Leaderboard

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.

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.

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

I could listen to the tone of this instrument all night.

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.

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

More Vocals With Seasonal Rudolph!

clever huh? first time i have seen this. what it really is, is some local feedback around the current mirror. the lower impedance load forces the current source to supply more current to the drive of the output transistors. all those output transistors in parallel really form an extremely stiff drive current without global feedback. in single ended form, perfect for low impedance ribbons. and 30v/10a switchers are cheap. lot of heat however, 1.5 amp bias current. (total) i have a single ended gain stage to go with it. basically half of the balanced version with a cfa capable input section. input section can have local feedback as shown. or remove that resistor. updated to current version pioneera09pre.pdf

So sad about the Reiners..... What a legacy Rob is leaving.... RIP as well to the victims at Brown University and in Bondi Australia. I think we need aliens to come and spray the earth with "let's get along" mist. This is a fucking crazy world.....

This is it. 🤷‍♂️

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

I had to do it! I had extra shoulder bacon, English muffins, eggs and so on. I did cook more hash browns than intended.

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.

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

Alton back doing Alton things - Alton cooks food...

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

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.“

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.

Free endorphin shots here

It's probably a sort of pilot project - if they don't lose their shirts on Type I, maybe they'll fire up Chromium and Metal cassette production later. And what is this stuff for, anyway? Hobbyists, or real music production work? Will most of these tapes go into cheap Tanashin-knockoff Chinese cassette players? Are we playing with analog for analog's sake - should a new cassette transport include noise reduction like Dolby S or is it a solved problem already (Digital Compact Cassette)? Wouldn't it make sense for a new cassette transport to use direct drive instead of belts and fewer parts for reliability? I'm putting this Nakamichi Dragon vs. LX-5 comparo and a boombox review below just for reference - there is a small niche market emerging...

R.I.P. Meathead. He sure brought joy to my life.

RIP Marty DiBergi...

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

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. 🙃

Which makes me think of...

A Jecklin disk is useful where you can't control your placement and are using a stereo pair of omni mics. If you just spread them a foot farther apart, you don't need the disk. My setup is an apogee element, and a parasound phono stage with xlr outs. I've used quite a few podcasting mics, most of them are fine. The nice thing about the SM7B ($250-300 used) is it sounds good while rejecting almost any noise RIGHT at the microphone. It needs a lot of gain to not sound anemic. The SM58 is the classic vocal mic. Runs about $50-100 used. Built like a tank, sounds pretty good (it's the standard vocal mic for a reason), doesn't require a lot to work well. It's not that a dummy head is inherently bad, it just takes a lot of everything to make it work right. Schoeps and Neumann both made dummy head microphones that were remarkable, but even they were hard to get good results from. Mostly useful for binaural listening, which honestly, most people don't like once the gimmick of it wears off.

Dang it. But I recommend doing the tear again! Or I will ...

Mics good enough to be worth it aren’t worth it if you don’t already have them.

after all these years we have finally found a solution for the power supply modules at a rational price. which means we can make a transportable electrostatic amplifier. similar to srmxh,srm252,srm270 etc. 3 times the power, +/-400v power supplys, no obsolete components etc. designed to be mounted to the bottom as a heatsink with silicone thermal sheet in between. should be about $250 in parts unless you go nuts with the volume pot. not sure of casing yet.

The sm7b is a fine choice for a podcasting mic with some form of cloud lifter or a preamp that can add 60+db cleanly. An sm58 is probably also good enough and doesn’t require the extra gain. recording speakers with a shitty diy head mic instead of just running the turntable into an adc like you’re doing a needle drop will make for an experience that is painful to listen to.

LOL, I'm dieing. Seriously though, what if I use a legally obtained skull and fill it with something the same consistency as human brain matter? Please comment more as that was entertaining AF. Lol That is a Roland R-05, though it does kinda look like an old flip phone

For legal reasons, you probably shouldn't actually say it. Where you source the head is non of our business. Is that a flip phone strapped to a portable amp? I have no business commenting in this thread. Good luck with your measurements.

Some of the other places this topic is discussed have turned into something of a shit show, so I've added this. This forum may get some new members joining, so try and cut them some slack for a bit as they get acclimatized to what head-case can be like.

has to be one of the ones that can be set to 12v like this Amazon.com: FARSENSE USB C to DC Adapter,Barrel PD Trigger Cable(3.3ft) with 10 Connector Tips,USB to DC Power Cable can Switch Voltage by Pressing The Key,Support LED Display Voltage : Electronics

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

Didn't want to embarrass those kids.

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.

Ohhhhh shit.

Went to hear Wynton tonite .. spotted Paul Simon in the crowd

on the left, lectrosonics spdr 2 channel 96/24 digital recorder (or 48/24 with a fail safe recording 20db quieter) on the right sound devices 552 mixer/backup recorder and zoom f6 recorder. 5 channels of transformer mic mixer into 6 channel 192/32 recorder both setups cost me almost exactly the same

I'll add a sub forum for approved users once we're established where the details of less public topics can be discussed outside of the reach of google.