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Update on the bathroom vanity cabinet, and some shots of two matching white oak linen closet doors with a slat design. Not fully assembled in these shots but you can get the gist.

Finished 11th out of 44 drivers at my last autocross. Goal was top 15 so I’m happy. Turns out putting better tires on the car makes a big difference. Who could have guessed? You can brake harder, carry more speed, and get back on power earlier. These aren’t even that fast of a tire too!

More found fun....

Work has been continuing to use photos that I’ve been shooting for publicity and Congressional communication so I decided that rather than keep shooting with my personal camera that it was high time to request a replacement. They asked what I wanted so I spec’d the following: 1. Body - Sony A7R5 - I’ve gotten used to the Sony ecosystem through my A7IV and figured what the heck, might as well have all the megapixels. I don’t need 120FPS so the A9 series was not compelling and while it would have been fun to shoot with an A1II budget was somewhat of a consideration. 2. Lenses - I’ll continue to shoot my A7IV with it’s 24-240mm so figured I should cover an expanded range with this rig and be able to shoot high(er) quality. So a 24-70mm F2.8 GMII and a 100-4000mm F4.5/5.6 coupled with a 2x teleconverter round out the bag. I’ve got the whole shebang with me on vacation to get used to the platform and find its limits (me) but sheesh, 60MP is a lot to work with. Initial impression is that it’s all very similar to the A7 but doesn’t shoot low light as well. That won’t be much of a concern at work and if/when night time becomes the right time I’ll switch back to my A7 for those situations. The 100-400 has as lot of pull and with the 2x, it’s pretty absurd. That was lightly touched in LR and just a quick handheld at sunset. I’ll have to contribute more to the HC coffers if I start pushing up 40MB drink photos. And 12,800 starts to get a bit noisy so I’ve reduced the max ISO to 3200 for now to see what I can still grab. And [EDIT] seems like the forum software intelligently down-sampled that image to a more manageable 5MB. It is wild what you can do for fun crops with this much real estate.

My son has two cats. He also plays bass guitar, and has a monster loudspeaker with a massive port on the bottom. You can guess the punchline. One of the cats went missing. After a search of the house and outdoors - no cat. Lots of weeping and wailing. Was the cat dead somewhere? It had actually made a nice warm nest in the loudspeaker wadding. Only discovered when my son fired up the amp and did some playing. Cat shot out of the port. Mystery solved.

This is the 12th eruption and we have reached the point where people are protesting unfair police closures. It's well away from anything and already fizzling out so nobody is worried.

The slatted door style has a lot of intricacies and places for failure. It looks simpler than the actual design. Many dados and places where parts have to fit exactly. But they went together easier than either of us expected. Not an accident, but Al's planning and forthought. Absolutely worth the effort, as they'll be an eye catcher for sure. This has been a rewarding project in several ways. Now that I'm no longer working as a carpenter, it's my much needed release for creativity. And Al and I are really enjoying the woodworking and smashburgers.

Holy shitballs! He found those in the trash...???!!! I've owned a couple Legacy speakers in my days: The Legacy Classic (Kevlar midrange edition, I think that was the second version of it), Karen actually got it for me as our engagement gift! Then very briefly the Signature 3's, and then the Studio HD's. I also remember going to a Head-Fi'er acquaintances place south of Boston, he had a pair of Legacy Focus (Focii?), driven by Krell KMA-100 mono's and a nice VAC preamp. Don't even remember his front end. That combo filled a small room surprisingly well! Such full sound, top to bottom; but still very relaxed and effortless sounding. The Whispers are nice-looking, would love to hear them. Also had read about a less deep bass response....

This is absolutely crazy. Th Those are Legacy Whispers. I'm enough of a nerd to remember when they came out in the early 90s. They were Legacy's statement model. They're actually not as bassy as the Focus model (which I have coveted for 35 years now) but they excel in more or less every other aspect. Of course, the way to get around the lack of bass is:

wow, you take off 2 hours to watch a movie and then all of this. if that class B output section could actually deliver 1 amp or more that is required for just about every single planar or ribbon then maybe it might actually perform correctly. but the opamp cannot possibly supply enough current to drive the output stage. all the feedback in the world won't help. and for real world loads R2 actually makes it worse. multiple feedback loops and it looks just like the squarewave of the nfca module. more like a stair step. something the AP cannot possibly measure. hint: look at the quad current dumper. class B output section. performs well within its power limit. all this to reduce the current capabilities of the power supply. all this to reduce the heat generated because the heatsinks are way to small. yes its a piece of unreliable garbage.

Visited the spiritual successor to Fry's in the Bay Area It did not disappoint

Proper Fish & Chips, ordered from an Essex Girl @ https://www.scrumptiousfc.com/

Thank you for making my day less boring and answering my question. I will label you as a troll and a psychopath.

Well, High Rollers. You can’t debate an angry person, waste of time.

From your welcome message when you joined all of an hour ago "Don't mistake our familiarity with each other as familiarity with you" "Spend some time reading before you start to post. Get familiar with what is going on, and who the various people are. Don't just jump right into the fray." "This is your only warning"

You don't need another Camera, right @blessingx?

Few more....

As the official patron saint of painters tape I appreciate the graphics but still feel like there’s room to grow there and that we should employ a kid with a Cricut to do you better. 😁

Turrboo has been given turboot.

I'm closer to my favourite fish&chipster now, I should go back there. I miss a great fish&chips (oil so hot it flash fries the fish inside). The bulgogi is kind of bizarre for such a small place, but one of these days, I will try...nah. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ecRrPwnM6ToJyVxm9 Me, rn: sammich from Wegmans

Lol. Seriously, why are you still in a place filled with people you contempt? Your existance and behavior contradict with each other. Just shoo away and let everyone be happy.

And the balanced switched attenuators, and many more. And Sprizer is the forum expert on headhones - particularly Stax electrostatics. Which is precisely why a newbie is encouraged to spend time reading around, finding out about who people are, and what they know and contribute before leaping in.

Marta's debut album is a collaboration with Tricky, so of course it's good. Moody as shit, too. I'm in.

Warm Day - Hot Funk. (50yo) Mothership Connection by Parliament (1975) https://album.link/mvfsbw8h7rrmb Example: There is only one Example needed.

Speaking of expensive... Anyone remember Kai Wong? In earlier days of YouTube, he hosted a bunch of photography related videos on DigitalRevTV, out of Hong Kong. DRTV doesn't really exist anymore, but Kai maintains some degree of celebrity in the online photography world. He's got his own YouTube channel. I'm not subscribed and have never watched any of his videos (before today) but YT's algorithm has taken note that I have been consuming a fair amount of photography related material recently. (I've been doing a deep dive on TTArtisan glass, the OG Canon EF 15mm F/2.8 Fisheye -- more on that later -- and of course specific M42 mount lenses like different iterations of the Asahi Takumar 50mm F/1.4. I learned that my non-multicoated 7 element version is probably radioactive.) I guess that explains the giant orange hexagon, but I digress... Well, ol' Kai managed to get his hands on a vintage French-made cinema lens, the Som Berthiot Flor 55mm F/1.5. I don't know a thing about the Flor 55mm or Som Berthiot in general. I do know that cinema lenses tend to be several orders of magnitude more rare and expensive than ones designed for still frame. They were made in comparatively infinitesimal numbers and only a small fraction were sold to the general public. Additionally because motion picture cameras feed the film through vertically, many cinema lenses don't make an image circle sufficiently large to cover the 35mm film plane on a still camera. The Flor is one such lens and it can be adapted to fit Leica rangefinder bodies. Consequently a clean example goes for upwards of 60,000 British Pounds in the rare event where one comes up for sale. I'm not necessarily suggesting anyone watch (most) of this video. In spite of Kai's best efforts with his little handheld wireless mic, the sound quality is lacking. Add to that the rather thick accents of most of the subjects and it can be a challenge to figure out what they're talking about. The example shots taken with the Flor are ...fine, but nothing dazzling. I own a (not so) small army of manual focus primes. While none of them match the Flor's specific unsharpness and color transmission, I can get to an equally interesting optical space with fair number of my vintage lenses. I can't mount any of them to Leica body, however. (Which is mostly fine with me, I have never coveted a Lecia digital body, but I would certainly give an M6 with a 35mm Summicron a go.) I'll go a step further and say that if there was lens that offered identical optical performance to the Flor, but was made in much larger quantity by a less storied maker (Yashica, for example) it would sell for maybe $100 on eBay.

LOVE this group, and they're finally back together after a decade and change break. They dropped a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert; I may need to watch it again.

Note, not my soldering job. battery in microscope dead too much work to get the 1:1 lens out.

Are you having a good time, Belvedere? Hip Service were. Serving up a diverse collection of crowd pleasers. Jackson 5, Beyonce, ABBA, Journey. Tight.

Just in case someone can make use of this one way or another. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215798863-audiophile

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

Yeah, pretty much. I was clearing up and found the broken X1's so time to do some tinkering. Sure enough, one driver started failing after an hour or so it's trash at this point... time for something drastic. I opened them up and nothing looks wrong so I just added some coating to the diaphragm, just a tiny bit. It's been an hour now and they sound pretty much balanced so this might have worked but it adds another issue, are Stax having coating issues 65 years in? Another thing about the X1, the drivers are wired out of phase as in the + signal goes to the back stator. Might be worth adding a cheater plug to these to reverse the phase to try out and the earpads on the X1 are clearly made by the same company as the 007S pads.

Begone AI spam bot!

Italian food.

Quick update: it’s 6 AM here in California and I just wrapped up some late-night tweaking. Someone PM’d me earlier asking how I solved the offset and balance issue, and I can finally say: done. Offset is now around 0.3V and balance is about 0.2V. If anyone else is running into similar issues, here’s what worked for me: 1.CCS Set Resistor: I kept the CCS set resistor at 1.5k, which gives around 22–23mA static current. You can try lowering to 1k if you want around 25mA, but I found 1.5k sufficient. The more plate current you have, the higher the offset you will get. 2.Cathode Resistor: Changed from 3300Ω to 7k–7.5k. A larger cathode resistor gives you a deeper grid voltage. I could only find suitable 7k wirewound resistors on Mouser – they’re a bit bulky but still fit. Note: Larger values will increase the offset, so some trial and error is expected. 3. Grid Pot: I replaced the 10k pot with a 50k, which gave me a much wider range to trim both offset and balance. Final bias: around 24–25mA static current, Vgk ≈ -75V. Hopefully, this helps anyone else dialing in the Megatron XL and happy tweaking!😊

Soccer Mommy does Pavement

IROC Rehab

I see we have a member of the audio religion in our midst, how fun to see the scientologist poke their head out of their echo chamber. Arguing whether Class A is better than Class B is fucking retarded so let's not but the question of measurements is a fun one. Are you measuring something that actually matters or is it voltage swing in an electrostatic amp, meaningless stat that is measured in the one spot that makes it even more meaningless? If you go from 0.01 THD to 000.1 THD... how does that change the sound? Do we have hearing good enough to spot that or are we picking up something different? If something measures badly but sounds good, which is correct? If you claim something terrible sounds good... do you have enough experience to know it sounds bad? Just because you have ears, doesn't mean you know how to use them. Same goes with a scope or a test suite, just because you have it, doesn't mean you know what to look for. If you take a cult leader, hand him a device he doesn't understand because he's as thick as brick, he measures it incorrectly and claims "I don't understand why anybody think this is good"... was the device at fault or was the cult leader being retarded? If you smother everything in feedback, can you hear that? What if you remove all the feedback and make an unstable circuit, can you hear that? There are so many good questions out there...

Do you truly believe, all other things being equal that class B will sound better than class A? In the world of amplification for speakers class AB, B or even class D is tolerated because its more efficient than class A and at high output powers pure class A is often impractical, and prohibitively expensive. For headphone amplification efficiency is not an issue given the tiny output power required - which makes pure class A very practical. Because of this there are few reasons to design anything other than class A headphones amps (portable headphones amps excluded because efficiency and power consumption matter here). Kevin Gilmore has designed and helped us build many fantastic Stax amps, for example the blue hawaii (which several companies sell), and of course the T2. He is incredibly experienced and is generous enough to open source his designs AND support those who build them. I would strongly think again about criticising his competence.

Finally! That's what I thought when reading Grahame's post announcing it

Yes, it's pricy. My eye is on the Fujifilm X-T50 but the phone will do for now.

Reassuringly expensive, surely?

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence by Dream Theater (2002) https://album.link/frb2khtqzt3f9 Example: Realizing there were a few gaps in my Dream Theater history. Filling those gaps. Happily.

Lots of Luedji Luna. Lots and lots. And just a little extra.

Stax just posted this on X in Japanese but it made me laugh: Anybody want to venture a guess why this had to be posted? Terrible headband design strikes yet again.

Ran Blake - Grey December (Live in Rome) Ex.

Figured i'd finally go through my tubes, sort them out a bit. Too many to catalogue properly in one go (which is why i never bothered) Was never quite meant to become the hoard it is, but.. left Luxman with crates worth of stuff, left ML with yet more crates, then isn't life funny when none are what you "wanted" for your then current system a few years later, so there you go buying more when they were still crazy cheap. Then you buy yet some more, because what if, right? You haven't got everything. And, yeah Sorted four 24"x16"x16" crates full of NOS tubes. I'd say 6-7 more to go; some other time. It's 23:28 and i'm spent. (actually 60x40x40 in cents, but i figure that's close enough?) So far am going with input/output/rec, US-EU/RU. It's gonna take some time. One of many things i miss dearly? Proper packing cartons. Yes, really. Nothing decent in EU. ECT/load-rated? Don't even ask, they'll think you're so funny. Not sure they know what this is down here: