mirumu

Happy birthday! Hope you have a great one!

Another McDonalds/Touhou mashup. Lacks the mmmmm and wwwww of the nico nico douga version, but Youtube will have to do.

External DSL at work... Home will be slower unfortunately.

I agree. That's a really cool looking way to mount them. On face value that parts list sounds like it could pack a punch too.

Yahoo Japan is definitely on my trawl list. Then again I tend to be there looking for other things anyway.

717s aren't as commonly available as they used to be. I've been keeping an eye out for them for a while now in case a bargain showed up, but I don't recall when I last even saw one for sale. Then again I don't trawl HF's for sale section.

They don't want to risk losing customers who like DRM. The kind who'd say "I just don't feel like I'm getting value for money unless some of that fancy DRM comes bundled with my music". I'd like to say I'm being sarcastic, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if record company execs actually believe such consumers exist.

I think the bashing and support of Ray here has been reasonably balanced. The A-10 will succeed or fail on it's own merit at the end of the day. That doesn't make any concerns about the design and topology any less valid. If his past products have been less than ideal then it's not surprising new ones are viewed with a more cautious eye. Especially when the design is a bit unusual for the application at hand. Goodwill is a perishable commodity.

Heh, well I guess if there were just going to be two completely independent amps inside the box that would work. I was thinking more along the lines of the dual unit like Kevin was describing.

Fever Ray

I don't see how it could avoid being a jack of all trades, master of none kind of scenario and this is my main concern with something like the A-10 given the description of it's operation and everything it's trying to be. I also wonder, irrespective of how good or bad the A-10 may turn out to be or what it's price point is, how much lower Ray could price an amp based around this design that was focused on being exclusively an electrostatic amp only without the bells and whistles. Something aimed more as a competitor to Stax's own amp offerings. I wouldn't deny Ray the freedom to choose what market he wants to go after, but I'm unsure if he really has a product here that will appeal to his target market. Time will tell I guess.

I read it as meaning the 6SN7s are only ever active for the pre-amp output, and the 5687s are only ever active for the electrostatic outputs, but the SE output doesn't use these and is always active. It's not stated explicitly, but it sounds like SE output comes off the circuit just after the pair of gain 12AX7s.

Ah so it's really three different configurations with not all tubes active at any one time. That certainly explains why there's so many of them. Seems a bit wasteful if it was only ever to be used an electrostatic amp though.

I wonder if it's one of those cases where 300V is the officially sanctioned value, but they seem to work okay at higher voltages in practice? Still seems a bit on the low side for stats. Since the four tubes along the rear don't match I'm guessing that would make the four 5687s the ones surrounding the 12AX7 in the middle? It's an interesting layout if that's the case.

I believe Kevin Gilmore said in the past that the original Blue Hawaii is 750 volts peak to peak.

You're using it with the supplied SR-001 headphones I take it and not one of larger Stax models? I've tried driving the SR-007 from the SRM-252A, but the amp is too underpowered to wake the headphone up properly. If after listening you genuinely think the A-10 sounds better than the GES then say that. SRD-7 Pro comparisons are welcome too although of course will be dependent on the amp being used. If you have more to compare then all the better. Someone who isn't a shill will tell us the good, the bad and the ugly. I admit I'd be surprised if the A-10 is a good match for the SR-007 given what we can surmise so far, and given Ray's track record, but stranger things have happened.

Hey, I hope you have a great one!

I feel the same way. I don't dislike the overall look especially, but the lack of symmetry works against it. I think the BHSE is on a whole different level again. Of course it's the sound that matters. I have no idea what the A-10 will sound like, but if the speculation regarding the tubes is correct it would appear to be a bit disadvantaged from the get go. Oh and krmathis' post is gold.

Hmmmmm, so then the power stage would have to be solid state then? Still seems like a lot of tubes for a preamp. I'm looking forward to these interior shots he mentioned.

Definitely more widely available than I'd thought then. I remember thinking back when I bought my O2s that the black variant might look good, but I wasn't particularly taken with the look when I saw it.

If so then that's an awful lot of tubes in the pre-amp.

I'm wondering about the tube complement. On the middle tube I can make out "ECC" and "3" in one of the photos so I'm guessing a ECC83/12AX7 variant. The output tubes (I'm guessing that's what the two larger ones at the rear are) look vaguely like the 6L6WGA/5932, but I certainly can't read a marking anywhere. I'm no electrical engineer by any means, but from the tube specs I wouldn't have thought those would be capable of driving something like the O2 as well as something like the BHSE's EL-34s. I do notice that he only shows Sennheiser stats in the photos though.

There was the SR-007BL which I believe was only available in Germany. I'm not sure if it was made available anywhere else.

The Mk2 came out in the latter half of 2007, about November IIRC. I don't recall any gap of time where the 007 wasn't available for purchase so I'd assume the Mk1 was discontinued around the same time.

I must have had some real brain fade when I wrote that. I have a D-link DIR-855, not a DGL-4500. Took a bottle of Thomas Hardy's Ale at 11.7% abv to make me notice.