RudeWolf

60 - 70°C is what I consider to be the long term safe margin for non-tube electronics. Remember that lower temps yield a longer lifespan. Can't really remember, but the rule of thumb was like double the hours for every ten degrees or so.

It's greasy finger time!

Have a good one!

you can see how I run my fifties. You can probably guess that the right channel is the most troublesome as it has what seems to be corner loading. This gives some room boom in the upper bass area. As for the sound - I do believe they do some things that are out of reach for most conventional speakers at that price range. Phase coherence is extremely good and the cabinet is inaudible, also the speaker sound very fast in the transients. If you like the Quads then I'm sure the fiftiess will also suit you. However they absolutely don't have the stereotypical British sound.

Here's some active speaker prawn - KEF X300A in transparent cabinet. Sans damping fuzz, as far as I can tell. Interestingly both speakers house more or less identical electronics and use USB cable for chaining - meaning both have DACs.

Can't they just get some kind of flooring that wouldn't totally kill the sound in those cables?

Basically what Grawk said - near field monitors shouldn't be expected to have significant output below 100Hz. Some have an FR hump at around 200Hz for more apparent "kick", but you won't get the physical feedback that floorstanders can provide. Monitors should excel at imaging, soundstage and neutral FR. Extra bass can be had by carefully implementing a subwoofer, however that is prone to excite many room related issues. For piano a good 8 incher should do the trick.

Or the PSU is too dinky to fry it all up! Still, there is a lot of frying to do on the KSA5.

How many of those present at Head-fi are actually able to recognize less-than-optimal circuit design and engage in an informed debate regarding this?

I wouldn't fixate on the driver technology. Both can sound terrific. Get the one that sounds the best to you.

I love me too. And my KEF LS50ies.

Perfect for office use! The desk friendliest KGSSHV so far.

Amen to that. Still - a terrific build!

Happy fooling around! http://scorpiondagger.tumblr.com/

Thanks for the info, guys. Have been thinking of getting a pair of open orthos.

I thought you liked cramped?

That's a really good regulator chip. I've been searching forever to find a good deal on these PCB's. After further digging I came to a conclusion that only the positive regs are noteworthy by this guy. The bipolars use postive for regulating the ground. Must be because negative reg chips are like 6 times more expensive.

The cutaway baffle edges may actually improve dispersion. So that's a plus in my book. Too bad we don't get these in EU.

I wonder why...

Scratchiness? I'm looking to maybe implement a TKD stepper in my headamp build. I just found this - http://www.ebay.de/itm/271419069682 Might be worth checking out.

Why settle for Alps when you have TKD?

Be glad they didn't ask for DSD.

Cause file resolution equals quality.

There's also this - http://www.8thnote.eu/attenuator_details.html Still, as time passes I'm starting to doubt if these types of attenuators are worth the hassle. To date the most elegant volume control I've used was digital as seen in the Sabre 9018 DAC's. My pipe dream to this day would be to use a digital volume control and build headamps without any of the expensive attenuators. The problem is that I've yet to found a ESS9018 based DAC that I would actually enjoy to listen to. My favorite DAC chips from Asahi Kasei sort of have the digital volume control feature, but none really want to bother with designing a control board. There are still interesting choices from BurrBrown and Muses but these also need control circuits that DIY people are reluctant to design.