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So, we finished the shelf install last weekend. Linda was in really good spirits. She was like a kid with a new toy when we finished. It made me feel great to make her happy! She then invited us into the living room for homemade lemonade. I started talking about music, and I think I threw her for a loop with my knowledge of musicians and music history. I told her that the first time I'd actually seen her on TV was on Dolly's show in the 70's. I was a young teenager and Dolly had Linda and Emmylou on her show. I was amazed at their harmony! They did several old country standards and it was magical. She was surprised that I even new of that appearance, and happy to hear how much I had liked it. She then gave me the greatest gift she could ever have given me. We sat and talked about music for nearly 3 hours. She told me about meeting Emmylou first, through Grahame Parsons, then her and Emmylou meeting Dolly together. We talked about Jackson Brown, and him introducing her to Glenn Fry and Don Henley. About her telling them to form their own band. We talked about her youth and her Mariachi history. I think that she enjoyed revisiting the past as much as I enjoyed listening to it. She kept being surprised at my knowledge and set a few of the stories I'd heard straight. I had one of the best times of my life!

That is a hell of good story Steve - I'm massively jealous! We saw Emmy Lou in concert around 6 months ago in Birmingham Symphony Hall (UK). She's 79, and made it clear that was the last time she'd tour outside the US - because of her age she finds it difficult now on endless long hauls. She was superb - lost the clear as a bell high notes, but still absolutely awesome. Back in the late 70's and getting seriously into audio, standard albums that showed off the quality (or not!) of a system was Linda Ronstadt albums. And one of my favourite albums even now is Trio - Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmy Lou Harris - released in 1987 (nearly 40 years ago - eek). Like you said the quality of the harmony and the way their voices complemented each other raises goosebumps. They actually spent well over a decade after the TV show you remember, Steve, trying to follow up with an album. But their personal tour commitments got in the way until Trio was finally recorded.

Carole suffered more angst than me when our kids went to college; Rob to Warwick and Liz to Essex. But the thing to remember when this happens is "Job done". You bring these little creatures into the world totally helpless, they progressively grow up - then they are adults, and quite rightly fly the nest. Now at 41 (Rob) and 37 (Liz) they both keep in touch regularly, and with each other. By phone and WhatsApp. Rob lives in the NE of England, and Liz is on the Gold Coast in Australia with a permanent residence Visa (so she can apply for citizenship). WhatsApp is a wonderful tool.

I figured it was worth its own thread to look at these aftermarket cables that have popped up. Now I don't really want to be a part of the whole cable mess but with electrostatics it is rather simple... the main component is capacitance. The cable will always add some and it determines how hard the entire system is to drive. So TLDR, more capacitance... everything is worse. The amp has to work much harder to try and push current into the top and bottom end. As a baseline, I tested a spare SR-X1 driver I had here and between the +/- inputs it is right on 40pF. We want to keep this as low as possible to keep the load low. So first off we have this ebay find, staight out of China: I was roughly 130$ shipped for the 2.5M version but I've seen them go for a lot more than that. It has the off the shelf Stax connectors on either end and they are nice enough quality. The wire is the cheapest, thinnest crap possible though. As a comparison the plan was to use a SR-X1/007S/009D cable but I only found a SRE-725 extension cable. Same length at 2.5m but is might be a tiny bit worse as the flat ribbon needs to connect to the Stax socket on the other end with wires will cross a bit doing that. Should be a small one but worth noting. I tested between the L+ and L- (I also compared against the R+ and R- but it should read the same) using a basic Uni-T capacitance meter at 1kHz. Both cables strewn out as long as they go on a wooden floor so minimal impact from that. So first off, here is the Stax SRE-725: That is 0.061nF or 61pF. Not bad and what I'd expect from the Wide PC-OCC cables. Now here we have the ebay cable... That is 0.46nF or 460pF. Yeah... that is not great is it. So as a comparison, the whole system capacitance with the Stax cable is 101pF, with the ebay cable it is 500pF. Yeah... this is utterly terrible and will make the headphones sound terrible. Now a second possible issue is how much voltage can the cable withstand. Again here we are hooked up to the L+ and L- simply because those pins are the easiest to get to with the large clips. This cable passes at 1500V with flying colors, almost 30 seconds and at almost 6 gigaohms so no issues there. I'm guessing this is actually double insulated as there is not a whole lot of wire in there.

so you need about 4 times the current just to drive the cable. so say 100ma bias. only the D&G can do this. or a 150+ watt speaker amp and a really large boost transformer. say a pair of transformers from a mc2300.

Well, I'd heard the same story, but something I didn't know was that they recorded an album in the seventies. It was all pop songs. The album was pushed by Linda's manager at the time. They had it ready to go, but neither Linda, Emmylou or Dolly felt it was right. So they decided to shelve it. The 87 album cemented that decision in all of their minds.

Wasn't today, but my nephew returned from the ISS last week....! Long read, but pretty cool.... NASA Astronaut Chris Williams Closes Out Space Station Mission - NASA

The Weather and the parking gods smiled on us as we got to show Sue why Big Sur and Highway 1 have the reputation they do.

Cassandra Wilson, Star Jazz Singer, Dies at 70 - The New York Times "New Moon Daughter" has been a favorite of mine forever: No cause listed yet. Although the article says "peacefully, surrounded by family". RIP.

This one will be hard to write, not because anything bad happened, only because change is hard. TL/DR - Nate is sad because Lily is in college. Longer, rambling version. Today we helped Lily move into college. She decided that she wanted to go to UNH in the spring time, so that's where we headed today. On top of the usual angst/sadness associated with dropping your first kid off at school it was a bit of an emotionally-charged day because that's where I went to school, met Maura, and lived for a few years even after graduation while Maura pursued her graduate degree. And in a simple twist of fate, the dorm that we lived in while Maura was a hall director is where Lily ended up as a Freshman. So it was a day of wildly swinging emotions. I'm confident that she'll do great there. The program that she's in (Occupational Therapy) is as good or better than any other in New England and it's very much right up her alley. So we know where she'll be for the next 5 years - it's a 4+1 masters program. What I can't figure out is why it very much feels like I have a broken heart? I mean I get it in lots of ways. As I explained to Andrew on the way home (he and I left first to get him to soccer practice), for every day in the last 18+ years I've known exactly where and when I'd see Lily next. Now, not so much. I expect it'll be at least a few weeks, if not longer before we see her. That's probably most of the pain I feel. But there's also a piece of me that feels a little, well, lost without her in the house. So we'll see how these next several weeks go with only one kid to day-to-day worry about. I'm not sure Andrew wants the additional attention coming his way. 😂

I Was thankful we were lucky with our timing. Others may not have been so lucky https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/big-sur-wildfire-22381679.php https://www.instagram.com/p/Db3V1TIFGzb/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== EDIT: California’s Big Sur sees evacuation orders as Timber fire grows https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/11/big-sur-timber-fire-evacuations?CMP=share_btn_url

I thought this was worth mentioning - Revox announced they are selling new audio compact cassettes, Type I C60 and C90 - what a crazy time we live in: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/new-blank-cassettes-now-available-from-revox/