dsavitsk

If someone is interested in taking the DSHA-1 for a spin for the purposes of writing a short review somewhere, I am happy to oblige. There are lots of places to do a writeup. Also, there is a new blog post for the first half of the Black Diamond headphone amp -- a project I am working on at http://diy.ecpaudio.com

Looks great, Marc.

Happy Birthday!

Does the DCR matter?

http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/15/19th-century-french-artists-predicted-the-world-of-the-future-in-this-series-of-postcards/

Can anyone recommend a good used watch dealer?

$6000 more?

The whole thing is basically an empty shell. My issue is that I wanted the feel of the Thinkpad, wanted to use a smaller X series computer as my main computer, but also wanted a large monitor. The external keyboard is the same as what they use on the laptops, but the shell does not offer as much support as a dense laptop body. So I was really filling it with goop in order to make it solid and heavy. The noise dampening was a side benefit. The hardest part of the whole thing was getting the case open. All of that said, it is still not silent. I think the only way you are going to not hear the keyboard at all is to go in the other room

I took a Lenovo Thinkpad USB keyboard and opened it up and filled the hollow bits (all of it) with Dynamat sound dampener. This is basically gooey tar with a foil backing. I then put a layer of adhesive rubber on the bottom. Keyboard is solid as a rock, and very quiet -- not quite silent, but better than most others I've tried.

@ jury duty ...

If you are traveling a lot, I'd take a look at a Thinkpad. I bet there is some way around here to eek out a discount on one, too ...

The Pickett Furniture/ecp audio Morkt Samfunn Console is up on Apartment Therapy as a submission in their 2012 Design Showcase!

Happy Birthday!

I'm sure you could send them to a DIYer to see if they can be fixed, or the amp replaced. Sometimes these sorts of things can be surprisingly simple.

Happy Birthday!

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/skills/how-to-build-a-homemade-levee

I'm working on this, too. I2C is built into the pi through a kernel module, so I am working on using it to control a Wolfson receiver to build the pi directly into a dac, along with other digital inputs. The handsome guy with the blue shoes in the front is me http://pumpingstationone.org/2012/08/nerp-meetup-08-27-12/

I'd not either. I saw them play in an old slaughter house in Dayton, OH in the early 90's. Great show. I saw Citizen Fish play there, too.

I very briefly heard the Audio-Technica W3000ANV and thought they were not too bad. Maybe worth a look.

I should add that non-proprietary/open source is a requirement.

I am looking for a good way to implement a music distribution system in a largish space. The space is ~10,000 sqft with several rooms and several levels. The space is a noisy workshop, so audiophile sound is not really a consideration. I would like to have multiple nodes that play music and that can be synchronized, or be used independently. The more wireless the system is, the better. I would like to accomplish two distinct things: - the first is to allow multiple users to play music from a central server to one or more nodes. - the second is to allow users to play music from a device (laptop/phone/etc) to send to the rest of the system. There is a large server in place that can run whatever virtual machine I like. But the nodes do not exist, and cost is a major factor. For the first part, I think the easiest thing is to run a central server (Vortexbox most likely) that stores files and runs Squeeze Server (Logitech Media Server). Each node will then be some small Linux device (Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, etc) with a sound card, a digital amp, a speaker, and SoftSqueeze running. That seems straight forward enough. The second part is the hard part, I think. One thought is some sort of software soundcard that could be installed that would broadcast sound to a network. Another possibility is a USB soundcard to plug into, or an AtoD converter that a user could connect the analog jack to the system. The issues here are broadcasting to a controllable set of notes, and not running wires every which way. Any ideas?

Low Z makes sense when speakers are badly behaved -- as most commercial ones are. But, headphone impedance is really linear, so it is not that important. Try listening to a Lowther, or a Fostex full ranger with a low Z amp -- it is awful -- unlistenable. So, the argument here is that dynamic phones are basically like extremely good single driver speakers. Tyll - I'll send you a gm type amp if you want to give it a try. Even KG liked it (though he says it isn't really a gm amp.)