hirsch

My TV's HD area is about 49" in 16:9 mode (53" in 4:3). I'm happy about eight feet away. However, after watching Dave1's 100" screen from about 20 feet away, my set seems kinda small. I'd contemplated a larger set (had actually planned to upgrade this year), but I like the picture on my set. I've also noticed that 4:3 sets do 16:9 a lot better than 16:9 sets do 4:3, and I've got a lot of 4:3 source material. My set handles 1080i nicely via component input, which is good enough for now. The move to HDMI means that I can't go to Blue Ray or HD-DVD without upgrading my set or finding a workaround (I actually can do HD-DVD by going through my X-Box 360 if I spend $200 for the outboard player, at least for now, but have no real desire to do so (no telling when a firmware patch will close this loophole)). To this day, I feel that a 4:3 rear projection CRT with 16:9 modes including 480p and 1080i was a great move.

OK, let me rephrase what I said at first in a different way. Forget the tubes. The Wheatfield was designed to drive high impedance headphones. Used with an optimal tube set, and there are many, it will sound great as long as you don't go playing about with low impedance headphones (and yes, that includes the L3000). The Wheatfield can be made to work with low impedance headphones, but the tube search is a pain and I never found a sound I liked when it did work. Consequently, I don't recommend the Wheatfield for use with headphones under about 100 ohms or so. Try running low impedance headphones out of the HAP-03 without the impedance matcher. Same issue carried to a greater extreme. If you really want to push low impedance cans with 6080 and related tubes, get your Supra tuned for this: http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2505812&postcount=8 Parallel plates mean half the impedance and twice the power (more or less).

Sorry. I followed your link. I thought "We now supply an NOS JAN 6080WC tube manufactured by GE as standard equipment in the HA-2." and "For the 5U4G: Leave the Sovtek tube in there!" to be reasonably unambiguous. Silly me. Yes, he may have started with new production 6080's, but the new ones are indeed crap. It's still the tube the amp was made for, which is the answer to what you asked. You want a thought out answer, ask a different question.

One reads your link more closely. Since the standard tube supplied was the 6080WC (for power), Sovtek 5U4G for rectifier, those are good bets. He probably used a 6SN7EH, or maybe a JAN 6SN7GTB (common and cheap). That may be in the manual, but I haven't looked. Usually, it's pretty safe to assume that an amp comes with the tubes it's designed for. That does not mean that those are the tubes that work best in the amp. There are two parameters that will indicate whether or not a tube will be good into low impedances. One is output impedance. Low is better. The other is output power. High is better. I'm being overly simplistic, but that's the bottom line. The HA-2 was not really designed for low impedance headphones, even though it can drive them with judicious tube selection. If you draw the line at 100 ohms, you get to use a wider variety of tubes, including most of the ones that sound great. K-701 is low at 62 ohms, but is still better than Grado's, Audio Techica or Sony. K-1000 at 120 ohms is great. Beyer and Sennheiser are probably the best easily available cans for the amp (but check specs for a particular model to be sure).

Note that many of the tubes for the Wheatfield are not particularly long-life. For example, the 6080 is rated at about 2000 hours. Bad idea to expect this tube to last very long if you're using the amp a lot.

The Japanese tube is the one I normally recommend. I prefer it to the US blackplate version. It goes deeper, and is not as dry sounding as the US tube. The Japanese Raytheon (I've seen them sold as Toshiba's, and that may be the real manufacturer), is one of my favorite 6CG7's, and outperforms some of the premium brands, such as the Mazda-Brimar or RCA cleartop, IMO. It's also very common and inexpensive, which makes it a gem.

No, tonal balance was not being altered that we could tell. We switched back and forth, just to be sure what we were hearing. I have no real idea what was going on, but everyone who heard it liked it. One thought would be that there was some sort of impedance mismatch between player and amps that was corrected by putting SDS-XLR between them. But that's pure speculation.

At the end of the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, Mikhail took his SDS-XLR down to the Virtual Dynamics/Star Sound room to try it as a preamp. The system was one of the big Wadia's driving solid-state monoblocs directly. In theory, a good preamp should not be subtractive. In practice, adding the SDS-XLR killed off some grain that was in the system, made the image more coherent, and added a level of detail that had been missing. Rather stunning improvement in the sound. After that I decided: 1) I'm now a believer in active preamplification. Adding extra circuitry should at best have done no damage, but should not have produced improvement. It did, and the difference wasn't small. 2) The SDS-XLR is almost wasted being used as a headphone amp exclusively. This is a world-class preamp, and should be sold that way. I haven't heard the B-52 since the National Meet. At that time, I thought the overall sound was very good, but that image was limited to between the headphones, which is a deal killer for me. I'm used to a large image that seems to go well beyond the headphones, and won't settle for less anymore. If you want to get a quick handle on Ray's sound, listen to the drummer. On every amp of his that I've heard, the drummer seems to recede into the background. The B-52 actually did better than Ray's other amps when I tried that. I've heard the volume that Ray listens at, which may explain this. At that kind of volume, there really isn't room for much dynamic range. A real drum hit at that volume level would pop the drivers right out of a headphone. Although the amps play loud, they have to compress dynamics or clip at that level. However, the problem comes when you hear the compressed dynamics at normal listening volumes. The dynamic contrasts simply aren't what they should be. Once you're listening for dynamic contrast, you can hear that it's missing on every instrument, resulting in a flat, bland sound. The drum and piano suffer the most, though, simply because of the dynamics of the instruments. Prior to the B-52, I thought the SR-71 was the only one of Ray's amps that was even close to getting the drum right.

Dammit, after reading that I'm going to have to check the bowl carefully before flushing

Several manufacturers have said that tube rolling will not affect their amps. Ray Samuels and Helmut Becker (AudioValve) come to mind. Both were wrong. Maybe Peter is right, and different tubes will not affect his amps. There's always a first time for this claim to be true.

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/hirsch_d Here's a few (OK, 189) pics taken at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Basically, lots of very good sound, but little that reached greatness (and a good deal that was absolutely awful). I'm still recovering.

I do. You'll need 5670's, IIRC. You'd have to rewire the tube socket to use a different rectifier, though.

I'll happily play my Shure SA-1 for anyone who thinks that they've heard a bad headphone amp. Just as long as I don't have to listen to it.

At the risk of being redundant, first check the tubes. Or else try a different set of tubes. If they work, one of the originals was bad by elimination. If that doesn't work, bring it by, and I'll stare at it as though I know what I'm doing.

Am I getting rid of mine? I hadn't heard about that. I need to keep more current, I guess.

An asshole by any other name would smell as sweet...

That would make it too easy. There's actually a better analogy to something like the early part of "The Outlaw Josie Wales", where the war has been lost and Clint Eastwood is running, family lost, no home. Come to think of it, there's actually a pretty good analogy of Firefly to "The Seven Samurai". Forgotten warriors without homes after the war is over. Quixotic causes over profit motive (dominant theme in "Serenity"). Whedon infuses a bit more overt humor in than Kurosawa into his characters (but Kurosawa's humor is present and very subtle). "Gilligan traits"? You can't have Gilligan's island without a real honest to G-d Gilligan. Not to mentioned the marooned and out of touch aspect that is not present in Firefly. We're going to have this conversation on a movie night with Dave around.

Find a quote on Head-Fi where tuberoller did not capitalize "MARINE". This clown isn't him, obviously. That's one of several stylistic errors in the attempted troll, but it's a telling one, in that it's something the real tuberoller would not fuck up.

Having been cued in to it, a similar sonic signature is apparent in L3000 using EMP. The difference is that is isn't objectionable on that amp. In fact, it sounds natural and clear. However, I can still hear the tonal qualities that were bothersome in the other rigs. I'd really like Tyll to get a frequency response on this sucker.

It's what I heard on two different pairs of W2002's, and the reason I never kept the headphone. I'll check with EMP today, time permitting. The only other decent AT I've heard is the #2 version of the W100, but I don't own that anymore. If I hear that signature in the future, that headphone is getting sold, and replaced by an OII. Come to think of it, AT is about due for another Limited Edition can in Japan...

Similarities between Firefly and Gilligan's Island? Both were television shows. Neither starred Jude Law or Ben Affleck. Beyond that, they're rather different...

Not yet, and probably not until I get back to town after upcoming trip. It was sounding weird the other day. Not unlike a more detailed W2002. Signature Audio-Technica midrange suckout, which I hadn't really heard on that headphone before.

In direct comparison, the OII is just a bit smoother than the Lambda Pro. There's a sense of refinement that the Lambda Pro lacks. However, that sense of refinement can remain in some music that simply isn't refined. Particularly out of the Stax SRM-007t, the Lambda Pro is a more dynamic headphone, that has great punch for an electrostatic can. ES1 drives the OII better than the Stax amp (but by then there was an HE90 in the mix). I can admire the OII in an intellectual sense, but once I heard a Lambda Pro I went out and found one. I've never really had a serious urge to buy an OII, despite hearing it many times.

Jude is the person who first asked Ray to build a headphone amp. Does that help put the pieces together?

To be more specific, Jude refused the money because it came from a raffle. This is considered gambling, which can only be done by a non-profit organization. So Tyll essentially had no choice but to create a non-profit that could legally accept the funds, and put them toward future meets and promoting the headphone hobby. Tyll informed Jude of this, and he initially agreed to it. However, Jude has some issues with the organization that's being created, so now he's attempting a pre-emptive strike, publicly talking about distributing funds which he has previously refused, to try and undercut the non-profit before it gets going.