it short, it's what the Sennheiser HE90 could have been but never managed to do. The CRBN has that same ethereal, diffused quality but with far more midbass and bass presence. They are not the bass monsters which the 007's can be but there is enough there and they are not bright or forward sounding at all. I'll post some more impressions later and the teardown pics as well.

Finally done! I regrettably sold my previous KGSSHV Carbon a while ago, this one’s not going anywhere soon. This is a 400V, 19mA version, using the ground plane amp board, Sumr transformer and Goldpoint V47 attenuator. I bought the heatsinks from China and had all the drilling and panels done at Front Panel Express. I pulled out the Canon 5D from the cupboard for some tasty shots.

I've found the culprit. A tiny solder blob which seems to have landed out of nowhere was shorting two solder points in the CCS module's PCB. Removed it, resoldered the module to the unit's PCB... and presto! Left-channel voltages back to normal! Phew! Rebiasing with the stock tubes took a couple of hours (3-4 rebiasing sessions with about one hour in between to wait for the tubes to drift). I'll wait a couple of months to see if it's worth it to start tube rolling. In the meantime... Currently testing my SR-007A with the newly recapped and CCS-modded SRM-T1S. Amazing! It seems a straitjacket was removed from the cans! The CCS mod really makes a difference.

I've done a lot of fine wood finishing but this is as extreme as I've ever seen (love to touch this finish!)

RIP Richard H Kirk. Founding member of Cabaret Voltaire. Big influence on many bands....article below isn't sure of cause of death, but some had rumored COVID-related. http://www.musictimes.com/articles/82848/20210921/mystery-behind-richard-h-kirk-cause-death-die-covid-health.htm

I'd forgotten this thread was here..... My dad died over the weekend. Sudden exacerbation of a progressive lung disease. I wasn't able to get there because of travel restrictions (fuck you, COVID), but thankfully he was able to be off the ventilator for about a minute to talk to me. The saddest part is.... I went through all my photos to provide them for his memorial that I won't be able to go to (fuck you COVID), and there are only about 5 photos of him with my daughter. We only visited home once when she was 7 months old. My parents were supposed to visit me over here to see her again in mid-2020, but had to cancel when COVID hit (fuck you, COVID). In the context of this forum, my DIY equipment holds a little more meaning now. He didn't teach me much about being a man, but he did teach me how to solder.

Something that erk'd me though was the trash talking about Vance@Myheadfi, so I had to say a bit on that for the record, which also covers why he's pushing JR gear. I live on Ebay and there's not alot of E-stat gear on there, well not for us Internationals, US is usually post to 48 states. When searching comes up with JR amps it's from Myheadfi listing, Vance is the owner and it's a one man band, I thought out of HK but I think could be China. He came across JR coz he likes headphones and was getting into E-stats, then started to sell them. MyHeadfi is a headphone shop that sells mostly secondhand and some new headphones/Iems/Dacs. I've bought the 3 amps through him and a week ago I dropped another $1k on him for iems even after reading the "issues" the other user has with him. I have atleast 50 emails between us over the last 2 years, and quite frankly is one of the most solid guys i've ever dealt with in the interwebs. When you go to his website, it displays prices based on your location..i.e AUS is AUD, US is USD, EU is EUR.....Vance is smarts And lastly, the iems I bought off him, I asked if he can check for imbalance before posting them, he sent me back a pic of the FR graph from a EARS rig....if he's such a scammer why is his customer service so damn good😝

Howdy, so this is where I step in with some helpful facts surrounding why ppl are buying JR gear, what Myheadfi is about and what can be used as constructive criticism to better the children for the future. But first it's story time, once upon a time...... I started in headphones around 3 years, I had no stereo gear at all ever, PC sound out or car stereo, but always bought CD's to play. Bought a AKG 712 Pro, then MONOPRICE 1060's, SENN HD700 and so on. When I found out about E-stats I eventually ended up here to learn what it's all about. Prob read 1000 pages on all topologies, without knowing much background knowledge about SS or Tube amps, all Tube stage, 2 stage, 9 stage. I know nothing about PCB or electronics, surface mount, through hole, all sounds Greek to me. What I do know about though is cold bore center-mass shots@ 1000yds and Benefication and Extraction of Earth's minerals. So when it came to getting into E-stats, what are the options..... And that's how I ended up with, Stax 353X, Stax-700T, JR Grounded Grid, JR KGHVSS Mini, JR Carbon, FLS Blue Hawaii...which all work, although QC is another story.