Torpedo

First things first, look after yourself, go to that sleep clinic and try to lose some weight Maybe that won't help you snoring, but will be good for your health. Those thin walls are an issue anyway. Would you need to soundproof the whole room or just the wall between you and your roommate's? Having a whole room acoustically isolated is going to be expensive

The Mullards (NOS) I've tried in my amp sounded as you describe, wonderful midrange but lacking bass correctness. No depth, no impact, no authority. The treble is smooth, kind of silky and quite detailed, but lacks some spark and top extension. They're great for midrange bloom and meatiness. Lovely with voices if you don't care for anything else. Never tried EI EL34s, but I tried EL84 in other amp and 12AX7 in my phono pre. They don't sound much better than russian tubes. Maybe a tad bit more "elegant", but still not comparable to Telefunken or Siemens. For power tubes I don't think going NOS is really worth it. Power tubes have a quite short life expectancy (rarely more than 3000 hours) and while some of the NOS tubes have very interesting features, IME don't have the completeness and top to bottom balance that more modern tubes offer considering the price. Furthermore it's very difficult getting well matched quads. If the amp doesn't provide manual bias adjustment for each tube (as in my amp) this can generate more sonic problems than the benefits of using such special and expensive tubes. I think I've tried most of the currently available EL34/E34L tubes in the market. In my amp and with my speakers, the ones with the more balanced response across the freq spectrum and not being harsh anywhere, are the JJ E34L. The KT77 keep that balance, and sound a bit more authoritative in the bass, but trade off a bit of delicacy in the midrange. The ones I'm currently using are Chinese Shuguang EL34-B. These keep most of the JJ virtues, maybe a bass a bit less impactive, but still going deep and very well textured. I like them better for their midrange, which is rich and enveloping, it reminds me a lot of the 300B SET midrange (tonally, not for the full richness nor the spatial distribution). In the treble they're quite similar, at first the Shuguangs may seem less detailed, but they're not, it's just that they're a bit smoother, kind of recessed. If you decide to try them, be warned, these don't have reliability issues IME, but for the first 10 hours sound damn awful. Really, they're the tubes that change their sound with burn in more hugely of all the ones I've tried. They go from crappy sound to very good. Fortunately you don't need to wait for 400-800 hours just in the 2 first hours the changes are very evident and promising. With 10 hours the sound just slightly worse than they'll do after 50, 100, or 1000 hours. The quartet I'm using now probably has around 1500 hours on and still going strong.

Sure. I've made a lot of tube swapping on my Filarmonia: My conclusions are similar, output tubes produce changes which aren't as huge and obvious as those provided by the input tubes, however the bottom end, treble extension and smoothness, and midrange richness are the areas were most of the differences may be noticed. Of the many tubes I've tried, the JJ E34L and KT77 are the ones with the most bodyful yet tight bass, without any treble edge. Russian tubes have decent bass, but treble is quite inferior. If Justin doesn't advise against the E34L, I'd recommend you to try them, but be warned of their reliability issues

E34L is a perfect direct substitute of the EL34 if the circuit is designed for the later. E34L can be driven harder than the EL34, so on a EL34 tuned circuit the E34L will work perfectly fine, but on a circuit biased and conceived for the E34L, a EL34 might fail. More or less the same goes for the KT77. However when things are designed consciously and conservatively, both can be used without problems. I had forgotten that 6CA7 is the american nomenclature for the EL34 I thought you were speaking of the driver tubes... Just proclaims my ignorance of what tubes the BHSE uses

^ Interesting way to shape the upper body

Listening to it right now on Spotify. This thing is great, someone speaks of music which might be interesting, then you look for it and if available, just play And completely free and legal

I think it's easier, healthier and more affordable controlling your snoring. Plus if it's got worse lately and you may be suffering from sleep apnea episodes.

Music playing from "the amp" even with no load (which I completely agree is very harmful for tube amps) is due to mechanical resonance of the OPTs. They vibrate harmonically with the signal they're fed. This can get worse if you play music through the amp with no load. This happens because the primary becomes a too low impedance for the tubes output, then a very high current demand happens which is what may end up damaging the amp. This high current going through the OPT primary excites the resonance of the core even more, then the music coming from the trafo sounds louder. Just make this test. Get a test CD with some high frequency tones from 10KHz and up. You'll notice that these are usually the ones that produce the loudest sounds. I've witnessed this many times when I've visited a friend of mine who builds amps, and he's testing them. Kind of scary hehehehe. Some OPT "sing" more than others, it depends on the core materials and shape, also how they're shielded, etc. EI core trafos are said to have this resonant effect more than others, specially if they have those metal caps attached with bolts, leaving an air chamber beneath, which acts as a resonance one. The metal cap, if has the appropriate size and thickness, becomes a sound radiator increasing the level of the sound.

Elephas, what EL34 are you using? I'd recommend you to try the JJ E34L. From the EL34 I've tried, they're the ones with the best bass response, deep, bodyful and well textured. Energic. But this is in my tube integrated for the speakers. The JJ KT77 are no slouch either, but they're less refined in the midrange. The problem with JJ E34L is that they have changed something in their production, and are less reliable. Quite frequently some of the pins loses contact with the thin wire going to the internals of the tubes, then stops working. Sometimes dropping solder inside the hollow pin fixes it, but not always. I have no experience with 6CA7 type of tubes, none of my devices uses them

Hehehehe, I wonder that too, but my upper canines don't seem to grow, and I keep more interested in feminine areas other than the neck.

Well, then there's not much else which can be done. Crossing fingers for the vaccine shots to work at some point, decreasing you sensitivity. Moving to the desert would work for your allergies, but not for mine. I'm allergic to sunlight

Of course it's inflammation of the mucosa, which leads to mucus overproduction and air flow blocking. To improve that I suppose you use some antihistamines, corticosteroid nasal sprays and all the usual treatment battery which is necessary to alleviate the condition. I suppose you visited at some point an ENT specialist or an allergist. Otherwise do it before the allergy season starts. We can't really cure allergy in most cases, but proper treatment planning may provide a lot of relief.

Same here

Freddie Redd - Shades of Redd (needledrop) Before, The Beatles - Sargent Pepper's... (mono, japanese pressing)

Yes, the ear wax producing cells respond to pressure and mechanical contact, in the same way nasal mucus producing cells respond to dust, moisture and temperature changes. If your rubbing your ears is frequent and kind of "hard" that may stimulate wax production, thus explaining your increased wax production while suffering the allergy attacks. If your ears get blocked for nasal congestion, this is due to a mismatch between the middle ear pressure and the atmospheric one, which should be the same. When nasal cavities aren't blocked, atmospheric pressure, nasal cavities pressure and ear one, are all the same. As soon as you have in your nose a different (usually lower) pressure than atmospheric, this transfers into the middle ear which develops lower pressure than atmospheric, then the ear drum gets "sucked" into the middle ear, doesn't vibrate as it should, so mild hearing loss and the blocking sensation develop. In such condition, you'd need to firstly clean your nose as much as possible until air flows through it rather freely. Then performing the Valsalva's maneuver, which consists in blocking your nostrils, and with the mouth closed, blowing air out (air which of course won't go anywhere outside) carefully until your ears "plop" and pressure balances. It's the same maneuver divers do when going deep into the sea. If you put too much pressure it will ache, so it's important doing it carefully and slowly until you feel the air gets into your middle ears and blocking sensation disappears. If you go too far, you may feel a different blocking sensation due to the pressure in the middle ear being higher than atmospheric. In this case, you just need to block your nostrils, close your mouth and swallowing saliva twice or more times, this will balance pressure in the opposite way than Valsalva's maneuver. All this will work as long as your Eustachian tubes aren't swelling and they allow air circulating through them. Usually ET blocking won't happen on most allergic conditions. I hope this helps

Yep, you can use it mixed 50% with saline solution if bubbling of peroxide alone is excessive. 4 drops twice a day for 4-6 days is what we recommend our patients before "de-waxing" their ears, when big occlusive corks grow. For normal wax production used once a week should be enough to keep ears pretty clean.

Mine keeps OK on Firefox, but sometimes gets deleted on IE. Well, it did on older versions, not from 7.something :/

Matt Bianco - Hifi Bossanova This band were one of my favs in the 80's, I was told they released a new album this morning. Not bad so far, listening to title track on Spotify.

Yum yum, Dexter is back

Whoa, that's awesome!! Congratulations Birgir

I don't know of medical conditions related to allergy which increase wax production, but I don't know everything. Wax production is increased mostly by mechanical stimulation (yet another reason for not using Q-tips nor hard mold IEMs) and other circumstances like dusty environment. Maybe the same allergens worsening your nasal condition can stimulate wax production somehow. Or it's possible that having your nose blocked produces some ear congestion, so you inadvertently touch your ears more, like after swimming to pull the water out, or use Q-tips more often.

Happy Birthday

Do you mean that nasal discharge goes out from your ear canals too? If so, you'd need to have your ears inspected.

This is why I won't ever use custom IEMs. I don't like pushing the wax too deep into the ear canal, and even less making it too close to the drum. Universals don't get as deep inside. Moreover you can clean regularly the universal's tips as thoroughly as you want, or even replacing them , but you can't apply the same "treatment" to custom molds having the phones built in. There's not a safe way to use Q-tips unless you just use them to dry the pinna and the outermost part of the canal. For that you don't need Q-tips, a good towel and your fingertips will do the same more safely.

Yep, in this I agree with Josep. As a toy to learn how changing frequency response alters our music perception, the Ultracurve is funny. Even for speaker listening in very complicated rooms having big modes which you can't control by placement and room treatments, it is also more than funny, can become a cheap solution. With some trade offs, but everything in life has them. However in Monkey's case, I don't think the differences he notices among his DACs are frequency response related. Most DACs have the same frequency response curves with slight variations which alone won't explain how different we perceive their sound. Two of the areas where I find most of the differences are bass response (more in the bass quality: impact, body, texture, coherence, integration, etc) and voices rendition. Most DACs measure the very same from 20Hz to 8KHz, however some are very distinguishable -the Benchmark DAC-1 for instance-. I still have to find what measurable parameter has a correlation with the sound. These are its measurements as published by Stereophile. I can't see there what makes it so recognizable compared to others