spritzer

Ahhh indiegogo...home of all the really, really legitimate shit.

Sunlight and thin plastic membranes don't mix but they are pretty resilient otherwise

It's finally ready...only after two years... https://www.head-fi.org/threads/stax-sr-002-srm-002-and-srm-003-mk2-srm-003-impression-and-appreciation-thread.631894/page-32#post-12238152

There are only 300 of the amps and 800 headphones so this seems like a dealer BS to me.

So PEEK...

Stax have never said what the diaphragm is but they might have moved away from mylar. Plenty of new materials to play with these days...

I'd just go with Mouser.... https://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Metcal/PS-900?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtV0HPngiEil%2frl7NJWznw4

You need to compare the results as a voltage divider so one end to wiper and then the other end to the wiper.

So the electrons don't fall out?

Nothing wrong with a magical potato... Do check out the updated schematic Kevin posted above and see if this makes any sense to people. This amp is such a pile of shit that it isn't even funny but how much do you want to bet the Liquid Crimson at nearly 3K$ was exactly the same? Fully single ended with a single 6922...

Metcal is always the way.

Those are my pics so who knows what the fuck they are really selling...

What's up with those V-caps? The circuit is fully DC coupled so special insanity? I do like the cloned chassis though... As it turns out I have my fans as well... https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.20141002.7.7fbc42fdH73z3A&scm=1007.10009.70205.100200300000001&id=543961961161&pvid=4b6da6a3-603d-4eba-962f-6f36272bacf7 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.20141002.5.7fbc42fdH73z3A&scm=1007.10009.70205.100200300000001&id=563080882986&pvid=4b6da6a3-603d-4eba-962f-6f36272bacf7 Even fake circuit boards as I never released the mini boards. Those are completely wrong but since when has that stopped anybody...

I haven't spent any time comparing them but this R2R seems to be a very different animal. It also goes through the main amp all the time as the gain switch is active even in fixed output mode.

It's about 15W continuous. Yeah, that might work. This is an R-core though so I could have cut a hole and fitted the bracket underneath the chassis but in the end two washers did the trick. It's really hard to get HV transformers which don't suck and are less than 40mm tall...

Been doing some testing using the Audio-GD as the dac... I've tripped the protection circuit on the CarbonX and the CTH just died when plugging in headphones. Returns for Massdrop will be super fun on this one...

I finally picked it up and it doesn't disappoint... Jesus this is bad and one funny thing, the surface coating on the chassis is very different from the CarbonX. Same quality parts, ZWEE output socket and the "legendary" SANNI volume control i.e. crappy Alps clone. Now the chassis is the same one as the CX but much better surface finish. The other one scratches very easily (as in I've already scratched it) but this one seems more resilient. One funny thing though, the hole for the tube doesn't quite line up. I tried to take a picture of it but it might not be as apparent as in real life. The space on the right is quite a bit bigger than on the left... No way this was done by hand so somebody was really sloppy... Now for the rest of the pics. The wall wart is also different, now featuring a built in US plug and 28VDC/1.25A output. The large cap in the PSU was flat down but I raised it up. That last pic is just baffling. Why on earth would anybody put MLCC caps this close to the socket. If they see any force on them, they can crack and short out. Instant fire... Shit engineering as usual...

Burn!!!!

They are both far better... as this is a really shitty amp. I think this one might actually be worse than the original LC if that is even possible. I had to go out tonight so I missed the delivery of the CTH so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

I'll do a thorough testing of the protection circuit.... I'll get the CTH tonight so time for some proper fun.

Hehe, I've barely even listened to it but I'll get around to it.

I very much doubt that AMB would be too happy about that.

I've actually plugged it in now and it appears to work but I'll try it out later on. I'm expecting great things, I mean it has to be at least as spectacularly bad as the Cavalli version. Just read the manual and check out the last page under servicing, apparently this thing has a tube which I must somehow have missed...

I don't have a HD800's now but I can get a set to try out at some point. I do have the HD650's so I'll try them out later when I find some time...

So as a counter point to the Massdrop amps, I also bought one of these Audio-GD units used. The R2R15 seems to have been replaced by the R2R11 which is more SMD based but it looks very similar. So this cost 350$ new, is not balanced but has a discrete R2R dac, discrete headphone amp and can also be used as a single source preamp. The Chinese version of the product page is still active: http://www.audio-gd.com/R2R/R2R15/R2R15CH.htm I must say it does look really fugly in real life (as so many of the Audio-GD product do) but it's amazing that they can do this for 350$.