aerius

dsavitisk's numbers look right. The Rp and Zout of the tubes & amp would imply a stepdown ratio of around 7.3:1, which gives a gain of 9dB or so (voltage gain being 20log[Vin/Vout]).

I can't say I'm surprised. Cratering tax receipts thanks to the recession along with a reliance on auction rate bonds to bridge prior funding shortfalls is a recipe for getting raped. There's a half dozen states including California & Florida which are going to get killed by massive budget shortfalls within the next year or so. Cali & Kansas already had to suspend tax returns this year when they ran out of money, next year's going to be even more fun.

I couldn't disagree with that more, especially since I've had a few opportunities thanks to one of the local audio guys to compare the direct microphone feed in his recording studio to the 24/192 master and the 16/44 CD. The direct feed & master were fairly close on the studio's monitor setup, but the CD is like trying to compare the resolution of a good DSLR to that of the Gigapixel camera. Not even close. Hi-res would be the equivalent of a good 5x7 or 8x10 large format camera, damn good, but still not as good as 9x18.

I've heard more CD players than I care to count, the main issue I have with many (not all) of the CDP's which emphasize detail retrieval & accuracy is that they aren't. Accurate that is. To use a visual analogy, what they're doing in my opinion is taking a photo and really cranking up the sharpening filter and giving the contrast a good bump. This will make the picture look super-sharp and reveal every little detail, but it's not accurate and isn't a true to life reproduction of the original picture. Edges are unnaturally outlined, colours look wrong, and subtle shadings & tonal changes are gone. It's much the same way in the audio world, push for ultimate detail retrieval and the tonal aspects of the music usually suffer and it ends up sounding dry & unnatural. The best gear can excel in both aspects but it's very rare. Also, obligatory sample of good recording & mastering quality. CJ - Blues sample

Going by the info on this page the price seems fairly reasonable. The case is teflon & stainless steel, it uses a transformer volume control, and the power supply is all oil-filled polypropylene capacitors with lots of chokes. Which probably explains why the units as a whole weighs 60 pounds. I don't think I've seen any reviews of this particular amp, but I recall reading favrourable impressions on the other products when they exhibited at the European Triode Festival a few years back.

Checkout this Craigslist gem listed near the bottom the Tubecad journal... CCDA: constant-current-draw amplifier

Or go with external crossovers, as is done with the Living Voice OBX-R. Build a nice shiny box for the crossover and separate it from the speaker entirely. This gives your more freedom for laying out the boards and it also gets the parts away from the vibration and magnetic fields in the speaker. The downside is you'll need extra sets of speaker cables to hook it up to the amp.

I admit to owning nearly a dozen ABBA records. Not counting my Beethoven & Dvorak box sets, that's the most records I own of any one artist or band.

Checked over all my tax forms and documentation after getting them back from my accountant. Pain in the ass, but it sure beats doing all the work myself.

The TNT Akropolis stands

There's an interesting chart which I can't find at the moment; it's similar to the Fletcher-Munson curves except it graphs the amount of distortion in the human ear (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th harmonic) with respect to the decibel level. At 80dB or so, the ear itself is producing something like 50-60% THD, with most of it in the 2nd & 3rd, and at 100dB it's something like 80-90% distortion, which your brain then has to filter out somehow. The ear has very little of the higher order harmonics until the sound level is cranked way up. Sidenote, this is probably why tube amps sound louder, the extra 2nd & 3rd order harmonics fools your brain into thinking the sound is a few dB louder than it actually is, the sound doesn't change much if at all since your brain filters it out and compensates for it anyway. Aha! Found it! http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/xentar/1179/theory/seamptheory/SEAmplifiertheory.html Ok, so the distortion wasn't as bad as I remembered, but it's still pretty horrible.

From best to least favourite: Vintage RS-1 with brown leather headband Newer RS-1 with cheap style headband AKG K340 Senn 580/Grado SR225 Senn 495

5 pin tube sockets for 27/37/56/76 type tubes. I thought I had a few extra ones lying around when I put in my order for a nice batch of 56's, apparently, I only have 1 left and I need at least 2.

Seem to have gone into a Doors phase...

Pretty soon Nugget Audio's going to be running a protection racket. If you don't pay the protection money, the case will be wired hot to electrocute the user.

Classical music phase, after picking up a whole bunch of records ever since I got my vinyl rig up and running. Mostly Dvorak & Beethoven, for some odd reason quite a few people were dumping their Dvorak & Beethoven box sets.

A Lotus Elise has less power than a Chevy Suburban and costs more too, clearly, it's the inferior vehicle and will get smoked on the track by the Chevy. Are you always this dense or is it a special day today?

As I understand it, auto-bias in this context would refer to self-biased, where there's a resistor stuck on the cathode of the tube and it biases itself to whatever it feels like. Fixed bias means you have a separate power supply to set the bias on the tube, and generally there's trimpots to finetune the bias to a given tube.

Sometime TdP does great work, sometimes I think he does things just because it's cool or because he can. The EAR Acute would be an example of the former, the V20, the latter. It's like hey, I bet I can make an amp that uses 20 12AX7's. I still don't get that, using 12AX7's as power output tubes.

Read Zanth's commentary on the PS1000 page, sounds like what I'm looking for. I'm in. PS1000

You know, I'm not sure if these are headphones or BMW model numbers anymore...

Sure hope so, it would make a great pairing with RS-1, between them I'll have all my music covered. And bass, as much as I like my RS-1's I do miss the PS-1 bass.

FET-A, as in feta cheese? Nevermind...yeah...boring day at work...

You know...something sounds cheesy here...

Well, there's always the good old standby of "O Fortuna", that's pretty darn bombastic. Of course there's a million versions and I have no clue which ones are the good ones.