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I went outside today. Chopped some wood, smoked my churchwarden pipe, had a Fremont beer.... So that is what a blue sky looks like. ... cool 😎

Culture.

Joni Mitchell - Ladies of the Canyon Hiromi - Out There

Now that the prices of used Corina's seem to be crashing hard, I picked one up. I have the impulse control of a fly when it comes to electrostatic headphones but this set was like new and way less than half price... Overall impressions match those from when I tried them at CanJam NYC in 2023, some parts look great while others feel like a 100$ "GAMING!!!" set for ROG or Razer. The housing is well made and I do like that back design. The headband is utter trash, the earpads feel high quality - yet at the same time extremely cheap and that blue stitching... who signed off on this? Worst yet... what the fuck is this?? I will refer to these in the future as "coRRRRRRRÍÍÍÍÍna". Seriously though, why? This horribly offends my nordic sensibilities. Last year I've also picked up a used Voce, a set I hated when they came out. Put those stock earpads trash where they belong, fit the angled Ether pads and they are quite enjoyable. They are also touching 1k$ in terms of price so for that money, they are a nice set to have. Voce naturally had the same issue as the Corííííína, DCA always has the worst headphone boxes ever. They keep trying to make headphone stands in boxes which make no sense. Now for the sound... I just don't understand why these were made like this. They are like the headphones for people who hate how electrostatics sound. Do you like your headphones to sound expansive with a nice solid soundstage which goes outside of the head? Nope, you can't get that here. On some tracks they are simply claustrophobic, almost if you are listening through thick cloth. Sure, it sounds inoffensive compared to something super forward like the X9000 but compared to something voiced correctly... yeah it isn't great. ere we can see the culprits, mesh on the back on the driver and that stupid damping they put on the earpad side (faint circular holes through the earpad mesh): Why they did this, I haven't got a clue. Electrostatics don't need this level of damping so it could only damage the sound. The Voce was initially supplied with a bunch of damping pads to put inside the earpads so they might think this is necessary... I didn't find an easy way of opening the headphones to check if this could all be removed easily. Now we come to the major issue though... what all this damping does to the midrange. Now this is really compounded by two parts, first off the headphones are rather inefficient and they sound so fucking dull. That means the volume has to be pushed to try and get something out of them... and that's were nasty midrange artifacts pop up. I picked up on some of this at Canjam NYC'23 but in my own system this is very apparent. It gets worse and worse, the more you push them which only goes to show how bad the driver setup really is. That also means I turn down the volume so now they just sound dull, not involving and I wonder why I'm not listening to something else. Now rant over, would I recommend these? Nope... not a chance, even at half price they are horribly overpriced for the performance they offer. On my desk now is the ES Lab ES-2a and the Audeze CRBN2 and I kept wondering why I wasn't listening to either of them instead. The Corina isn't even comfortable so yeah... nothing going for it really.

Not cute, but he can cook, so that counts for a lot!

Breakfast at Marvin's in Novato. Cheers Mikey!

Checking out of the state of Beatbox.. its going well. Wing is blowing up right now. Part of Beatpella House.... Did you pass the K-pop test?

How did you meet Marvin, Steve? Is he cute? 😉

Friday Volcano check... Yup, still there.

Wasn't sure the best place to post, but this is pretty cool. Chris is my nephew, he is brilliant (as is my niece, they met at MIT). https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronaut-chris-williams-assigned-to-first-space-station-mission

Pre Tariff 🐔 🍛 + 🍌 What will tariffs do to 🍌?

The first completed DIY project in 3 years and in my new workshop lives! It's a battery powered Philips TDA1541A based stereo DAC, About 18 months ago I needed something to kick start me back into DIY after breaking down my old setup and moving to Florida. So I built a 10'x11' room in one of the garage bays and proceeded to slowly unpack. I ran across a few threads about the TDA1541 and became curious. This is what I settled on for the first try. It's on a test board I put together so I could mess with different power supplies and experiment with controlling relays to turn the power on and off. It's sounds surprisingly good! Very easy to listen to, the vocals are up front and full of details. It's only been running for about an hour so the highs are a little bright but we'll see what happens after a few days. I'm also feeding it an I2S signal from a PCIE to I2S bridge that's running off the switcher in the PC so I'm hoping a better PSU for the bridge will add further improvements. I have what I need for a balanced setup and then two chips paralleled in a balanced config so that along with a display for the Arduino are coming. Let the flames begin!

Bear in mind this came out yesterday.

Slight health scare. Went down with the "cold from hell" in October last. And it seemed to come back four or five times over the next 5 months. Feeling wrecked most of the time. Considered Covid, so took a test - negative. Eventually made an appointment, and saw the Trauma nurse at the practice. Put a blood oxygenation clip on, and sounded my chest "It sounds really rattley ". So packed into one morning in mid March, I ended up with a course of kick ass antibiotics, a full spectrum blood test, and a chest X-ray. Saw the Trauma nurse again yesterday. Antibiotics worked wonders, so the problem must have been an opportunistic bacteria had moved in. Blood test was all nominal (who knew there were 5 different kinds of white blood cell; not me), and chest X-ray was completely clear. So finally after 5 months of recurring misery, I'm finally firing on all cylinders again! Back in the gym, leading 14 mile walks, and running. Happy days!

mini T2 ver.25 is starting to take its final shape, I think. I'm filing a little now and then. A small test board made now after coffee... here with UX4 socket. The connectors are from Electrokit https://www.electrokit.com/pcb-hane-5.08mm-2-pol-lagprofil and https://www.electrokit.com/skruvplint-pluggbar-5.08mm-2-pol-lagprofil. It is possible to use a regular 2-pole screw terminal, but I think the connectors in the pictures are much more practical. The circuit board connector in the pictures is notched in each lower corner with a sharply sharpened Japanese master chef's knife to fit between the solder islands. P.S. AI translated - I'm lazy

Dinner: Chicken Shawarma on homemade garlic naan with garlic white sauce. Dessert: Atlantic Beach Pie (also homemade)