RudeWolf

You guys need to contact Sjöström Audio- we need a credit card sized KGSSHV! Put it in an Altoids tin and be done with it. Maybe whip up some Peltier elements for cooling...

Happy Birthday! Keep them bottles clean (and empty)!

I won't pretend that I'm more concerned about this than the Baghdad bombings but what concerns me are the invisible casualties of terrorism. I can't even comprehend how many man hours and dollars have been used since 9/11 to maintain heightened security measures. The more I see the more I'm starting to think that the price for security against excessive violence is too high. I'm pretty sure that there are certain acts of violent offense that I simply cannot hope to survive whilst remaining human. Again- I mean no offence to the dead, maimed or mourning. Every lost life is a loss, regardless if it has been lost to shrapnel wounds, blind vengeance or post-traumatic depression.

An actual Latvian masterplan on how to rob Norwegian houses. That face in the second figure is a photo-realistic rendition of Latvian happiness.

I'm not sure about which type of volume controller you are talking about, but in my Jtree attenuator all the remembering is done by a potentiometer. The controller just reads the impedance and sets the relay configuration accordingly. Even if I power down the pot still stays in the set position and when powering on the controller sets the correct volume step. However I still used a separate power transformer for the digital circuit. Seemed like the kosher thing to do.

Yep, I prefer mine to a Beta22.

Have a great Geburtstag, Steve!

I hope he returns back to academic writing. Old fart wasn't too bad at it. Can't say the same about his poping skills.

This is why you don't want engage in prolonged turn fights with a Spit. Them BF-109's bleed energy like crazy in turns and therefore excel in zoom'n'boom. Sucker had it coming.

Actually getting a Dynalo together ain't that hard. I know that fetaudio.com sells matched input jfets and everything else is pretty easy to get. PSU can be had as a kit from glassjar. Casing is what I found to be the most of a challenge, but as I said- it is possible to find premade Chinese headphone amp cases on ebay. After that it's just a matter of drilling a few holes for the pcb's. It was my first DIY project and it came together pretty well. As long as you don't mix up the polarity on the power supply... From all of the amps mentioned here it might be the best for current hungry cans. Here's mine for inspiration- P.S. If you manage to find a Dynalo pcb, or two drop me a line! I'm pretty sure that I can squeeze in a Dynamid in there!

In my opinion the biggest advantage of both of these kits is that they come with cases. For me designing the case was the biggest challenge in my first build. I had to plot where all of the parts will sit and had to account whether they intersect or not. Then I did a CAD drawing for the CNC and so on. You could also get one of the AMB kits if casing doesn't scare you. Actually there are plenty of Chinese cases prebuilt with IEC inlets, RCA's, TRS and volume pots. These usually need very little work, assuming that everything fits in.

Well, you do have to keep good care of it. Occasional brushing and toothpaste treatment.

Well, the new GPU's will come out... Then you'll have to wait for the non-reference design PCB's and so on. I waited 8 years for this! Now none will keep me from C4-ing a shark in Farcry 3!

Finally put an order for my new PC. I used to be quite a gamer but then I gave up on upgrading my PC constantly. I'm happy that now I have almost a decade of games I'll be able to play for the first time. This will be one of the longest weeks in some time, I reckon. Guys promised me it'll be ready by Friday.

No flavor text???

The problem with Ivy Bridge it seems is a pronounced hotspot on the CPU plate that most coolers aren't very successful at cooling. I guess that's the price you must pay for die shrinking. For pure overclocking I'd get 2600K as it cools a lot better and you are able to get it up at similar frequencies.

How much of a performance boost could I get via overclocking? My thinking was to get a more powerful CPU and run it on stock settings for better longevity. It seems that nowadays PC's don't get obsolete in six months. The gaming market is largely dictated by consoles except for the odd Ukrainian release or so. I also want to keep my fan noise low because it has a tendency to creep into my listening sessions. I'll get the Asrock Z77 Extreme4 and when the day comes I will buy a new cpu. Thanks for the info!

AsRock looks like a good deal for the money but I still can't shake off their former image when they were a part of Asus. Their Z77 Extreme4 board has received a lot of praise. But yea, AssRock.

Finally got fed up with my monster 17'' CRT + Pentium 4 setup. My thinking is to get a more or less future proof system with a i7 3770 cpu paired with a GTX660 ti gpu. One of the local guys recommend getting an Intel DH77EB board. Not to mention Intel announcing leaving the standard form factor mobo scene I initially found the board to be very erm... pedestrian? What's your take on Intel mobos? Sure, they lack the bling of other makers but supposedly they are very reliable. I'm not sure I'f I'll miss SLI/X-fire or extreme overclocking very much. Thank you!

I feel that my opinion towards vodka quality largely depends on the mood I'm in. I started off my drinking adventures with pure vodka when I was 15 and I remember that any vodka tasted very good. It was like the best ones I've had now- with no taste of its own and only the fresh aftertaste that doesn't give you the usual shivers. Once I stole a bottle at a party and simultaneously ran and tried to drink as much as I could. Nowadays I can't imagine myself being able to do anything like that. I think that the best I've had was imported from Moscow where they supposedly keep beluga bones in it. I could even drink it warm.

No HD650? Well, fuck you then, Sennheiser! I didn't want to be in your club anyways...

Damn, has this been a day... Now sipping a nice whiskey to end it off. The story goes like this. I'm in charge of a webpage/e-store project for a construction material wholesale company. The head of the company is my sisters fiancee so yeah, a typical eastern European business operation. Almost a year ago we hired a guy who used to live in Canada to help us explore the Scandinavian market. Things didn't go as well as everyone wanted and we had to ask him to leave the company. Me being the "computer guy" of our bunch it was my duty cut all access to the databases, e-mails etc. for this guy. Mind you- everyone of our company used to work together at a large construction material wholesaler before the financial crisis struck so basically everyone knows everyone (besides me, that is). So yeah, the guy leaves our merry bunch and suddenly everything picks up for him! He's the sales tigershark he used to be (he was the head of the sales team where everyone of my colleagues were). My bosses were slightly irritated because of this but there were no explicit hostilities between us. Also this guy used to drive me to the bus stop quite often so we were pretty close. We both have higher education and we had lived abroad so we had stuff to talk about. Y'know- criticizing our bosses and such. Fast forward three months and he calls me up if I can install some program for his new laptop. I say that sure, and that I'm at the office. He drops by today, and gives me his nice Asus MacAir lookalike-book and I proceed to install the stuff. Our office is one of them open types where everyone sees everyone so whilst I do my computer stuff, he chats off with the other guys. Somehow I had this funny feeling to take a peek at his Google drive local folder and so I did. Then I almost died a little. There was all our database with client, supplier contact lists, all of the price catalogs which contain our profit margins... The good stuff, that almost guarantees someone to outbid us if needed. A little shaken I proceeded to erase all of our data he had. About 600MB's worth of text and numbers. All that with a straight face with him sitting across the table in front of me. It's quite miraculous how fast you can do it with these new SSD's. Also as promised I installed a pirated version of some PDF editor and handed the laptop back to him. The local Google drive folder was cleaned out and ready to trigger the same process to remote storage when connected to the Internet. Felt like shit. When I told my boss about he was quite surprised but not overly. He might've had backup after all. Well, at least we know what the guy was up to. And I hated the Windows 8.

Just did some biasing to my Parasound 1600 (one channel had a nasty 0.5V DC offset). Turns out that despite using really nice (for that time) opamps Parasound decided to use rather cruddy MOSFETs as current buffers for the IV stage. Therefore I'm thinking to swap them out for a BUF634 buffer that would most likely give better linearity and no danger of DC offset. Have any of you got experience with using this chip as a current buffer in similar applications? I could whip up a smd diamond buffer but I have a hard time seeing practical benefits of this.

I use 30AWG silver plated copper and teflon insulated multistrand wires for anything that isn't too high current. For soldering I actually prefer stranded wires as they suck up solder by capillary action just like solder wick. I used to use CAT5/6 wires but for soldering the insulation melts away too easily. Also the bare copper seems to oxidize in clamp type connections very easily. For high current and 220VAC level I just rip up some lamp cord do a nice twisted pair. Soldering these sometimes require a little more oomph from your soldering rod but the isolation usually holds up nicely. Just be sure to keep your heatshrink far away from the spot you are soldering, there have been times when I've shrunk some prematurely and had to reconnect the darn thing back again.