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Now it shouldn't come as a massive shock to anybody but I'm not much of a SR-009 fan. From day 1 they always sounded messed up to me and the BK and S didn't really make it any better, even a bit worse with the 009S. To this day I have only one 009BK (as it is a limited edition) in my collection and one regular 009 that showed up here randomly and was a stark improvement over all the other sets I've owned. No idea why those sound different but better not mess with them. Now the plan was always to do something with the 009's to improve them but there was always something better to do. Well with surgery pending a couple of months ago, I finally had time to do something not too taxing. First off I needed a donor set and here is where that came in: I got these three years ago and they just sat there in a box. Too many parts missing with no spares available, three out of the four dust covers were trashed and I took off the arc to rescue another 009... so a pile of parts with fucked up drivers. The plan forward was clear though, the drivers needed new dust covers, new diaphragms, a way to mount the cable and finally some way to attach the earpads which wasn't 009 levels of stupid. Now none of those parts could be reused or they simply weren't there so time to do some designing. I still suck at 3D design but practice makes perfect... or it should in theory. Now first off, dust covers and diaphragm holders. These are easy to do as PCB's but materials, thickness, films used etc. are all large variables. Here are my first drivers, actually using the third batch of diaphragms as I slightly tweaked the dimensions once I started test fitting: Those familiar with the stock drivers might spot the bias connection is very different. I had to spend a lot of time cleaning the stock drivers, as they had been open for who knows how long, but this first test was successful. Fully balanced drivers and no noises from them at all so they are as clean as I can get them. The dust covers are 2um mylar-C, just lightly stretched (hence the slight lines visible) and the main diaphragms are also fairly loosely stretched 2um mylar-C, then heat treated and given a coat of fabric softener. The drivers are easy to align but one major part of this project is to find all the correct o-rings used to assemble these and in the right grade. When I had waited a month for a large shipment just for the one size I needed to not show, I even bought some stupid expensive examples locally. That got me here: All new screws used to get the drivers into the housings. You can see how beat up the aluminum housings are but hey, fine for a project like this. Now there was the next difficult bit, the cable entry: On the stock set it is a plastic guide which sits in those holes, the cable fits in that and the whole assemble is screwed down. Now the stock cable I had was not perfect so instead of making my own version of that... I just used a standard Lambda cable. A L500 was going to die for this set anyway (as I needed the arc) so why not use that cable. Here is my solution for that: This is 3D resin printed and is the second revision. First was just to check for hole size, alignment and if it was fouling on anything but it was way too shallow. This version still had to be sanded a tiny bit but it fits nicely. I did make a 3rd and 4th version which is incoming to clean up the design a bit and give me some more internal room. The earpads above are simply stuck on with some blutack so more on that... For the earpad mounting, there two problems there really. None of mounting hardware was included and anybody who had changed the 009 pads knows just how fucking stupid that mounting setup is. I also wanted to use non Stax earpads (not paying 300$+ for pleather crap) so here is what I came up with: Same idea really but I added a spacer between the plate and the driver housing so there is room to slide the lip of the earpads underneath it. The two layers of the PCB sandwich are visible there (along with the production number as I forgot to have it removed) and it works nicely. I could have made this from aluminum but it wouldn't have cost roughly 4$ then... This is the fitment with some random test earpads and standard 1.6mm PCB's. Works just fine and I can't find any issues with baffle seal... quite the contrary really. So here we are, the MA-009 This set of earpads has already been replaced and it takes a matter of seconds to swap them over. What a novel feature... Now what was the true goal for all of this, well besides having some fun doing something new... make a set of 009's I would actually want to sit down and listen to. Now this project is far from over but here is something novel... a SR-009 that has some actual bass output. They are still forward sounding but it has been diminished by a large extent. I can use these for hours quite happily, even at my usually higher volume levels. The decision to use 2um mylar was to try and tame that forward edge and it has been partially successful. A stock set of 009's is terrible on most music I try them with, this one is mostly good with just some tracks which show how bad that stator design really is. There is this slight forward sheen over everything and it simply has to be the stators as the rest of the headphones has so much in common with the 007 overall design. Now the major issue is driver stability as the left diaphragm really likes to get stuck to the stators and I have to open up the driver to get is back on song. I might have gone too far in sealing them up but I wanted some bass dammit!! I will make some more test diaphragms and see if I can make some which can handle the pressure of going on the head energized while giving the sound I want. For now I'll just use this pile of parts to make some music... So to end off... if anybody has a set of 009's with blown drivers that are collecting dust... hit me up and I might want to buy them.

Robert Earl Keen's Greatest Christmas on Earth John R Miller opening https://archive.org/details/rek20251209 https://archive.org/details/jrm20251209

I won an album today. Sharon Mansur's Trigger -- which is jazz fusion and unholy carp, this might break me -- it's right up there with Hiromi and Fox Capture Plan! Just listen to this shit:

Meanwhile, in San Rafael , it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

My plate was almost as decadent

Al and I just prepared Eggs Benedict for the Mayberry compound. I may have overdone it. See you all after a brief food coma.

New Tricky album I got for my bday... feels like I'm in Highschool

Cheers Matt!

Have missed a few of our normal holiday events this year, so happy to see Mountain View went all out for last night’s tree lighting ceremony.

Had not made empanadas in a while. Decided that needed fixing so I defrosted some left over carnitas and that was that. Well, first I made a double batch of dough so I could make them more hand-pie sized. This was half of them.

More Vocals With Seasonal Rudolph!

Nobody Speak - DJ Shadow [feat. Run the Jewels]

Thanks every one pretty much a uneventful day ,turning 74 which was okay.

This is it. 🤷‍♂️

Saw some talk about this and decided to make a new version. use either the tube unbal/bal to bal board, or the solid state version result is about 125 watts rms into 8 ohms at thd of .005% will definitely drive 4 ohms with suitably large power supplies. transistors are standard pinout, so pick your favorite output transistors. the to220 transistors are mje15034/mje15035 perfect for so many things, including esl boost transformers. pioneera09.pdf

Glad this won best score and basically every other award it was up for. This rocks so hard.

Didn't want to embarrass those kids.

I'm gonna go with the The Princess Bride. Saw in theaters in '86 and have watched it periodically throughout the decades. Andre the Giant said he was happiest on the set of that film. It was the one time he felt normal.

Man. So many classics of his it is hard to pick a favorite. Probably Harry and Sally, but Stand by Me also right there for me.

Other people play music and I record it for the kind of recording I do this is in the running for the most d-_-b way to do it outside mics are dpa 4015 sub cardioids mics at a 90 degree angle to get room “space” next in are schoeps mk41v HyperCards at a 110 degree spacing to catch clarity and make up for being a little farther back than is ideal the football is a schoeps surround setup called double midside. It has a front and rear facing mic and then a 3d mic to add sides i can blend them or isolate any of them depending on how things turn out Sonosax recorder and preamp are basically the best battery powered options on the market, 12 channels of 192/32

Marcus Gilmore - "Journey to the New" Drum Solo (Nublu Performance)

My D200 is now over 20 years old, and while it shows its age, it still works. The 300 F/4 I keep permanently attached to it is from 1987, but it has aged like a fine wine. I use the combination to catch the local wildlife, usually without leaving my house. The "lawn crew." This is from September, and the Hathaway house has now seen major renovations. More on that later. An osprey looking for lunch. The corner of the mower shed is a prime squirrel snack bar. "I have an acorn, and you don't!" *honk* *honk* Canada geese don't actually like the pond that much, because it's surrounded by trees. They prefer Sweetened Water Pond, across the street. Even though it's a much smaller pond, it's open and they find id easier to access. With that said, the geese will sometimes slum it and land in Jernegan pond. The ducks are slightly more frequent in their appearances, but they too prefer the more open pond. A great blue heron taking off the moment he caught sight of me. Herons do NOT like humans. *gobble* Survived another thanksgiving. I took a bunch of photos of this fatso, but I've only one I've edited so far. Tune in next time for fall colors, antique lenses, and irritated kitties.

Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time by Jacob Garchik

Firm holiday party is in Monterey. Think I might bring the bike down with me. Don’t let a free hotel room go to waste, right? I’m not quite sure I have the legs for this vertical, but I’ll practice on Zwift this week.

RIP Marty DiBergi...

Windy Folk with a Brit twist. And just to shake things up

This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas

Warren Haynes Christmas Jam 2025

With Martin Parr’s recent passing, articles have resurfaced, including on a single vote getting him in Magnum. See how angry/joking photographers can get. “The other person to avoid was Martin Parr. As he put it, he was photographing a Magnum Annual Party for the first and last time – using a flash with a thing like a Styrofoam coffee cup on the end of it. My penile extension, he explained hopefully (but unsuccessfully) to any lady who passed by. I mean if Magnum had to hire someone to do the party pictures, did it have to be Martin? He’s clearly not as successful as we all thought, if he needs to do birthday parties, Bar Mitzvahs and weddings. I sincerely hope the Magnum blogsite goes down before he has a chance to post. I mean, if Magnum wanted to hire a party photographer, why couldn’t they have selected a nice ‘concerned photographer’ like Philip Jones Griffiths or Ian Berry to do them – photographers who photograph you with dignity and humanism and make you look good – instead of the appallingly ‘cynical’ and ‘ironic’ Parr? Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus did enough pictures at the MoMA of people looking demented without Parr adding to them.“

From an engineering perspective, hfm and stax differ in design in many aspects, the mesh stator alone cannot be used as a simple evaluation criterion. I would like to briefly discuss the following points: 1. Different Assembly Structures. Hfm uses glue to bond both spacers and stators, unlike stax driver house. Their assembly method also borrows from early Sennheiser and Sony design concepts, attempting to isolate the shell and driver vibrations through flexible coupling. In other words, if you disassemble any non-latest hfm headphone, you can see the driver is sandwiched between the EVA foam and panel on both sides. These three headphone assembly methods—"stax（driver house + rigid shell）," "senheiser、hfm（flexible coupling assembly）," and "completely ignoring vibration transmission"— will produce some differences in subjective listening, but these differences are not significant in the frequency response curve. 2. Different stator acoustic designs. Stax stator acoustic surface size is consistently significantly smaller than the diaphragm size. This design improves sensitivity a bit and also provides a gradient radial damping for the diaphragm. Limiting the acoustic surface size at the stator level is also one of the reasons why stax have a bit different image compared to other estats. 3. Different mesh counts. Stax uses lower mesh counts, such as 60-80 mesh in the Omega and x9000, while hfm uses higher mesh counts, around 300 mesh in the Shang JR/SR. Lower mesh counts result in more transparent sound waves, while higher mesh counts provide more uniform but higher damping, leading to audible differences in subjective listening, but there are no winners in this regard. 4. Different earpad and wearing design. This goes without saying, it greatly affects the sound of electrostatic headphones, and hfm and stax have almost opposite design philosophies. 5. Different diaphragm. Whether it's the thin film material itself(pet vs pps), the conductive coating, or tension, hfm and stax are all different.

Just checking out the local river as a result of the atmospheric River. not a good video and YouTube forced it to be a short which I hate. 🙃

It's the start of the Holiday Concert Season at the College of Marin

Which makes me think of...

Saw Mary Fahl last night, I think the 6th time I've seen her (7th if you count October Project in 1995). Wonderful concert, some of her hits, October Project hits, and covers. The whole second set was her adaptation of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, pretty stunning. I think this may have been my favorite show of hers. Got to chat with her and her husband after the show, and also met 3 folks with whom I'll keep in contact ongoing; just some amazingly nice people.

I guess I’m fully bought into the Fujifilm ecosystem. I’ll be visiting a museum next weekend that I plan on using the RF and Xhalf at. Will post any decent shots I take. I’m really looking forward to X-pan style panos.

I knew about street hockey but never knew there was street curling! Did you throw any stones?

Happy Belated Birthday birthday Todd.

Happy Belated Birthday Buddy!

We always play the SNZ Christmas album during the holidays.

Barber: Adagio for Strings & Violin Concerto - Schuman: In Praise of Shahn & To Thee Old Cause by Leonard Bernstein · New York Philharmonic Orchestra (1971) https://open.qobuz.com/album/oq1lj3jsx8huc Example:

Thanks all! Wasn't the celebratory day Karen would have recommended.... Fighting a cold, and did some work starting at 4:30am! But after all that, was able to chill for much of the day. Realized I hadn't done that for a long, long time - a few hours here or there but not for basically a whole day - and it felt damn good! Needed to recoup some but also just shut things off. And having Andrew's cat June purr in my lap was good medicine, too. Andrew ended up bringing in Thai for us for dinner; our planned excursion out will be a rain check.

I forgot I had a bunch of 1975 (50yo) albums in my queue. so Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy by Elton John (1975) https://album.link/s73nbgfjm47tw (hey look album link is working again) 🤷‍♂️ Example: I was going to share the title track which I like so much, but this is just prettier. I grew up with this album, my sister had this. I spent a lot of time with looking at the cover.

Been in the Seattle - Museum of Pop Culture (MOPOP) - many times - always enjoyed the building as much as the collections. Here is an exceedingly boring shot.

A while back, I bought a lot of camera gear because I wanted one specific piece. The lot was cheaper than the item on its own, because eBay. Included in the pile of gear was a Tamron "vacation lens" (all-in-wonder, not good at anything) 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD A010. Yes, that's its name. I was not expecting much with the Tamron and it's barely delivered even on that meager promise. With that said, I did have some fun with it. This past September, I took the 5D IV and Tamron for a walk around downtown EDG. This New Beetle is parked in front of this shop all summer. 78mm @ F/9, 1/200. Old Beetle! It made genuine air cooled noises, and belched out noxious exhaust fumes. 87mm @ F/8, 1/200. The main drag, which is one way, because it was built for horses. 70mm @ F/8, 1/200. Zoomed in on the same, 179mm @ F/7.1, 1/250. Main St. never meant to hold a Wagoneer. A rather famous boat, with Chappy in the background. 28mm @ F/10, 1/320. Speaking of famous, the Dolphin returns to harbor. 71mm @ F/10 1/320. Both On Time ferries, 109mm @ F/9, 1/320. A Series III on Kelly St. That's a pet pickup truck I see in the summer behind it. 195mm @ F/7.1, 1/200. The line for the On Time, Daggett St. 97mm @ F/8, 1/160. Mose St. is two way, and has parking. It's even less suited for Wagoneers. 97mm @ F/8, 1/200. The Connaught House, now just another goddamn rental. 109mm @ F/8, 1/250. North Water St. 179mm @ F/7.1, 1/250. A cute MG and absolutely garbage bokeh. 223mm @ F/7.1, 1/320. South Water St, which I have callously ignored for 20 years now. 87mm @ F/8, 1/200. September is still vacation for some. 43,mm @ F/8, 1/250. The Tamron is not a very good lens. It covers a large focal range and not well. I had to work over many of the above pretty thoroughly to get decent results. I also had a bunch of shots that were not really worth the effort to salvage. Tune in next time for Vineyard wildlife and some seasonal colors.

The war and treaty at the bijou in knoxville

On No Kings day, Claire and I made an exception for Kingfish, aka Christone Ingraham. He's an amazing blues guitarist and a great singer to boot. I was very happy to hear some great blues and if the video works for you, it was a blast when he walked out into the audience while playing and ended up two feet from me. IMG_7503.mov

Ubuntu 25.10 was just released (October 9), too - probably worth upgrading the test system eventually (in my experience, new releases are very buggy for the first 4-6 months) - alternatively, Ubuntu 25.04 or the older 24.04 LTS will be more stable: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/10/ubuntu-25-10-new-features And of course, Flatpak doesn't work out of the gate: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/10/flatpak-broken-ubuntu-25-10-apparmor-bug For what it's worth, I am tech-scared too.

I just upgraded my mom's mini-PC to Win 11 today, with Win 10 ending support this week. You can pay $30 for one more year of security updates, which was my original plan. But then you NEED to create an MS account, and use it to login to your machine. That was a no-go for my tech-scared mom. Upgrade went fine, though. Machine is a bit slower, but it'll hold for a while. I had a little fun with Ubuntu. I got a Celeron-based Chromebox for $25 from a used Electronics store in Maine a few weeks ago. I was able to download & install a new BIOS for it, upped memory and SDD drive ($50 total), and loaded Ubuntu on it. Still a tiny bit slow, so TBD if I'll keep it like that. It was just fun to play with the innards and BIOS of a computer again.....