aerius

I think it's that along with where the voice coil attaches to the diaphragm. It voice coil is glued about halfway between the centre and outside of the diaphragm, and with the way it's shaped it looks like the centre part would move more than the edges.

Is that tape wrapped around one of the capacitors? At last, I don't feel alone anymore!

The problem is you can't do it for cheap, and the speaker will be a decent sized floorstander. Finding a woofer which matches the efficiency of Lowthers isn't easy, you'll have to go into the pro-audio world (Beyma, 18sound) or a boutique maker like AE Speakers and that is going to cost you. Oh yeah, and they're big, 10" woofer at the absolute minimum, more likely, a 12" or 15" unit. So the speaker is no longer a nice slim box, it's now a big fat box. Then you need to find a tweeter, none of the tweeters from Scanspeak, Focal, SEAS or the usual audiophile companies will have the required efficiency, so you're looking at pro-audio tweeters, ribbons (Beyma, RAAL, Mundorf) or some sort of compression driver/horn combo. Once again, $$$.

X version for the TSM and VSM plus the version immediately before the X, for the VSM I've heard everything from the Gen III onwards. I've heard them in several systems, some better, some worse, but the Merlin sound is always there. My reference is the Living Voice OBX-R2 and Quad ESL-57, a lot of speakers, including many highly regarded ones sound dead or hopelessly coloured next to them. I'm also damn picky with speakers, there's a lot of little things that bug the hell out of me which most people probably wouldn't care about. They'll be fine, I've heard them with a 30W tube amp and they'll still go plenty loud on that. Lowthers are goddamn finicky sumbitches, especially when run full range. If you want to play operas, solo vocals, or jazz at a low to medium volume they are absolutely stunning. But if you start pushing the volume a bit with say, Pavarotti then you get the dreaded Lowther "shout" and it starts going honky. Throw massed choral works at it (O Fortuna from the Carmina Burana for example) and it gets ugly fast. There's a couple guys I know who have a ton of experience with Lowthers, according to one of them the key is to run them as a wide-band midrange from about 500-5000Hz, and removing the whizzer along with a few other modifications. It keeps the midrange goodness while getting rid of most of the colourations and it lets them play a lot louder without distorting.

I can't recommend the Merlin since it sounds pretty dead to me, especially so at lower volume levels. The Lowther isn't that good of a choice either since it needs a larger box to get decent bass, and that runs counter to your size limitations. One speaker I know of that would meet all the criteria is the Oskar Aulos, but I can't say I know how good it'll sound from a couple feet away since i was listening to them from a distance of about 7-8'. The bass isn't as tight as say, a PMC or Harbeth but I didn't find it to be overly loose or boomy either, certainly no worse than a B&W 804 or 805. Another speaker I like which unfotunately doesn't meet the sealed/front vented requirement is the TB2i, it uses a transmission line which exits to the rear. The overall sound is similar to the Harbeth's but it's more lively and works better at lower volumes as well as being more efficient. Once again I'm not sure how they'll work out at your proposed listening distance.

Interesting...the sharp peak in the impedance graph at ~8kHz matches up with a similar peak in the frequency response graph at about the same frequency. I'd suspect this is a resonance of some sort though I'd need to see a cumulative spectral decay plot to be certain.

Yeah, you're right since he did mention he wanted a longish tail pair. Problem is a good LTP can't really be done with the 6C45P using resistors unless you use a negative supply, and if you're going to use a negative supply then you might as well CCS it. I'm not sure a choke on the cathodes would be a good idea with these tubes since they're prone to noise pickup & oscillations, it seems like asking for trouble to me. Personally I don't think a LTP would be the first choice with the 6C45P, and it definitely wouldn't be my first build using the tube. I'd lean towards using a transformer phase-splitter to feed the tubes and run them as a simple P-P pair, I give up a bit in signal balance between the tubes but it makes the rest of the design & build a lot simpler. LED bias on the cathodes, CCS feeding the centre tap on the transformer, and a cap from the centre tap to the cathodes. That's what I've heard as well from various sources, I ran mine at a bit over 20mA and it seemed to be pretty happy there. Apparently it gets pretty temperamental at higher currents.

LED bias, but you'll need to put 2 or 3 LEDs in parallel to get enough current capacity and a small value resistor in front of each one to ensure even current sharing on the LEDs. Same as the picture you linked, just replace the cathode bias resistor with LED bias. There's a couple DIY amps I know of which use this arrangement with a 2:1 (or was it a 4:1?) input transformer in front of the tubes, and a TVC in front of that to set the volume. Using a pot as the volume control will likely require an additional cathode follower stage to drive the miller C on the tubes. I've only played with the 6C45 in SE parafeed mode, it worked but it was darn finicky and I don't have a 'scope so I didn't explore it much. The tubes went back into the parts box and I went back to easier stuff.

Band of Horses - Everything all the Time

Gain shouldn't be an issue with Grados, I'm running a set of 6BL7's in P-P with a Lundahl 1663 which is a 5k:8 ohm transformer to drive my RS-1. On the other hand my CD player has a variable output which goes up to 5V and most of my listening is in the 60-70dB range. My amp is LED cathode biased, it was CCS'd via the transformer centretap but I stole the IXYS 10M45S's for another project, I can't say I notice any difference since my PSU is ridiculously overbuilt. The 6C45 is definitely a step up in difficulty but as long as you have a 'scope you'll be fine. You just need to pay real good attention to your wire routing and use grid stoppers to keep the damn thing from oscillating. And don't forget to tie all the cathode & grid pins together (there are 4 & 2 of them, respectively), leaving one or more floating invites problems.

They're next to useless unless you can cram it right behind whatever you're soldering, which means it won't work well at all if you're doing point to point work or soldering within a chassis. It's ok if you're working on a PCB and can put the thing right up against the board. Back when I worked in the electronics assembly industry we'd use something like this unit where there's a flexible vacuum hose that can be positioned directly over the work being soldered. The vacuum & filter unit goes under the workbench and the hose gets moved around to wherever it's needed, so even if you're working in the middle of a chassis you can put the hose right over it and let it suck away all the fumes. Unfortunately they ain't cheap to say the least.

I've only read the excerpt which appeared in Tennis magazine a few issues back (or was it SI, can't quite remember), man, it must've sucked being Andre as a kid. I thought I had it pretty bad with way my dad was pushing me in tennis when I was young, christ, it does not even compare to what he went through, I probably would've jumped off a bridge. Best part of the excerpt, Andre and Steffi's dads almost getting into a fist fight over what a proper backhand is, fucking hilarious.

Frequency response looks decent, but the harmonic distortion spectrum is one of the worst I can remember seeing. Doesn't look very promising to me. Way too much higher order distortion products for my tastes.

We'll just have to adapt the wisdom of Shakespeare to the problem at hand. The solution is simple; kill all the bankers.

There's actually a reason for that. The banks are hoping that you'll make a big withdrawal or debit from the account soon after the deposit, so they'll hold part or all of it so they can re-arrange the order of your transactions and hopefully ding you with a shitload of overdraft fees. They do that with regular checks, direct deposit paychecks and wire transfers all the fucking time, and in the last year & half or so they've started doing it with cash deposits.

The GF1 and E-P2 have electronic viewfinders, the E-P1 has an optional optical viewfinder which works only with the 17mm lens. I had the E-P1 for a few weeks before I returned it, the clip-on viewfinder was too much of a pain for me to carry around & use, if they could make a built-in viewfinder in a micro 4/3 camera it would be perfect for my needs.

Thanks for posting those latest pics, I finally know what to do with the wooden boxes that my bottles of whiskey came in. I've been struggling to find a use for them and now I know.

Blow it out your ass, fuckwad. If we're talking about raising kids and how to be a parent you'd be right and we'd have no argument. But we're not talking about raising kids are we? Or are you dumb enough to equate the act of photographing kids with that of raising kids? Oh yeah, and it's "you're" not "your". As in you're a clownfucking moron and you sodomized your mom.

I know enough people who have kids, most of them got a DSLR and went nuts with taking pictures for a year or two, then they get sick of it or overwhelmed by the sheer volume of photos and really start cutting down on how many photos they took. They'd go from 20-30k photos a year to about a tenth of that or even less in some cases. In almost every case the photos got better when they cut down on the numbers since they are now putting more thought into the composition of the pictures instead of just hoping the magic moment was captured in one of the 10,000 frames they shot. What I'm getting at is this. It's not the camera that counts, it's the person behind it. A DSLR is not some magic tool that's required for good kid pictures, most people think they absolutely must have one but this isn't true. It has features which can make the job easier if you know what you're doing, but some of its other characteristics can get in the way and make the job harder. It's not a silver bullet, and in most cases it's complete overkill.

That only matters if you're going to carry the DSLR with you at all times with the camera turned on. How many people are going to do that? Realistically you're going to have to grab the camera off the table or whatever, turn it on and then take pictures, and if you're doing that a DSLR isn't really any faster. Focus tracking and fast continuous shooting is nice for shooting photos as the kid runs around, but again, do you really need 100 photos of your kid running around for 15 seconds? Are you prepared to sort through thousands of photos to pick out a dozen good ones? It's "spray & pray" and gives way too much work afterwards, and chances are the person will get so frustrated sorting through the crap that he just forgets about the pictures forever. I've seen it happen a lot. It's much better to follow the action with the viewfinder or screen and take a few pictures at the decisive moments, and almost any camera is good enough for this if you know how to use it. I'm doing this with a Canon SD800IS, kids aren't gonna be a problem. Unless he's from Krypton or something.

I'd say forget DSLRs unless you need the fast focus & tracking capabilities they offer for your photography, or you need the manual depth of field & focus controls which some DSLRs don't even have anymore. Hell, most lenses don't even have a depth of field scale these days. I'd personally go with the micro 4/3 system and the Panasonic GF1 which can be found on Amazon for under $900. You get a smaller lighter camera which you can stuff into a pocket and the sensor size is still large enough that you can take high quality pictures in all but the worst lighting conditions. If the lighting's that bad then you can switch to the 20mm/1.7 prime and still get the shot, or get an adaptor and slap a Leica Noctilux lens on it. Which would be pretty silly, but possible.

For $400 you should get a blowjob from your mom. It goes real well with everything.

What you really need is a set of snowmobile tracks for your bike. Fortunately, this has already been invented and the conversion kit is on the market. Ktrak

There's actually a reason for that one, our human brains do not like random crap and if presented with such in say, a random noise pattern on a screen or Led Zeppelin played backwards, our brains will want to make a pattern out of it. This is why we're so suggestible in these situations, if I point to a random pattern of scribbles and say to you "this is a martian picking his ass", you will see it, and that's how the fake lyrics work when you play "Stairway" in reverse. It's random and sounds completely wrong, your brain doesn't like it and wants it to make sense, and when the fake lyrics go up it goes "aha!" since it thinks there's now a pattern it understands. Where the power of suggestion doesn't work nearly as well is when there's already a pattern which the brain understands. If I have picture of a horse I'm gonna have a hell of a time convincing you it's a giraffe unless you're on drugs or you don't know what a giraffe is. Similarly, I doubt I'd be able to make you confuse a french horn for a trumpet, or in the speaker world, a Lowther for a Quad ESL-57, or in headphoes, an AKG K701 and Grado RS-1.