aerius

Actually I don't think you'd even need an UHB cable, I find that stock Grado cables are a lot worse than popularly accepted and even something like Cat-5e or Cat-6 network cable is a big improvement. I briefly had Cat-6 cable on my 225 and it was a big improvement in treble smoothness, yes it's still a bit on the bright side but it's no longer sibilant. But since I needed that cable for my K340 I ended up putting Biggie's old PS-1 cable on my 225. It's somewhere in between, but closer to the stock 225 cable. Cat-6, some heat-shrink tubing, teflon tape, and techflex (or shoelaces for the cheap) and you're good to go. Might as well do them balanced while you're at it. Another possibility is to get a used RS-1, they're best with tubes IMO and since you already have a bunch of those you should be good to go.

I admit that Ass-raping the head-fi morons is starting to get old, which is why I haven't done it in a while. RSA however, deserves every bit of abuse he's getting. His designs, if we can be generous enough to call them that, are flawed at best and a goddamn safety hazard to boot. Combined with his questionable business practices he deserves to be exposed and ridiculed at every opportunity. I can't speak for others, but I know we're better than Head-fi, the content is there and it's slowly building itself. It'll take time though, Rome wasn't built in a day afterall. The bitching stays in the Casino and RSA threads and most of the rest is pretty much good content. Take a look through the Headphone forum, the Amp forum, Speakers, DIY, Sources, it's all filled with good stuff. Now go look on Head-fi, same fucking threads for the 10 millionth time, over & over & over, getting worse with each day. "Best $50 headphone", "I just got a XXXXXX and it's the best shit ever!", "I want an amp for my HD-650", "I need a $200 DAC", "where do I get OPA627's?", same shit every day for the last year or two. Not to mention the fucktards & shills. Great signal to noise there. I'm lucky if I can find a single worthwhile thread on the first page over there. I'm working on it. I like to think I've contributed some good stuff, but there's always room for improvement.

Or the myths which people like to parrot to the point where they've become accepted "fact". 1) Grados don't really need an amp and don't benefit all that much from one. While it's true that Grados will sound pretty decent straight out of a PCDP or iPod, they improve a hell of a lot when driven off a good amp. A 225 is pretty listenable out of my Walkman, but gets a fair bit better out of my Gilmore Lite, and it's better still on Biggie's pimped out tube amp. I'd argue that a Grado will scale as nicely as any other headphone. 2) The "tube sound" myth. Tube amps have rolled off highs & lows, rounded off transients, lacking dynamics, fuzzy imaging, but great midrange. Congratulations, you've described the typical shitty design of 95% of production tube amps. I can't blame people too much though, since not too many have heard a properly designed tube amp. Like the one I have which is +/-0.5dB from 10Hz-40kHz, and which has all the best attributes of tube & solidstate. 3) It'll be better once it's broken in. Maybe, maybe not. I never tire of bringing up the Senn 650 case, where people complained that the damn thing got worse after it was broken in. So what are your favourite myths, favourite as in everytime you hear someone say it you feel like beating some sense into them with a ball bat.

Experience is definitely a factor, but ownership ain't everything. For instance about 3 years ago the best I had was a Senn 580, but I'd heard a lot of other headphones many of which were better. My general rule of thumb is that the person should have some experience with gear that's a level up on what he's commenting on, it gives a much better idea of the strengths and especially the weaknesses of the gear in question. If I'm reviewing an SR-60 it would be nice to have a 225 so that my review is more balanced and doesn't end up being a masturbatory gushfest. Of course this isn't always possible since some of us are going off into unexplored ground, the EC Zana Deux and higher power Singlepower variations come to mind, but it's still nice to get a comparison with similarly priced gear from other makers.

Another idea would be to change a few resistors & wires around and plop in a 5687, wouldn't have to do a single chassis mod.

You guys are weird, weird I tell you, weird!

Bingo. At that age the baby's not even eating solid food, how the fuck is it going to lay a turd like that with no solids? At 19 weeks the best the baby's gonna do is have some semi-liquid shits and diarrhea, there's no way it can lay a log.

The AKG K340, $130 plus another $20 in mods and it kills anything short of an RS-1. Squashes all current production Senns & AKG's like a bug. The Denon DN650F pro audio CD player. Uses the nice PCM1700 18-bit DAC and a super simple output stage. Rip out the generic film & electrolytic coupling caps in the output and replace them with silver mica and polycarb or polyprop caps and the performance goes up a lot. Replace the generic diode bridge with Schottkey diodes for a blacker background. I got mine off ebay for about $40 shipped, but I've seen them being sold for about $200 or so. Modded it'll give the Eastsound E5 a really good run for the money if not beat it. 6BL7 & 6BX7 tubes. I bought some at the local surplus store to try out, liked them ever since. Huge dynamics and soundstage on these tubes, and once the operating point's dialed in the tone's pretty good too. But the best? 1633 tubes. The 25V version of the grey glass RCA 6SN7. At $4-5 a pop I can buy tens of them for the price of a decent 6SN7. I've hoarded a nice boxfull of these tubes.

Gotta agree with that one, of all the digital amps I've heard the original $99 Teac Tripath is the only one I can tolerate, and even then it takes good speaker matching due to the limited power. Panasonic, blech, dry digital sounding, Rotel, bleh, same as Panasonic but not as bad, BelCanto, nothing to write home about, haven't heard CI yet but not expecting much either. Personally I like the Class? sound, haven't heard their older models in a long time but the new Delta series is damn nice. Chord's new CPM series is pretty nice too, similar to the Delta series but a bit more tubey sounding and maybe lacking a tad of refinement & detail.

Never? What if someone says that the Omega II is piercingly bright, and the brightest headphone he's ever heard, and in the next sentence says the SA5000 is rolled off and dull with less treble than an Senn 650? What if he then goes on to contradict himself multiple times in multiple ways? Would it then be appropriate to say that he's completely full of shit, and that his opinion is worth less than the turd I crapped out this morning? How does one deal with a grade A dumbass like the above?

Think of it as the META42 or PiMeta of hybrid tube amps and you're not too far off. As an inexpensive easy to build amp it sounds pretty nice, but it's not going to challenge the big boys. I built one last month before stripping it for parts for my in progress 12W6 amp.

Mix 99.9 Beachfest 06, the annual free Labour day concert on one of Toronto's beaches.

I think we can all agree that audio is a pretty subjective hobby, and that we all have different tastes and preferences, not to mention that we hear differently as well. With that out of the way, we move on to what happens when we start debating the merits of various gear, I may think "gear x" sucks while someone else says it's the best damn thing since the invention of modern contraceptives. So far I think we're still in the region where it's all just opinion, and everyone's viewpoint has equal or almost equal validity to it. But what happens when someone makes a clearly unsupportable statement and claims that it's just his opinion and that his word is worth as much as anyone elses? For instance, what if some guy says that the Grado SR60 is the best headphone ever, and that it's clearer and more detailed than a Stax Omega II? And when asked to support his claim, he says "well that's my opinion and it's as valid as anyone else's? What then? What I'm trying to get at is this, are all opinions really equally valid, and where do we start drawing the line between subjective opinions and verifiable facts? Where's the point where you start going "look, you're a dumbass and you're full of shit"?

Click my sig. Or click here to see some tits.

He's obviously taken lessons from the Microsoft school of business, there's profit to be made in selling a bugfix as an upgrade.

Boobies!

The 12W6 & 12V6 I'm rather familiar with because I recently bought up the entire surplus shop's stock for my own uses. I have a rough build (push-pull design) using the ECC40 as the input & phase-splitter with the 12W6 in triode mode and it sounds pretty nice, but I'm running into distortion issues at higher volumes since the ECC40 is pretty underpowered. Killer with Grados, not so good with my K340, I'll probably put a 12SN7 or 6BL7 in the phase-splitter/driver slot next and see how that works out. Results are promising so far. I can't wait to see how your amp turns out.

More thoughts on the Raptor PSU. Looking at the size of the heatsink I'd guess the regulator's giving off about 5-10W of heat, and the off-board mounting of the resistors would imply that they're dissipating about 2-3W each. So low end estimate of 11W and 19W at the high end for power being wasted in the PSU. Assuming a 25W transformer which is about the most you can hope for given its size, in a best case scenario the donut's right on its limits, and worst case it's way its rating. It looks nice, but the design is shit. Anyways, what am I looking forward to? Earl's transformer output Singlepower, and toroidal output transformers no less. That should have serious drive & slam along with the ability to drive any headphone with ease, and with higher power tubes like the 6BL7 or 6BX7 it's going to be a beast.

I'm pretty sure I got a good seal since I couldn't hear a damn thing from outside. Heard'em at a couple meets with both flanges & foams, it absolutely needs tube gear and even then I still didn't like it much. To me it's for someone who likes the HP-1000 sound as opposed to the RS-1 or PS-1 sound.

I know, and IMO it's still pretty borderline at best. From spec sheets, 5687's are good for 7.5W per tube on the high voltage plates, 12AX7 is 2.4W, for a theoretical max of 17.4W. Let's say the tubes are run at about 80% of max which is typical of many modern designs, that gives 14W. Assuming a 25W donut that's not too bad, leaves about 10W for the caps & regulators. A 20W toroid and that margin's getting pretty thin. Take into account the current spikes from the caps charging up on each AC cycle and that margin's close to gone. Personally I want the donut to be rated for at least twice the power that the tubes are pulling, and preferably 4 times or more.

I do have to question the Ety ER4 recommendations, it's very different from the Shure sound and I'm not convinced it's the right way to go. To me at least, Shures have a decent balance with slightly rolled off highs while the Ety ER4 is painfully bright with super-tight and to me, lacking and dry bass. The ER4 is among the most sterile and analytical IEM or headphone I've ever heard, and with an all solidstate signal chain it just spells trouble IMO. Personally I'd much rather grab a Shure E4, not it's not quite as detailed & resolving but I find the balance is a lot better and the tone is much more to my liking.

Heat dissipation, keeps the resistors from burnng the board. Though the way he does it would never meet standards. You're supposed to bend a kink like this to keep resistors and other parts off the board instead of going straight in. That's because it is. I can buy a switcher very similar to it for $8 at the local surplus store, in fact they might even have the exact model. No, it's not just you. Scaling off the IEC socket the picture is LARGER than life-size on my 17" monitor which is set to a 1024 x 762 resolution. That Plitron transformer's probably rated at around 20-25W tops. Which means this power supply is almost as underpowered as the original one.

Actually I was thinking about gluing plastic tabs on them, marking up the price about 20 times, and then selling them as "amorphous high density insulating cable risers".

I hate to be a party pooper and all but a Dynahi? Granted I've never heard one with an RS-1, but to date I've heard two of them with an HP-2 and my Grado 225 and I was not particularly happy with the combos. Yes it's detailed, extended, dynamic and so forth, but it doesn't do the full wrap-around soundstage of a good tube amp. It doesn't have the "reach out and touch it feel", then again, not much does. Also, better check the gain on the amp unless you want your ears blown out, I couldn't listen to one on the stock gain with Grados, way, way, way too loud.

If I had to take a guess I'd say that some people aren't getting laid enough, but I could be wrong since I only took one Psychology course in university many years ago...