Torpedo

^ Does she blow some instrument properly or is she just cutie?

Well, the seller took his time to sort out everything, but we've finally closed a deal and I've just ordered payment for that Gilmore Reference Balanced. Hopefully I'll have it here by next Wednesday or Thursday. We'll see how I like it

I own a modified Bidat, a friend of mine owns another one which has external PS transformer, and I had the chance to listen to the modified Melior in my system. They're different DACs, I mean all three, but the Bidats are different animals than the Melior. For some time Bidats were produced using a switching PS too, but they stopped that and got back to the normal PS. It's very possible that Deepak liked the Melior, it's really engaging. It has that kind of "bitstream" sound that also some old Marantz players and Discmans have, but with a bit more of resolution. Regarding the top loaders, I wouldn't dismiss the CEC transports either. The old Sony CDP-X7xx-ES series were very good ones, I still keep a 707 "just in case" Rgrds

Do you mean a Museatex Melior? Nice sounding DACs. Maybe Meitner was more into good sound than into making money those days

LOL BTW those Neutriks look about the same. Any internal difference? Rgrds

Have you tried to get into the chatroom? I can't access for the lack of the plugin. I've been using it today and still has an erratic behaviour. Sometimes it displays pages very fast, like no other, and other times... well feels like frozen. I like some of the features like the spell checker -but being this a Spanish version marks everything wrong while wrting in English- and the ease for copying pics' links. I suppose that when they fix it, add all the plugins and some final version is released, it can be one of the best browsers.

^ My comment was for the passive EQ device, not for their speakers. A single driver has physical limitations which prevent it to deliver low frequencies. Increasing them by EQing is IMHO a no-no situation which most likely will cause the driver to severely distort and screw up the rest of its performance. Rgrds

I wouldn't be much concerned about the frequency issue unless you were to drive a turntable. Most modern electronic devices can work perfectly at 60 or 50Hz without a single problem. Otherwise the thousands of americans travelling to Europe would have fried a lot of laptops and many other electronics, and europeans travelling to USA had done the very same Make sure that Korea has 220V and not 230 or 240, that could cause a higher voltage delivered to the device when a surge happens. In fact getting there a decent surge protector wouldn't be a bad idea. Regarding trannies... not sure what to advice, it largely depends on how many devices he's planning to take and the power consumption they'd add altogether. Rgrds

That sounds to me like but considering I haven't tried it, who knows... And yes, I think Boomana has the Cain&Cain listed on her system.

The Zu Druids along with some Audio Note models are quite sensitive for not being horn designs, but any of them would be way more expensive than your budget even used. I haven't any direct reliable reference of the sound of these but for a bit more of your budget they could be an interesting "experiment". Rgrds

JJ tubes were produced upon the factory that Tesla tubes once were made, and had a very good quality, for built and for sound quality, but as long as their sales have been increasing, it's said they moved to a bigger facility. Maybe they outsourced production of some parts to China, who knows. The fact is that their quality has been going down with time. In the last two years I haven't had a E34L quartet that lasted for more than 1200 hours. Most of them fail for one of the pins losing connection to the inner wires, and can't be fixed by filling the pin with soldering. Once one of the tubes fails, you need to change all four in my amp for its fixed bias design. Maybe using other brand tubes for this experiment yields different results. In my experience, cryoing JJ E34L is not a good idea. The ones that the manufacturer sent for cryoing were some from an old batch, probably made in the late 90s or early 2000, and were compared to tubes of that same batch. It hadn't been smart comparing "better made" tubes cryoed to some of recent production ones, which we knew had lower quality.

The cryo treatment was performed by a company that does that for Hovland and other electronic parts manufacturers using cryo treated components. I don't know if they know their bussiness, but I'm prone to believe they do.

Yep, the high sensitivity and affordable speakers market is full of compromises. Even of the big very expensive ones is. My advice is that you tried to listen to a few ones with your amps and took the ones you found more satisfying for your taste and priorities. Rgrds

We had already done that. The tubes after cryoing (the power tubes) not only sounded different, but also measured different after treatment. Measurements were taken -the manufacturer told us and I have to believe him- right after the tubes got to him, then he burnt them for about 24 hours and repeated measurements. I don't recall the exact figure, the manufacturer told us that they had lost some power delivery which hadn't recovered after that burn-in. In our experiment the tubes were used already burnt-in by the manufacturer. This was less significative on the small signal tubes (6922) and while the sound was different, it really wasn't "that" different. Justin, I won't get into the statistics discussion about how many trials give significance to a test, nor how to make a proper DBT, please consider that I'm a MD involved in clinical research. We made this more than two years ago just to help the manufacturer to decide if it was worth cryoing the tubes he included with his amps. We didn't pretend to make a scientifically 100% valid test, nor I'm claiming this is even close to "true science". IMHO the test is good enough, and as far as I was involved in the listening, I'm pretty sure the tubes sounded different, especially the cryoed power ones. Rgrds

Oh yeah, Happy Bday mate!!!

No, not easy at all, specially in the first assessments when the cryoed and un-cryoed very hot EL34 had to be swapped. The guy used the gloves to take hot trays off the oven. We were afraid of the tubes being damaged for hot swapping, but they stood well.

This was a long "experiment" and we worked on 4 different scenarios: - Cryoed input 6922 using non-cryoed power EL34 - Cryoed input and cryoed power tubes. - Normal input tube and cryoed EL-34 The reference for the DBT was a set of normal tubes and we carried it only to compare the cryoed 6922 + normal EL34, because it was this combination the only one that offered small and not so clear differences. All the other combinations involving cryoed power tubes sounded so different for everyone attending the test, that we decided it wasn't necessary spending much time on a DBT. We had two sets of cryoed tubes and two sets of normal tubes, but only needed one set of each, all measured by the amp designer-manufacturer and matching within 99.5% before the cryo treatment. We had two amps, one used just to keep the tubes warm driving a resistive load and the other for the listening. The trickiest part was swapping tubes while they were hot Obviously the test wasn't strictly double blind since the pal swapping tubes knew which ones he was plugging, and it wasn't immediate A/B, but none of the listeners knew if the cryoed or un-cryoed 6922 was on until the end. We were 4 listeners, plus the manufacturer who was swapping the tubes. I'm not sure now how many trials we made, something between 6 and 8. Two of us spotted the tubes used right in all of them. I've made other blind tests using tubes, but none as thorough as this one and none invoving cryoed tubes. Rgrds

We used tubes from the same manufacturer, which were measured by the amp's manufacturer before being sent for cryoing, and also after treatment. The power tubes were matched as quartets. They were JJ 6922 and JJ E34L. For sound and measurements, it's as though cryoing had aged the tubes. The DBT was carried quite seriously, the manufacturer of the amp was really into knowing if the cryo treatment was worth the expense and the hassle. Using the same procedure, but without being able to DBT, is how the cryoed and uncryoed caps were used. Two identical amps measuring the same, using the very same tubes, one with cryoed caps and the other with normal ones. We made it twice, one in my place and the other at one of my friend's. Despite the non-DBT I think the results were consistent.

I don't know what KG has to say, but I've had the chance to carry a DBT at my place using cryoed and uncryoed tubes on my speaker amp, and I spotted them with 0 errors . This doesn't mean the cryoed were better. They weren't. Cryoing was clearly an awful thing on power tubes. On caps I also noticed clear differences, but for obvious reasons it was impossible to carry a proper DBT. Probably some parts change more undergoing cryoing than others. Not sure the plastic sheet on an electrostatic HP would change a wee bit.

Thanks, still hadn't heard of him. Interesting stuff for the DIYers.

Thanks for the update. Probably S&B decided to earn the big bucks selling their trannies through their doughter company Music First and to selected companies like EAR. I hate when companies get that greedy. Good news abut Bent Audio. I have no references of Slagel. Any experience?

Do you have an approximate idea on what's the current eff. weight your tonearm has now? If you're already on the 25 grs range then you're done and probably listening the DL-103 at its best -tonearm wise-. Were you under that weight, just try a bit more

Especially if you load those detachable shells with some lead and silicon to increase tonearm's effective mass over the 20grs range J shaped arms also work incredibly well, and were it a 12" arm... Most of the B&W sound becomes quite colorist, which is not the same as colored

Yep, the DL-103 is a very good cartridge for the price. Kind of "black & white" sounding, and a bitch to match with tonearms. That very low compliance, while on numbers can be handled... you'd be surprised how much better it sounds on a heavy tonearm. If properly set-up, I wouldn't spend more money for many many of those "high-end" carts in the kilobuck range.

You're welcome mate. This vinyl thing has too many variables to tweak and can become a nightmare hehehe. For an affordable DIY project the Lundhals can be just OK, however getting that Denon on Ebay -or any other when it came out- could be interesting, quite affordable and "good enough". Not sure how much would cost you building a SUT using some Lundahls, but probably not much cheaper. Rgrds