audiosceptic

Thanks spritzer for the reply. I've read bad things about the Khozmo as well so I think I'll go with your TKD recommendation. One question though and pardon my ignorance but would going with the 50K pot avoid the need to put resistors in the circuit for proper volume control? The Khozmo was a 100K pot. They also offer a TKD10K pot.

I bought this Audio Note Kits HE-6 headphone amp and had it built by a well known Audio Note kit builder, digitalpete. The amp sounds great with planar headphones but I have a problem I need help with. The volume control has a terrible scratch noise when adjusting the volume while music is playing. It will also produce the scratchy noise when the volume control is even touched while music is playing. When nothing is playing the sound is there but barely audible. I emailed digitalpete and he wants me to ship the amp back to put in a new volume pot. In looking at the khozmo volume pot it looks like there are only 11 connections to solder and all are easily accessible so I'm wondering if this is an easy repair? I asked digitalpete what model volume pot this amp had and he wrote back "The Khozmo unit I used is the standard model. It was bought as a 100K stereo. For your application and on khozmo's recommendation I changed the input resistors to 12K ohm which gave the control the proper range of motion. At 100K resistance it was 3:00 before you had any volume level." I'm thinking about either having digitalpete send me the volume pot and replacing it myself (with the help of an engineering friend), or putting in a different, perhaps better volume pot up to the Alps RK50 which is in my BHSE. The questions I have for this group are: 1. Is it necessary to have the resistors in place or would a different model attenuator negate the need? Is it common to use input resistors to change resistance for a volume pot? 2. Any recommendations on a great volume pot that would work in my application, be easy to install and provide better performance? A non-stepped volume control is preferred. Thanks for any and all input. I attached pictures of the volume pot and the circuit.

We tried getting rid of cable a year or so ago. I bought a Mac Mini with Eyetv to DVR OTA channels. I subscribed to Netlfix streaming and Hulu+. We looked into MLB.tv because we're Brewer fans. I abandoned this and went back to cable for several reasons. 1. Commercials. Hulu+ includes commercials and no way to skip forward. I hate commercials. 2. Broadcast quality was just OK on both Amazon streaming and Hulu+. Why spend the money on a nice HD TV and look at lesser quality broadcasts? 3. Eyetv was buggy. Plus I could never get the remote to work like a normal TV remote. I always had to switch to keyboard and mouse to fix/play shows. 4. Not family friendly. My wife and kids hated it. If I were alone I think I could make the change. 5. MLB.tv did not broadcast home games. 6. I missed Dexter, Shameless, GOT and other premium channels. Yes I could BT stuff but that was not an option for my family. So I'm still paying high cable fees but always looking at ways to reduce costs. About every 2 years I call TW cable and threaten to cancel and they always reduce my bill if I promise to stay.

I run Windows 7 Ultimate under VMWare Fusion with no problems on a Macbook Pro Retina. I haven't used Parallels in a long time.

I had assembly issues with my BA. Big reason why I sold it.

My A-27 is done with final testing this weekend. I should have it next week so Hamad will have time to work on other stuff.

Since late September.

I found a Pioneer A-27 integrated amp cheap and sent it to Hamad to be updated. I really love the sound of the M-22 amp Hamad restored for me and am looking forward to the A-27 in my speaker rig. Here is a picture of the amp as received by Hamad: Here is a link to a Youtube video he made of my almost complete restoration:

I bought a Pioneer A-27 Integrated Amp a few months ago and sent it to Hamad at Amplifier Surgeries to have it rebuilt. I and others here have had Hamad do wonderful work on Pioneer M-22 amps. Since I will be using this amp sometimes with headphones (but mainly driving my Sound Lab speakers) I asked Hamad to check the headphone circuit to make sure it is optimized as much as possible. He indicated he would and asked what headphones I was using so he could "check to see if the resistor network can be matched for my headphones". The hard part is I don't know which headphone to have this amp optimized for. The dynamic headphones I use are the LCD-2, HE6 and HD800. I like them all but they have quite different impedance and sensitivity ratings. I'm leaning to have it optimized for the HD800 but was wondering what others thoughts were on this. Here is a picture of my amp:

Any recommendations?

Good question. I'm using a Forte F-44 I had laying around for now. I did use the BA as a preamp but the lack of features plus liking the M22 as a headphone amp so much made me decide to sell the BA. I was thinking a tube preamp like a Audio Research but the heat generated by the M22 might make me look for a cooler running non-tube preamp. It gets pretty hot in my small listening room.

I decided to join the M22 club. I've always wanted a M22 and this thread did not help. I found one on Ebay for $600 and had it sent to the same place in Illinois that agile_one used. Hamad did an outstanding job restoring the amp. I've been using a restored Threshold S/200 as an amp for my HE6 and LCD-2 headphones and the M22 is an improvement over that. I like the sound so much I decided to sell my BA and get a real preamp to drive the M22.

I also had the REF 7 on the loaner program. Wasn't too impressed at all. My ULN-2 and Modwright Transporter were superior.

Well this didn't turn out well. We went for a week without cable and decided we'll keep it. The biggest problem is lack of convenience and poor picture quality. Having to use both a mouse and a remote was frustrating for my wife. The picture quality was great for OTA broadcasts but Hulu was horrible. I even tried the Hulu plus trial subscription and was disappointed. The kicker was realizing that local Brewer baseball games were blacked out unless we paid for the subscription with an out of state credit card and used an IP proxy service to make our IP address appear to come from out of state. So I guess we're keeping cable. I did get them to lower my bill by threatening to leave so that was a bonus.

I've decided it's time to get rid of cable TV. I'm currently paying Time Warner $190.00 per month for HD cable, 2 DVR's, Phone service and 7 MB Roadrunner service. For now I'll keep Roadrunner and the phone service but plan on transitioning to the following: Mac Mini hooked up to our 2 TV watching areas in place of the DVR. I already own one and just bought another. I have an Elgato Hdhomerun box on the network and I'll watch and record OTA HD broadcasts through that. We have all the major TV networks available in our OTA broadcast area. I've been using Hulu for shows I can't get OTA and that seems to be acceptable. You can also go to the broadcasters direct web sites to watch free content. We're big Brewer baseball fans so I'll subscribe to MLB.TV to get those broadcasts. We'll try iTunes for movie renting like we did with Time Warner OnDemand. We also have the cheap Netflix service. Has anyone else made this change? This biggest challenge I see is getting my wife used to using a computer to watch TV. There is a remote available for the Elgato system that will allow channel changes but Hulu broadcasts will have to be chosen via mouse and keyboard.