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Today, I had two of the most delicious steaks. The master chef at Raouche Cafe was kind enough to share with me his very easy, simple marinade, and I’ve been on a quest to recreate it ever since. Today, I recreated it perfectly. The recipe is white vinegar and black pepper. I added garlic, cumin, and white pepper. 30- 45 minutes marinade time while the beef warmed up a little. Then placed in foil, added more garlic, pepper, and a little salt. Closed foil, 375 preheated oven for 11:11 the first time (too well done), 9:99 the second (medium). Might try 8:88 tomorrow. Cut was Food Lion filet mignon tenderloin medallions. Barely needed a knife both times, could’ve cut with a fork. Tasted right both times, too: Super delicious.

my lever machine showed up. There were some initial indications of it’s italian heritage, but once I disassembled it and connected the pressurestat, I was able to pull a tasty, tho slightly long, shot my first try.

💽 MiniDiscs are the future

A little misguided use of English by this lotion store in Paris. And a fun translation for a manger scene. And Baby Jesus is in fact chillin in his crib

Yes, arrow is reliable. And they take private individuals as customers. Since they have multiple warehouses around the US, if you order much, you will get multiple shipments, in big boxes (for the items being ordered/shipped). Kind of irritating, but they are reliable.

Personally, I always thought that this issue is overblown. Below is a chart of normal hearing loss with age, shown as hearing threshold db per freq per age group, for men and women. There are many versions of this same chart floating around, this particular one was recently reproduced in a Lancet article. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6065(21)00040-7/fulltext We know that the magic in music happens in the midrange. Sure, there is spatial information in the high frequencies etc, but honestly, we can all change eq settings / equipment / listening levels as our hearing shifts with age. When we are first exposed to music that we fall in love with, in our teens and younger years, it's not because we can hear what's going on at 15khz. Or even 8. We often listen with crappy speakers and headphones in those ages anyway. Is it unfortunate that we can often afford more gear as we get older and our hearing gets crappier? maybe. But all of the riffs, melodies, lines, and even harmonies I love listening to should still remain well audible in my older ages.

Shout out to my old Sony d25

You must be a very popular Dad.

I've had my eye on these for the last year or so but waiting for a cheap set to come up. There are three versions they sell and I found the cheapest one for sale, brand new in the box with the transformer adapter. I'll take some pics of the system tomorrow (shortest day of the year here so... yeah not great for photos) but I've at least a pic of the headphones and the internals of the transformer box. Here they are and I quite like the looks and the build quality. They are using mini XLR's which is not ok but questionable connector choices are a theme here. The stock cable is beyond crap (more on that tomorrow) so I'm using a Stax PC-OCC off my RR-1's. They feel substantial but also light and fit my head snugly at the largest extension. Carbon Fiber headband and the leather is nice. On their site they claim the Minima is supposed to have pleather earpads but these are clearly genuine leather. These look very similar to earpads I've bought from China in the past and nothing wrong with the quality. I shone flashlight through the driver to you all could see the structure, very unusual drivers here. Now onto the adapter box... yeah this is not good. That's it... and yeah there are so many issues here. Let's start with this gem: It's hard to capture on "film" but the IEC input and the fuse holder are completely uninsulated and mere millimeters from the metal frame of the transformers. Thankfully the chassis is earthed but yeah, this is not to code and an instant CE violation there. In the first picture you can also see there is no protection for the transformers at all and we will get to why that is an issue. Now the active parts: The bias supply is driven directly off the mains, no isolation between you and the wall. Now this was commonplace in the 70's but now... I'm not sure this meets any modern standards. The bias supply is a simple voltage doubler and for 117V they just add another doubler on top. There is then a 600V zener clamp to make sure the bias doesn't rise above that threshold. None of this has the elegance of the Stax bias supplies and frankly this is just sad. For instance the LED for power indication is driven directly off the mains, through one tiny resistor. Now you might notice those 3 pin XLR's there and yup, they are the stock outputs for the Euridiche, the Stax output is just for convenience. One of my biggest gripes is with using XLR's as they are in no way rated for these voltages, especially the cheap, no-name, units they are using. Also check out the clerances on that PCB.. bias and high voltage signals less than 1mm apart. Then we have what scares me the most, see those traces which go right to the edge of the board and into pin 3 of the XLR's...? Yeah that is the bias so 600V is sitting there, pressed right up against the chassis with exposed solder connections. Sure this is after the ballast resistors (one 4m7 for the Stax and separate 10M units for each side of the XLR's) but still... They have a lot of faith in the powder coating on the chassis. Finally the Stax socket, 3D printed and fed directly off the XLR sockets. Almost no way to actually cram a Stax plug in there but you know, I almost had to use a hammer. 😉 Then we come to the final issue, on paper these appear to be Stax compatible despite the stupid XLR connectors and similar bias supply but nope... they are so inefficient that my usual test amp (Icepower 50 module with a preamp tacked onto it) was at max volume to get these to my normal listening level. I plugged in my test SR-207's as well and they were at half volume using this transformer box. As seen in the first pic, I've fitted them with a Stax plug but they make the Carbon CC work for its pay so yeah, you need a very powerful amp to drive them. Now finally, how do they sound... pretty damn nice actually. 🙂 This is off the Carbon CC prototype in my rig right now and they are very balanced sounding, slightly dark sounding but very mellow and open. They are not overly forward or bright, unless when called to be and I can listen for a few hours with nothing bad to say really. Bass is plentiful and deep, midrange has a nice presence to it and the soundstage is pretty good. Top end is a tad dark but it is very mild and they make for a relaxing and pleasant package. So TL;DR... great headphones that are let down by being too inefficient, frankly unsafe transformer box and stupid cable/connector choices. Change the cable to Stax and drive them off a powerful amp and the sound is great.

Yea, I've bought a few parts for T2 from arrow. They have not a great customer support for individuals, but all parts are genuine.

Not "The Children"?

Thermal resistance 100k/w instead 80k/w..... I think it can be used, but I would make an accurate calculations before. And you will need a board with a full metal polygon and a way to mount it on heatsink. It is gonna to be cumbersome. Anyway I can't find IXCY too.

Listening to a set of Beyerdynamic Amiron -> Chord Mojo -> Panasonic SL-CT820 was the best "portable" listening I've ever heard... I think some of the high-end Sony Walkman and Astell&Kern players are in that territory, but they've never appealed to me. They would be less cumbersome, though. It might take a while for wireless audio to reach the same heights.

From dinner last night, homemade nachos carnitas w/ pico and cheese, served with homemade guac and sour cream.

I've spent some more time with the headphones now (when I really should be testing out the new CRBN) but I like these a lot. They really do nothing wrong, soundstage is a bit flat (flat earpads though) and they aren't great with small detail retrieval but other than that they are neutral, honest sounding and I can spend hours listening to them. Now for the wanky things (besides that name, seriously... anus in your company name can never be a good idea ) such as the box these ship in: Almost Voce bad but at least it is well made, unlike the Mr. Speakers box. Here is the silly dual cable for these, male 3 pin XLR's on one end 3 pin mini XLR's on the other. It feels terrible and I'll rip it apart later. What truly bothers me is this shit, these are cheapest XLR's you can buy short of the knock off Neutriks and they are pushing 600V bias and 200Vrms through this? Yeah it's not ok... I'm thinking about what I'm going to do with that energizer as the transformers seem to be pretty decent. Probably just fit my own PSU to it and change it to three Stax sockets that the headphones actually fit into.

Festive Pizza, Along with homemade shortbread and mince pies (and not shown all kinds of goodies including "hand couriered" Sainsbury's mince pies "that taste of home") at a seasonal festive gathering of the Brits.

Sustenance for two hard working cabinet makers.

Techmoan does it best (he didn't mention that the high-end PCDPs had line-out and mini-Toslink optical outputs for outboard DACs, but it's not an audiophile channel):

"Apple Music boss admits he can’t hear any difference between compressed and lossless audio: “our ears aren’t that good” | MusicRadar" https://www.musicradar.com/amp/news/apple-music-lossless-audio-dolby-atmos-difference "Apple's Eddy Cue on Spatial Audio, Future of Music – Billboard" https://www.billboard.com/pro/apple-music-eddy-cue-spatial-audio-lossless-future-of-music/

RIP artist Wayne Thiebaud at 101. He was a professor at my alma mater UC Davis so I saw his work early in life. He is most famous for his cakes and ice creams and such, but I loved his streetscapes of SF and also his quirky portraits. My dad grew up next door to Richard Diebenkorn, and Thiebaud was influenced by him and his city streets and parks always reminded of him (not an original or unique observation, just to be clear). RIP Prof. after a very good innings. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/obituaries/wayne-thiebaud-dead.amp.html