Leaderboard

Having personally dealt with the fragility of the Cicada drivers I can say at this point i wouldn't bother tracking one down. Back 10 years ago when I built and then had to deal with i think three out of 4 drivers failing, you're better off sourcing matched replacements that work in the existing circuit. They'll never look as cool but they will probably last longer. I can probably dig up what I did for the desktop versions I built long ago. I worked with Craig on that.

Not sure if this is what you need: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/blast-from-the-past-moth-cicada-speakers.2011/ Matches the specs on the internet archive of the moth audio website.

Lux Vivens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen Jocelyn Montgomery with David Lynch

Thanks everybody. though there were some bumps in the road this past year, i'm still breathing and that's what counts. You folks are great. Cheers!

Damn. Okay, just need to buy every desired disc that may leave streaming in the next 20+ years. Wait, Sony is ceasing MiniDiscs too? Betamax is still safe though, right?

Korg found a use for the NuTube - the handytraxx tube portable record player:

A little baffle surgery to accommodate a different driver should be pretty straightforward. Unless someone else has it, it's worth a message to Craig or NP to get the driver specs. That will help choose a supravox or lowther replacement.

I actually believe NP legit is the only source of those drivers. Ages ago I did ask him for a driver and he did sell one to me, but I’d have no idea if he still has them, if he sold them off to someone else, or if he is just hoarding them.

Al, if you do contact Craig just be mindful that the cicada driver thing is a sore subject with him. When I spoke with Craig ages ago, he had mentioned he had a deal with NP, some kind of mutual agreement of purchase of said drivers, but NP had asked Craig the manufacturing source of the drivers (China) of which Craig had shared with him (before actual purchase agreement was settled). I believe at said supposed meeting, Craig was left empty handed as NP didn’t show up (I can confirm that when I asked NP for drivers they were brand new, he must have had some built through the original manufacturer). Craig isn’t a fan last time I checked

Finally found out where that snippet is from at the start & end of this Pelageya song. It's Rachmaninoff.

Hopefully. But seriously folks, yes, the first night with the drain, the four different painkillers in rapid succession night, was easily the toughest. That zero to ten pain scale may need a few more digits. Interestingly, as I understand it, depending on how difficult the obstruction phase is, the rupture can even be a temporary relief for some, before the leaking fluids and infections retake the lead. Obviously, not your case Rob and it sounds like it was pretty awful. Also thanks for the monetary heads up. Retirement is overrated, right?

NTTAWWT. Asking for Quentin Tarantino.

Honestly, I bought the LP because of the cover.

Nope, just guy. This was a solo effort by Voltron alone. I just helped deliver it. The pebble is no longer in my hand.

The pics don't do justice to the incredible flame Maple front section. And the homemade fried chicken, macaroni and cornbread she made us were amazing!

My friend and former secretary has asked me -- and now Steve -- to build some cabinets for a pantry area next to the kitchen at her new house. That project will take a while to percolate but I decided to build here a kitchen island in the meantime to replace a table she has been using to expand her counter space. Her cabinets have a dark cherry stain so at first I was going to go paint grade to avoid clashing. Rooting around the shop, however, I found enough figured maple boards for the main pieces and thought that would fit well so I went for it. I had to buy the prefab butcher block top and maple 1x3s for the slats below, but all the other maple and one plywood for the drawers and cabinet bottom were in the shop. It's hard to tell from the photos but the figuring on the cabinet and drawer fronts is really pretty. She wanted a knife drawer and another for large cooking utensils, so that's what she got. The knife blocks are maple with non tarnishing felt. Very happy with the results, except that I don't love the coloring of the butcher block. Terri loves it but may not be able to use it fully until she can get over the idea of marring it. 😂

the problems with the stax srm006t is that like the srm007 it has too many design compromises that massively effect the sound. 1. its high voltages are not well regulated 2. it uses resistors as a anode load for the valves which reduces current drive and efficiency rather than using a constant current source. (the srm007t is exactly the same design but parallels up the values to get a bit more drive but its still not fixing the problem and costs twice as much) 3. it uses values which don't have much current drive or are that high voltage. Most of the good designs use far more powerful values such as EL34 running at conservative currents (for what they can do) rather than running tubes design for pre amps really hard. The result of this poor bass, poor dynamics, mushy and in general, a sound that, as you turn the volume up the bass gets more soggy but not that much louder. The drive situation gets far worse if you use a difficult to drive headphone like the sr007 (I tried this and you cant get even close to the performance the 007s can provide with a well designed energizer. Replacing a silicon diode bridge with Schottky diodes might give you a bit less switching noise and slightly lower voltage loss but its not addressing the major design issues. If you really want to upgrade the energizer get the anode resistors replaced with a constant current source. This massively increases the drive and addresses some of the poor design of the energizer. If you are in to diy electronics and want to build your own energizer there are a variety of energizers so much better than the srm006 or srm007. one of the simple and fairly cheap options, with better valves and fully regulated high voltage power supplies is the alpha centauri from http://www.high-amp.de. Its relatively simple to build and walks over and kicks in the head the srm006t. I am speaking from experience here. I started with a 006 and built the centauri. The published design still uses resistors for the anode load but the website does offer pre built constant current sources for it. Unfortunately the schematics and the pcb files are not available for the constant current sources. Next come the energizers with constant current anode sources, fully regulated high voltages and beefy output valves: The blue hawai, it will cost more to build than the alpha centauri, is bigger and more complex but sounds even better At the apex of stax energizers is the diy T2. The original one uses transistors which are no longer available and so getting non fake transistors for it is not easy or cheap. The design has been updated to use more modern transistors. I built the mostly modern version which has a mix of old and current production transistors. It big, complex and fairly expensive to build but the performance is fantastic. I replaced by blue hawaii with it and never went back. There is also a mini T2 which is a simplified version using modern transistors and smd (surface mount components). Its not as good as the full T2 but I think its better than the blue hawaii. if you want something that is fairly simple and will warm up a room on cold nights then there is the megatron. I never got around to finishing my build but its one of the more simple designs. There are many more diy designs out there and in this forum. But the bottom line is if you want a realy good energizer for your Stax headphones, Stax does not sell one and most of the other commercial designs are almost equally as bad (and in some cases worse). P.S. the offset or balance DC voltages being a few volts out or drifting around by a few volts is not going to effect the sound or reliability. Remember the headphones are designed to take 100s of volts, 5V or 10V of DC offset or DC balance is nothing to them.

https://www.techspot.com/news/106477-sony-cease-blu-ray-production-leaving-physical-media.html Sony heard about @blessingx's Blu Ray player purchase?