spritzer

Hell yeah!!!

Are the stators painted black on the ESL57? Almost all black paints have carbon in them which isn't a very good idea with high voltages. Even the guy which runs Quads Unlimited made that error though...

The difference between a SR-404 and the LE is so big that I'm sure tweaked drivers come into play. The LNS drivers are all but identical to the SR-404 yet they sound nothing like each other.

Pffft... I do think that a large potion of the HE60's out there aren't running at 100%, at least that has been my experience with the sets that have come through here. That includes the two "recently serviced" units which were clearly not done right by Sennheiser. Damn I want to buy a HE60 now...

The 4070 enclosure is brilliant but so is the whole headphone design. Managing the backwave without resorting to diminish the true dipole action of the drivers is something to be very proud of for Stax.

Nope, had a new-ish SR-404 here and it sounds just like the older units i.e. badly. I seriously doubt that the difference is down to the earpads since I changed them out on my SR-SC1 back in the day.

HE60 > HD600 > HE90 > HD800. The HE60 has to be properly refurbished and driven by a Blue Hawaii then it's easily the best model Senn has ever made. The HD600 may not be as refined as the He90 but they annoy me less and I could live with them day to day, something which can't be said about the He90. The HD800 is a fine headphone but nothing special. The HD650 I can't stand so it doesn't belong on the list.

I'm not buying the cryo crap but the SR-SC1 sounds a lot like the SR-404LE from memory. The drivers assembled a bit differently perhaps?

It could be a new version of the 252 as the 353 should be close to being released. The old amp was certainly just a rebadge with a new PSU but I don't know if they actually did anything with the amp circuit.

No, no she can just keep it as a bonus...

EAC to rip the disks in FLAC and you need nothing special besides that. For a Windows PC use Foobar to play it back and I'm sure the Ayre comes with some form of ASIO output to bypass the Kmixer built into Windows (it resamples everything to 48kHz and does other nasty things). HDD's are all way too fast to ever become a bottleneck and if anybody can hear difference then I'd like some of those drugs they are on. You can naturally use iTunes as well with ALAC but I never use it. Audiophile USB cables are a bigger scam then digital cables as next to none of them adhere to the strict USB standard. With the Ayre in particular you are feeding the dac an asynchronous data stream so the cable should not matter here just as the cables inside the computer won't matter. I'm sure that there are differences but are they from interference/dropped bits or just the sound being moar better? One thing you should consider later on is a NAS solution with some form of RAID for data security. HDD's don't really like the rather violent movements found on ships so show absorbers would be a good idea.

Happy Birthday!!

Congrats on the double amount of presents!!

Happy Birthday Ken!!

I do have a lot of ES-1 wire left and solid core is great for filaments. It's also supposed to be pure silver...

Went to work, made a shit load of breads then had to deal with crazy cash registers that refused to work correctly. Went home and cleaned/waxed the car. Too tired to do anything but Christmas starts in less the 4 hours here so I'd better get cracking... I quite liked that one. Truth be told I always set DC offset by touch, much better then any stupid "measurements". My gauge of physical pain must be as accurate my ears, right?

For 22AWG/600V this is hard to resist (I've ordered 3 times already), they also have a 18AWG listing.

I second Castle, very good show.

A two gang is not that expensive and a nice Shallco input switch isn't either. Hmmm I do have a spare +/-15V S22...

The real modding opportunity would be to replace that cheap volume pot with something better. There is also the option to DIY a Dynalo, strap it to a S22 with a nice attenuator for a killer amp/preamp.

The only Stax gear to use those switches in bulk were the preamps and they are rarely talked about so data is limited. They were also used in the SRM-T1W and I haven't heard of any issues. If this amp has no serial number then it could also be a late prototype and/or very early production model since AFAIK, the SRA-14S should have an external PSU.

It's arrived but I'm going to hold out until the 24th before I open it. At least try...

I'd love to see some pics but as usual with Stax, service manuals are hard to come by. The amp section is supposed to be identical to the SRM-1 Mk2 so the standard DC coupled SS affair.

I'm with Doug, if I'm going to buy music it has to be something I can hold in my hand. The HEV90 is rather overrated to say the least. Still the HE90 likes an amp that is a bit vague.

Nah, somebody had to stay behind and keep the driveway clear...