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Tomorrow starts fencing and we have a personal link to many coaches and fencers. Our friend and Lance's former coach is there with the Hong Kong team and another friend is the Italian team coach. We know a few Olympians from Italy, France Hungary and Hong Kong and will be cheering them on. In the olden days, the coaches had been over for BBQs and to polish off a few cases of our wine while the fencers seemed to enjoy the tri tip and 11-hour braised short rib tacos. Great memories...

Substitute "old man" and "in the 80s" and yeah that's accurate.

Vivian, the Hong Kong Epee fencer and our friend's athlete takes gold. It's a pretty awesome feat since the French fencer is very talented.

It looks like the HFM diaphragm is stick to the stators. Most of the diy estats failures I encountered were due to conductive coating problems causing the buzzing sound. I found a frequency response test of Shang-mini, and it seems that the mini driver is a reduced tension version of the Jade2. Considering the diaphragm size(Jade2 and Shang sr are almost the same area as the 90mm Omega）, the DS-gap of the Shang jr/sr is 0.7mm+, while the Jade2 is 0.5mm. For low-tension diaphragms, 0.5mm DS-gap is difficult to work stably. I can understand the "hangs there in mid-air" of HFM estats. The bass of HFM estats are even weaker than many Lambdas. The main reason is that HFM adds additional gaskets on the stators for support to prevent the low-tension diaphragm from sticking to the stators, but the gaskets will significantly suppress the diaphragm swing, and the overly breathable design of the HFM earpads also make it impossible for the low-tension diaphragm to work like many planars. Perhaps this is what HFM thinks is good, cause there are many treble heads audiophiles.

Have had a new bias servo working with my CFA3smd something for a few days. Schematically it looks like this, and the new thing is in red square. Now I get a good reference point to the servos. Don’t understand why I didn’t figure this out earlier – slow brain perhaps. All four servos are fed from the same point. So, one trimmer and full control over the BIAS of all channels. Diagram for new servo - 6 minutes from cold. and diagram for old servo (in mA for the first 40 minutes from power on) Please have in mind that the graph for no servo is for my CFAsmd something. I guess the original CFA3 have a different and better behavior – where all tripple Darlington and vbe transistors are mounted on heat sink.

I've been using the Mini for all of this week but lacked all motivation to post more impressions as the sound is just so bland and not "there". Now my Stax SR-X1 has its issues but when it works... is a far more engaging listen. The sound of the Mini just hangs there in mid-air... for some music it ok but other it just falls flat on its face. The lack of a proper seal is clearly an issue here as they exemplify all of the negative traits of electrostatics. Similar to the utter trashfire which is the Shangri-La SR. in this regard. Now I woke up this morning, turned on the rig and one driver squeals like mad. Typical Hifiman quality control then, they lasted less than a week. 🙄 I had planned on opening them up, swap out the trash cable and take pics of the insides but hadn't got around to it so they are completely untouched.

(Prompt: Midjourney, please make an animated gif of Jean-Michel Jarre nodding appreciatively)

My reaction when I saw it: "LOL! I feel seen."

Me: EDM weekend at Tomorrowland... https://www.tomorrowland.com/home/

Watched it on its entirety. Nice gesture inviting Rafa Nadal to carry the torch, then being joined by Serena Williams, Nadia Comanecci and Carl Lewis.

Feliz Cumpleaños! Have a marvelous day!

Thank you very much, dear friends. As usual by these dates in Madrid, it's been damn hot and many friends and family are away on holidays. Good celebration with the wife, another year in the pocket. Starting the seventh decade feels a bit dizzy. I don't know who's that guy staring at me in the mirror.

Happy Birthday Antonio!

Happy birthday! 🎈 🎈

Mine's been working fine since I discharged it. Fingers crossed. They definitely screwed up the launch and I hope they're aware of the issues and can fix them. This would be a great headphone at a good price and a real disruptor in the market... if only I could safely recommend it.

Cheers Antonio - Happy Birthday --

Happy 60th Antonio! I hope you enjoy a nice dram or two on this momentous day. Cheers!

Happy Birthday, Antonio!

Very Happy Birthday Antonio!

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Antonio! Have a wonderful day.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Doc!

Happy Birthday, Antonio!

Happy Birthday! Have a great one!

na - just looks better than the main stage in the daytime. I will watch people run fast and jump high another time.

With all those lasers, I thought it was For a moment

Greyhamer's innuendo skills are not to be trifled with.

Olympic opening ceremony

I bet you say that to all the boys!

So true!!!

Birgir "It's not complete trash" for those not familiar this is high praise

Polishing that turd. thanks DOMi..

An update on the SR-X1 issue. I left them unplugged for two weeks and when plugged back in they were back to normal. About an hour in and the right hand side is dying again... slowly fading in volume as I listen.