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bumpybump... nearly two years after doing my first A/B/C of Spotify, Qobuz, and Tidal (where i reported no differences of any kind)... i have revisited Tidal. continuing frustration over Spotify HiFi not being a thing, recent social dilemmas, and the current $2-for-3 month promo for the top tier all pulled me in along with plenty of @recstar24 encouragement. it's a huge jump this time. of 100 or so tracks so far, there's been less than 10 that i thought were not hugely improved specifically in staging and the '3d'ness of individual lines. maybe it's the rig... Tidal Connect into Naim Uniti HE to Utopia is some truly glorious digital. most likely i will stick with it unless Spotify pulls a 180.

Late to the party, but here goes. Lured a nice small case off of MLA for a cheap penny, wanted a compact CFA (SE). Took some time for my slow mind to figure out how to best use the space in three dimensions, but I found a solution that works fine so far, if you're planning something similar. No interfering leads or unwanted nearness of critical components, and bias can be set without problem. In reality, I'm surprised it turned out quite airy and spacious, considering the limitations. Note the Müller Rhombus transformer device ("Konzept Raute"). This romboid plate interacts wit the circular toroid shape and the electromagnetic waves are forced through the four holes in an endless loop in this electronically confined space, and thus traps all hum in an existant/nonexistant void. This amp is noise and hum free. I'm particulary happy with the volume control, a 24-position Swiss Elma switch that's been lying in a drawer for 35 years. 15K (why not?), shunt coupled and making as little contribution to the signal as possible. I think this plays a part in the clean, revealing sound of the CFA design. The odd resistor out is in the position I mostly listen to, a hand selected Syldavian military plutonium component (0,01%) from 1953, made in a numbered series of three of each value (I own the third one as well) and these days sold on ebay in Hong Kong for not less than $1200, if available at all (only one for sale during the last nine years). Set the bias at first to 150mA, it sank to 135 after some time, which was to be expected. Decided too raise it (why not?) to 200mA. Put the lid on and after three hours it was stable at 175mA after a last fine-tuning. Gets warm, but not too hot. Like all successful, completed builds it sounds wonderful , but if that lasts only time will tell. If so, I may be tempted to follow up with a CFA3.

Opinion? demonstrable facts, more like - for an American audience. Thanks, NYT

I'm tempted to say "Augsburger, buy a Lagom P100". But I know that's mostly because I want one, not because I think that's the best grinder for this case. I definitely think Jacob is happy with his Niche, so there's one option. Another option is getting a grinder for pour-over and another grinder for espresso (if you have the space, mainly). A Baratza Encore or Virtuoso plus a Sette 270 is affordable enough; I have an Encore M2 mod plus a Sette 270 and if nothing else they've been reliable while getting the job done. I'm not sure if this is a boon in your use case, but having dedicated grinders means you don't need to purge anything (even if your grinders retain grinds). And yeah, I'd say be careful with which type of burrs you're getting if you can choose. For the SSP 64mm, unimodal apparently suits longer ratio espresso and pour-over, whereas high uniformity suits shorter ratio espresso (only if I'm remembering correctly here; going off what I think Hoffman said). Burrs are such a rabbithole -- I was telling Jacob a while ago that SSP sells tungsten carbide burrs, which are rated for 20,000 pounds of coffee. AKA "are you sure this grinder isn't going to be a family heirloom at that point?"

Did you burn an OG mix CD to celebrate?

That looks nothing like huevos con chorizo

Installed 2sk170/2sj74 instead of THAT340 in my SSDynalo. Did not listen to it for a long time, but initial impression is that HD800s feel less fatiguing. Like it had just enough cups of coffee, not one or two to many.

Chorizo con Huevos For Brent: That translates to Mexican (in this case) sausage and eggs.

Not coffee, but adjacent: where the Ember mug truly shines is with green tea. I’m much less discerning with tea than I am coffee, but I still enjoy a good cup or 3, and it’s just *perfect.* It’s lovely for coffee, but this is going to have me getting back into tea. PID kettle is also a tea game changer; no more putting an ice cube in the pot while I brew and hoping for the best!

A tube diode CRC power supply driving GRHV would have slightly lower noise.

YES

I have the previous generation of the 2i in very good condition just sitting around, will sell at good price?

Niche, then. It’s not perfect, but the next level is the Lagom P64, and it’s twice the price. And it’s also not perfect. I have the same burr set as the P64 (SSP multipurpose, which is one of the options and would be the burr you would want if you got the P64 and wanted to use it for both espresso and pour) in my modified Ode and it’s not a better burr than the Mazzer conical in the Niche. It’s… different. I use the Niche for espresso only (I actively prefer conical for espresso; I like the texture), but I would happily use it for pour. I’m in a position where I don’t have to use one grinder for everything, but I would keep the Niche if I had to choose one.* I do prefer the SSP flat burrs for filter, but this is super coffee dork preference stuff. *That’s not true: I would keep the Orphan OG, but I don’t think you are looking for a hand grinder.

Well way less than the Mignon XL. Not unlike audio stuff, spending huge does not guarantee your gear will even work...the first time. The Niche is a contender as most of the grinders I am finding in my searches are either ugly, have questionable controls, or state that they can only do pour over grinds or espresso only grinds, I need both. And most importantly, I need the grinder to work without field stripping it each time I use it.

I suspect this could go in at least four threads...

Played on a Pleyel Grand Piano from 1836 - info.

Paypal took care of the Clive issue so I am now in the market for a grinder that handles espresso for the Flair 58 and Chemex switchoffs. I am going to be much more particular in my selection this time.

you can expand the picture and read it NOT Felista Audio OTL Push-Pull Electronic Headphone Amplier For the record this is not a push pull amplifier.

I had another Doctor's appointment Friday. Mostly to go over my blood pressure readings and to evaluate my machine against the Dr's. machine. After checking my home machine against theirs, it seems it's functioning just fine. My blood pressure log has been averaging about 155/90. Way better than before I went on medication, but still not where we want it to be. My Dr. has decided to add a beta blocker to my current meds, but only to be taken if my BP is above 130/80. One thing the nurses did was to check how I'm taking my BP, and it seems I wasn't doing it just right. It was determined that I should be resting my arm at a level even with my heart. And maybe even more importantly, I was taking my morning BP first thing after waking. They told me to wait an hour after taking my meds before taking my BP reading. Well, after making these two changes, my last 3 BP readings are as follows... 124/71, 127/74 & 129/61. All within my 130/80 goal. Now it's early on in this new routine, but it sure is making me feel good about achieving this BP goal. My Dad had Hypertension, to the point where he was often bright Red in the face. He had Congestive Heart disease, diabetes and probably some other issues. Also he was a lifetime smoker. So my own health has always been a question for me. With my A1C below 7, my blood sugar testing well, the diabetes is under control. My cholesterol is normal. I have an appointment for an EKG in two weeks. If the EKG shows no worrisome issues, then I'll be feeling really good about all of this. I'm also down 30 lbs. from when I first discovered my health issues a few years ago. Assuming that this coming 61st. birthday is not spent puking in the toilet all day, due to Vertigo, my 60's are not looking as gloomy as I worried they might be. It's a crap shoot, as my Father's family all died pretty young (mostly in their 50's and 60's). But my Mother's side have lifespans like golopagos tortoises.

I finished my first SRX+ build yesterday. It is overall quite satisfying. It doesn't have the breathtaking bass or unforgiving resolution of KGSSHV Carbon, but is rather non-fatiguing for long-term listening. I took the SRX+ Gerber file Kevin created (Thanks, Kevin!), added larger footprints in order to use the cheaper tube sockets, TO-92 footprints for the DN2540s and moved the heater-lift resistor dividers to the amp board so the wiring between this and the PSU board can be more streamlined. I also changed the small tubes to use 6.3V heater in order to match the surplus power transformer. The PSU board from Kevin follows JimL's original shunt PSU schematic. I added a normal bias tap in the zener diode string with a copied low pass filter, different lead spacing support on the output film caps in case a certain part number is out of stock. It is also cut short 1/2" from the original. Got too aggressive in fitting these boards into the small chassis. The internal space is barely large enough for the two boards to lay side-by-side. Had to mill off internal supports here and there, and ended up not having enough space for a real volume pot (the place holder is a rotary encoder waiting for a future attenuator board. The build started with a faint hum. Swapping tubes can reduce it to a certain level. Then I found a 55mVp-p saw-tooth ripple on the power, which is not supposed to be there (the shunt PSU has >120dB ripple rejection at power line frequency according to simulation). It turns out, the bias circuit voltage doubler drops its leg on the virtual ground and injects >1mA of ripple current, because the bias has to be ground-referenced. The virtual ground is not really a low-impedance node (about 60 ohm @ 60Hz with two 22uF caps). Any noise on the virtual ground is considered common mode to the shunt regulator, and is pretty much out of the control loop. Besides, with transformer HV voltage suitable for this design (I used 600V center-tapped), the voltage doubler doesn't have enough juice such that the 10M90 bottoms out at the low voltage points. So I modified the bias circuit to have its return tied to the output B+ and let the shunt regulator deal with the ripple current. Pro-bias is still easy to obtain, but the normal bias would have to come from dividing the B+ like in the original SRX circuit. The final assembly has 2.5mV hum in one channel and 5mV in the other. I don't think I can reduce them significantly beyond that without using DC heater and take care of the common mode noise from the header windings, perhaps also need to shield the small tubes. There is always some coupling from the heater to the cathode and it varies from tube to tube. With multiple tubes sharing the same AC heater I don't think you can balance it out completely using a pot, either. This simple amp performs well, THD+N is as low as 0.01% between 35dBV and 45dBV (40dBV being the rated operating voltage for the SR Lambda Pros to output 100dBSPL, which is pretty loud). One thing I'm not too happy about is the -2dB drop @ 20kHz when loaded with the AP (200k ohm + 66pf including cables). So I played a little with the open-loop performance. The driver stage has only -1.4dB drop @ 20kHz when disconnected from the final tubes, but the Miller cap of the 6SN7 is killing the high output impedance common-grid driver stage, dropping it to -9.5dB @ 20kHz. Negative feedback helped but didn't bring it back to ruler flat. It might help with a cathode follower stage before the 6SN7 but then there goes the simplicity. A rolled-off top end could explain the more forgiving sound, though. Thanks again to Kevin and Jim to make this such a fun project. If you are going to build it, I'd suggest using Jim's Revised shunt power supply for SRX Plus or any other dual voltage regulators. And don't use a chassis too small!