udurbalanced

Which is another shame, because Audeze brought a Carbon CC to Canjam Chicago in 23 and the original CRBN was best in show for me. Hardly any space at Axpona for anyone.

I had a chance to listen to an Audeze CRBN2 through this amp yesterday at Upscale Audio's Axpona 2026 table. Audeze had the Z10e at their booth for auditioning and the experience was starkly in the Z10e's favor. The Feliks Audio Bliss smothered the imaging, engagement and dynamics completely. I don't know about the Z10e's design or build quality, but the end result of my experience was a $20k+ amp missing the point of electrostatics.

On a trip last weekend up the north shore of Lake Superior with my girlfriend and a wolf crossed the highway between Grand Marais and Grand Portage. My girlfriend rolled down the window and snapped a picture. I lived in the Northland most of my life but never thought I'd see one in the wild like this.

Tungsten heatsink Very exclusive

It turned out to be the four big caps had failed. I took it to a local hi-fi dealer who recently started carrying Stax and had it repaired.

Running a 1 khz signal and measuring AC voltage with the ground lead on the side of the amp and the hot lead on each output pin, I get a brief spike of 0.005 volts before it hits zero. I also noticed the D4 LED is lit while the D3 LED is off or extremely dim. I don't know if that matters but it caught my eye. I took another picture of the last main reservoir caps and it doesn't look to be bulging. Where/how do I measure rail voltages? Will I able to tell visually if those resistors failed? If so, which are they? I try not to open up the amp if I can help it and I haven't done anything with circuits in years so I apologize for the potentially obvious questions. Does the circled area look like a burned/shorted area?

The aesthetic of the SR007S is a huge downgrade but if they borrow the ergonomics from the X9K I'd call that an improvement. The swivel-cup mechanism is the only thing I don't like about my SR007, and I can see the benefit of being able to replace the cable if it gets damaged.

I have a CCS modded Stax SR-006t from Mjolnir Audio that stopped working back in September. For a few weeks I would get no sound until I turned it off and on, but now I get nothing. I've tried multiple sources and cables but no dice. I tested the DC offset between + and - of both channels and between the bias and both channels' - line. After that I tested the AC voltage playing a 1khz signal and followed it from the inputs to the vol control and got nothing. Spritzer repaired it back in April of 2023. The HV- line wasn't working due to a failed resistor and a capacitor was starting to fail. At the time the left channel was much quieter and had a buzzing noise before I stopped getting sound at all. It had no issues until September or August of last year. Any thoughts or help are appreciated. I attached some pictures of the amp. Nothing looks obviously amiss to me.

Also selling Peruns since their website went kaput. Interested in reading a non-shill review of those.

I heard this yesterday at Canjam with a pair of brand new SR-007s, which the Viva rep made a point to tell me since that would apparently explain any deficiencies in the sound. Didn't spend a lot of time with it because I was waiting for the Grand Cayman with the X9K to be available but it was very okay for a $32k amp.

A fire, I'm guessing. How many Liquid Lightnings are even out there still?

I was thinking stack a Liquid Lightning on my AGD amp/dac Wire 4/5 of the Stax plug pins to the Cavalli Wire the 5th to an RCA on the back of the AGD I'm a mechanical , not electrical engineer, but I think this will do

Is there any hope for hybrid estat/dynamic amps? Seems like it's better to just do one very well than try to stuff both in a box.

A cheap Stax compatible amp that won't burn your house down is a great thing to me, but it is a Chinese amp. Just as much Audio GD as JR Audio.

I don't get the fuss. It takes exceptional skill to put a circuit components in a box, throw it off a cliff and then solder everything to make a working amp. They're succeeding where Mikhail failed, if you ask me.