Leaderboard

Milled a front panel, with inscription, today. With black painted aluminum net as top cover you can see the light from eight red LEDs.

Learned how to engrave with my milling machine today. It's an original Kevin Gilmore et. Al. DIY T2 amplifier with original parts.

i've been saying that the switches in a r2r dac were a real problem for many years now. especially the ttl versions. the teac ud-701n is the cheapest ($4k) of the esoteric dacs that use custom and hand matched switches. I expect that better switches will be the new big deal in the next couple of years.

I went down an 80's rabbit hole. It surprised me which albums had the most tracks I loved: Simple Minds New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84), but not Sparkle in the Rain Joe Jackson Beat Crazy but not any of the others Ultravox Vienna (not surprised) Yello One Second and Stella (not surprised) Red Guitars Slow to Fade Wire The Ideal Copy

Check out Mark Lindsay’s YouTube channel. It will tech you everything you need to know. He is a little slow which is good at first but gets annoying once you know what’s going on and just want the meat. If you have any questions shoot me a message, I’m pretty good at it meow.

Threw together a little stand for the magic side table that is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Need to take the flush trim bit around the edges as I did a lazy glue up on the lamination. The Rockler stands are certainly not the easiest to get square, but seem good enough to support the magic side table, I hope. Having the drawers/shelves will certainly help. Going to run shop vac up to a spring hook in the ceiling to give me dust collection of I can make it work.

Thank you, Dr. Gilmore. Given the background of amir (mid-high level on the corp ladder at M$), I wouldn't expect him to be as hands-on as the lab monkeys who spend most of their days with an AP. In an earlier post on that site I saw him struggling with setting up the AP to measure the deviation from RIAA of a phono pre-amp. Apparently he's never done that before and just like many of us, don't want to read the manual. Everyone has his/her limitations and comfort zones that takes some courage and effort to step out of. To give this guy some credit, he is able to measure the conventional gears in a consistent way, disclose the data and offer some objective comparisons/analysis, at no cost to everyone who is interested. That alone is worth some praise. Besides, some data is better than no data. When it comes to discrete R2R DAC, what intrigues me is that most designs use generic logic chips to drive the resistors. No matter how well the resistors are matched, the driver chips are not. No manufactures would specify or production-test the matching of a 10 cent bus driver, bit-to-bit or part-to-part. Parts coming from the same batch could be from the same wafer and perform somewhat close to each other, but there is no guarantee. The end result is therefore pretty much on a 'best of luck' basis.

I knew this cat had strong Maine Coon characteristics, but I’m fairly certain that Oatmeal Johnny is a purebred cat. He conforms perfectly. Except he’s a little too small (he’s a big cat, but not a big Maine Coon). What a dork, too! Not that it matters (Silver was feral, and Dunhill was more tumor than man at the end), but I don’t quite know why you would surrender a pedigreed juvenile (he isn’t quite fully grown, I do think). If he doesn’t gain another pound he will be a runt. That could very well be why. He’s easily the largest cat I’ve ever had. And maybe the sweetest. I like cats.

No, you do not connect to commercial music services, no streaming. You just use roon or LMS to play your local library only. From the same server, via same protocol (smb), via same network, only use one of the best (universal) Apps (roon or LMS) to play/control that stuff. You can change the client, you can add rooms and play in sync, whatever... always using the same App and accessing the same music files on your server. One could do wild things with roon, even DSP on the client, calibration with mikes or digitally splitting into bands for active speakers, etc., Very cool advanced stuff. Both LMS and roon do local libraries. It is common misunderstanding that those are streaming only.

Why don't you try roon or LMS for free? Control from an iPad, phone or any browser. You can use the Laptop as the client or any other dedicated device. The Teac would be a roon endpoint directly. You separate the client from the server and control device by doing so. I have yet to see an HW vendor app that matches a SW vendor only app. Not even Linn is up there.

i think one of those is coming, under the esoteric label, its going to be $20k+. makes no sense when you can get a sacd ripper for $300 and then put it on a nas drive. then you rip the disc once and you are done. i've done that over 5500 times in the last 12 years. 18 terabytes of playable dsd files...

Not sure if this is the right forum for this, as it's not a source component... but then again it doesn't really fit anywhere else. I'm sure you know Jan Meier and his work. He just released an interesting new product, which - if anything - is certainly innovative. An external DSP box for headphones and speakers, with digital ins and outs, and an analog section with headphone and line outputs. All controls happen with physical buttons but on the digital realm, with an EQ, crossfeed (as expected), and then a number of more unique features I haven't come across before. More details here. I've been following the development of it via his newsletter, it's been years in the making. Nice to see it come out, and nice to see some innovation in the field. http://www.meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/country.html

While waiting for the GU-50 sockets, I found a pair of reasonably matched EL34s, and decided to wire them in the original GG circuit for comparison. The TTC004Bs are used as drivers. Above the THD+N curve turning point at around 80V (multiply the X axis by 10 for actual voltage), the majority of distortion is 3rd harmonic. So I think the tube matching is not the major contributing factor here. The EL34 is biased at -37V, which means the driver transistors have to work really hard to push the tubes to make the output swing. The Pentode could be a better choice in a simple circuit such as the Grounded Grid. A more complex BH-style final stage would be needed to make the EL34 really shine. The triode-connected EL34 also lost on the high frequency distortion (100Vrms)

Good looking cup of coffee, Sam! My new cat supervisor takes his job very seriously.

Somebody is acclimating. Hopefully Silver follows suit (they are currently segregated but are aware the other exists: Oatmeal Johnny just wants to be friends! Silver… does not).

If I had a nickle...

Absolute savagery.

Voja, I think you are seriously missing the point. The big problem with the transformer box is potential SAFETY issues. When spritzer talks about the construction not being up to code, what he is talking about is construction standards that are designed to protect the user from being SHOCKED, or worse, ELECTROCUTED. For example, he mentions that the XLR connectors are not spec'd for the voltages they are intended to carry, which is not aa good thing. The metal panels on the box are not all connected to ground which means that if a wire inside the box should somehow break and touch an ungrounded panel, and you then touch that panel, you would get a shock. That is why all modern appliances (including amps) with metal boxes have their outsides electrically connected to the ground wire on your three wire power cord, for your protection. You admit that you are not a technical person, so you should pay attention to someone like spritzer, who is. It doesn't matter a bit if the headphones sound absolutely perfect, if they could injure or kill you. End of discussion.

While I'm at it, here is the cable they use: Just took some quick picks with the phone, can't be arsed to spend any more time on this: So those are the cheapest XLR's money can buy and possibly the oddest cable I've ever opened. The signal is carried on those thin wires but the bias is on a massive copper mesh for some reason. Now somebody spent a lot of time making this but that doesn't mean any of it is a good idea. First off, the teflon is clearly very thin when the proper 600V stuff is not and in what world is it a good idea to have the highest current capacity for the bias wires? The bias supply is tied directly to the mains, if the bias resistors fail and all hell breaks loose... you don't want what is essentially a mains cable coming up to your head.

I tried to read that article... holy crap do you honestly believe those cables and idiotic footers make a difference? For fucks sake... Also first good point is build quality... sure. Thanks for the internal pics though as this thing sure is a hot mess. So you have a tube amp... and you could use that to directly drive the stators but nope, they went the worst of all worlds. They take a push pull amp, step that down to speaker level and then step it back up for the electrostatics. WHY!!!?? In what universe is that a good design choice, double up the transformers and cram it all in a small chassis... right next to the power transformer and the inductor. You would be much better off with a cheap tube amp off ebay (the China specials) and a SRD-7. That way there is at least some isolation. Same bias supply as the transformer box, despite this being a tube amp and thus safe, high voltage AC being present which is easy to step up. Hell, a dedicated tap off the transformer would suffice. I just love that one nut in the back right hand corner just not fully fixed. Shows the amount of care. All the same earthing issues as the other amps as it uses the 3D printed corner pieces which don't conduct.

Not really, the Soekris does pretty well. I'm guessing that having more HD than other models, but without noticeable inharmonic distortion would help to make its sound more "natural" whatever that means.

A good day to take off and enjoy my boy's company... Happy caffeinating... HS

Made a mezzanine adapter board for the TKD 4CP-25xx pot on the original DIY T2 board from Kevin. Precisely adjusted the hight of the pot to board prior soldering. Worked out perfectly.