aerius

I got a demonstration of the CD demagnetizer at my local audio dealer, much to my surprise it worked. It shouldn't work, but on that particular CD of mine it did. It didn't work on CDRs though, so I guess a solution would be to copy all your CDs to CDRs, and for the cost of the demagnetizer you could buy a hell of a lot of CDR blanks.

I bought a dozen ABBA LP's at a garage sale.

It's all fun & games until you have to shovel it. That's why I live in an apartment.

Clearly, the solution is to get a more expensive amp to keep the ratio in balance.

Oh no, I've started another trend!

I posted a couple pictures of the insides in the Casino. Super secret internal pics thread, can't remember which page though.

Confirmed. It ain't got a digital input. It does have digital outputs but that doesn't make much sense since if one can afford a DAC that's better than the Acute, then there's not much sense of using the Acute's CD transport which is the stock Arcam unit.

Bought an RS-1, then sold it a few months later when the damn thing kept breaking on me. I think it spent more time being shipped to and from Grado Labs than anything else. Bought another RS-1, this one seems to be working fine. So far. Built a couple amps, only one of them was a success. Made some new cables. Borrowed a pair of Visaton B200 open baffle speakers, surprised that open baffle speakers work in my room. Gave them back to the owner after a few weeks. Bought an EAR Acute CD player. Future plans: Apogee Scintilla. I gotta have one. It's the PS-1 Pro of speakers. EAR Acute CD player. I just bought one after having it on extended loan for almost a month, I think it's better than the Capitole. I might write up a quick review in the next week or two.

Free. Well, not exactly since it comes out of our taxpayer dollars, but there's no fee to get the shot. We just drop by the clinic, get stuck with a needle and that's it.

Government mandated flu shots, haven't had the flu in years. I used to come down with the flu every year or two, but no more.

Clearly, you need to invite people over when you plan on listening to your amp.

Graph of the harmonic distortion products of a Senn 650 and Beyer DT880 No way you can make either one sound like the other as convolution can't do harmonic distortion and other non-linear effects. Such as breakup, and peaks & nulls caused by resonances and cancellation.

I guess perfect pitch would handy for knowing if your turntable has speed problems, but other than that I doubt it's too useful.

It looks like an Apogee Duetta with a shiny wood facing, about the same size too.

Yup, gotta love those good old Apogees. The Scintilla will still murder almost anything made today, it just needs a good amp that can handle a 1 Ohm load. The original full range is said to be even better, but damned if I can find anyone who has one.

It's absolutely impossible to make this look like this with any sort of electronic signal processing known to man. The problems, that being resonances, echoes, stored energy, and so forth are mechanical and physical in nature, and can't be compensated for in the electrical domain. To alter those properties you have to go in and make physical changes to the device, for example, adding foam to soak up echoes or changing the driver material to help with resonances and stored energy. To use an example, let's say you have a subwoofer with a shitty cabinet design, the cabinet rattles like hell whenever there's a note between say, 30-80Hz. There is no way to get rid of the cabinet rattle with signal processing, you have to go in and make physical alterations to the cabinet. It's the same thing with headphones & speakers, though usually on a much degree. I can't make a Quad ESL-57 sound like an Klipsch or Altec horn system & vice versa. I can't make a B&W 805 sound like an 801. I can't make a Lowther sound like a Wilson Sophia or Watt/Puppy.

Since you already have a sub you can grab the GedLee Nathan 10 or stretch the budget a bit and buy the Abbey 12. I've had a brief listening session with the former and I was quite impressed. Think Grado HP-2 and you won't be too far off.

Yes, but I don't know how far down their product line you can go while still retaining the family sound. I've only sampled their products from the Space 294 and up.

No, that's Antwerp.

My one problem with Benchmades is they don't grind the edge thin enough, and I need to spend a good hour or so working it down to where it cuts well. They've gotten better with some of their more recent models but it's still not up to Kershaw or Spyderco standards. Otherwise they're great, I have a half dozen Benchmades and I'm happy with them all, except for the time I need to spend regrinding the edges.

I see some vague similarities and that's about it. The layout isn't the same, the parts aren't the same, and the boards sure as hell ain't either. I remain unconvinced of any cloning between the two. Tell you what, trace out the circuit on both amps and we'll talk. Until then I'm going to file this in the tinfoil loony bin.

Which one is your kit, which one's the commercial product? I can't tell a damn thing from the pictures and I doubt anyone else can either. I need good quality pictures of the circuit boards, and label them so I know what I'm supposed to be looking at.

I'm a big fan of the Kershaw Vapor series in that price range. I own a Vapor and it's tough solid knife, the only issue I have is it's not really a one-handed open as the thumbstud is too small & pointy & not in the best location for leverage. It's also nice & slim and the handle is nicely rounded so there's no sharp edges to dig into your hand.

You should start a Rent a Kid business. You get a bunch of orphans or whatever and rent them out to people for set terms. You could do weekend rentals, 1 week rentals, 1 month rentals, and 1 year rentals, with options for renewals and stuff.

You're a guy. Regardless of your relationship or marital status, if you didn't have the hots for other women every now and then, you need to get your testosterone levels checked.