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My younger niece (11) and folks are visiting us in Durango. Took the train to Silverton and went on the Alpine Slide at Purgatory Ski Resort. 20230730_145026.mov IMG_5113.mov

I'm jealous of this room.

...and then burn them with fire, right?

Another Rudy recording: Somethin’ Else - Cannonball Adderley

I sourced a replacement steam boiler, so I should be back up and running after it arrives from Australia and I have it installed. $150 plus repair cost is a lot cheaper than a new one! That is sweet, Sam! That machine still looks amazing, and plumbed in is living the dream!

Watched off and on for the past week the Milan World Fencing championships. HK team co-coached by our friend, took silver. Of note two of the four in the team competition attended a BBQ at our house with both coaches a few years back after training with Lance and his club prior to a Cup competition out here. International incidents were avoided as no rattlesnakes or coyotes dared to make an appearance.

Filter setup in case it's of any use to anyone. Houston has very hard water. HS

RIP Paul. May they lay you to rest in the basement of the Alamo.

The latest from Intelligencia. I somehow managed to forget the Black Cat...ugh. Picked up some Hidden City espresso roasted by Oak Cliff out of Dallas. Sourced from a small local shop that does a nice job. Tasty. HS

Nice score, Jacob! I took a hard look at those machines and almost pulled the trigger on one. HS

LL9202 can be wired 100:1 http://www.lundahl.se/wp-content/uploads/datasheets/1620_3_7_9202.pdf

That's all good statements in theory. My suggestion would be to plug-in the real-world numbers, do the math and find out what kind of voltage you really need/can afford, and go from there. For the protecting scheme, too. You now have a high voltage DC supply which can conveniently verify the protecting threshold of the candidate device. You could also connect the protection device/series resistor(s) to your phones and listen to them at comfortable levels. If you can't hear a difference, or even prefer the sound with the protection device present, viola! you've got a solution. FWIW, I found an MOV which looks like a 2W+ metal film resistor in my old Stax Lamba (normal bias). I guess at the time the non-linearity it brings was the lesser evil compared to a burnt driver.

Via Reddit (as are most of these), a DIY Altec Voice of the Theater project:

Thanks, everyone!

There's an annual gathering of Land Rover owners here on MV. There's a bunch on island, but people come from all-over. There are two photos (taken by someone else) from last year's meetup: I made it a point to be there this year. I took my Leica C3 and well, my iPhone. There's always "that guy" at these meetings. Not an Land Rover, but a neat conversion. I have no idea what this thing is, but it's fascinating.

Reading Jacob's post and realized I forgot to include the actual machine...LOL. So surprised how well it's held up simply by using terry cloth and water after uses.

Approaching two years that I purchased the Lelit Bianca. I ultimately plumbed it directly to water and added a filtration system to make it simpler. This thing is a tank. At first I was using it a few times a week. it's almost a year I use it almost daily. So time for a service and it was good to see how clean things were. Replaced the group head filter and gasket. Gasket was hardening but not brittle by any means and the IMS filter looked very good given usage. Included is the replacement group head filter. The original gasket is in black and 8mm. I bought both 8.0 and 8.5 and the original size was best. Very little to clean under the filter. And finally the product I use to perform backlashes every 1-2 months (mostly latter...). Happy brewing... HS

I bought the Topping and got it this week, with hopes it could be a second or extra Stat amp. I was even planning on doing a "bargain stat amp" feature at my new journalistic home "Positive Feedback", where you can find my review of the Audeze CRBNs, for example. Anway, I'm not going to publish, I don't like to publish reviews of bad gear 😞 What a disappointment this amp turned out to be. My disappointment came in stages. The first stage was an optimistic listen: "Hey, not too bad". At that time I was listening to some simple classical and folk arrangements: with solo voices and guitar, the weaknesses of the Topping circuit are not immediately obvious. But as soon as I played more complex music, full orchestra, rock band, you name it. Where it starts to get real harsh, bloated, lose dimension is with complex music, full orchestra, rock band, you name it. The more I listened, the more I started to hate this amp. I WILL BET THAT THERE ARE MEASUREMENTS THAT WILL REVEAL THIS AMP'S WEAKNESSES. You just have to know how to find out where the bodies are buried. I did find some that clearly show its weaknesses. Attached below. Frequency response (with a 100 pf load), Output level just before clipping, THD at various frequencies at normal levels and just before clipping (spectrum and %), IMD (19-20 kHz) (spectrum and %). The one thing I should have measured is a special multitone signal I use, I bet that would show where the bodies are buried, and tell us why the amp falls totally flat the more complex the music you put into it. But I'm so disenheartened and disappointed by the sound of it that I don't have the energy to bring it back to the test bench. I like to display an amplifier's measurements in equivalent SPL, based on Stax 007 and CRBN nominal sensitivity of 100 volts RMS = nominally 100 dB SPL. It helps bring a real-world perspective to amplifier measurements. Topping Factory spec for max is 700 volts RMS (I suppose the factory took this a cat's hair below clipping and only at 1 kHz). I measured maximum output at 1 dB below clipping at 630 volts RMS at 1 kHz, equivalent to 116 dB SPL. But When performing the 20 Hz THD test, the amp's DC protection circuit kicked in and the most I could get out of it at 20 Hz with a continuous sine wave was the equivalent of 105 dB SPL, 177 volts RMS before the amp shut down. So the lower the frequency, the worst the amp's headroom for transients. Plus, the THD at low frequencies is pretty bad, the transformer saturates very strongly. To see where the skeletons are buried in this amp, take a look at my measurements. The measurements to really study is a comparison of the Mjolnir KGSS HV Carbon and the Topping at nominally 90 dB equivalent SPL of IMD 19-20 kHz 1:1 ratio. I think that lurking in that measurement is at least one of the reasons why the Topping sounds so harsh and the Mjolnir sounds so pure. The primary difference tone at 1 kHz in the spectrum does not tell the story. Notice the high frequency side bands near the 19-20 kHz that begin to reveal to us the Topping's nonlinearities. There's more in the attachments. I'm sorry that I didn't do the multitone, I will some day, when I get around to it, and I'm sure it will reveal the skeleton underneath the "golden glow" of this amp. The date in the Fluke scope pictures is wrong... it's actually yesterday, 7/28/23. I have to fix the date in my Fluke Scope. Every time the battery dies, it loses the date 😞

cracker, the 90s alt rock band that used to be camper van beethoven they’re now about 50% country. And did Euro trash girl as a country song.

Summer Synergy - Schiit Audio/ Dan Clark Audio Collaboration https://danclarkaudio.com/aeon-2-noire-and-jotunheim-2-multibit-summer-synergy-bundle.html https://www.schiit.com/products/aeon-jotunheim

Damn... today some guys came to prepare my roof for the installation of solar panels and they found severas "tenants". In total three wasps'nest... ironically my team is called El Avispero.

RIP Paul Reubens AKA Pee Wee Herman.