dsavitsk

The L-2 is a hybrid in the sense that it uses both tube and solid state parts in active roles. But, the term is typically used for something that uses a tube for voltage gain and a solid state buffer, which is not the topology used. In the case of the L-2, as Nate noted, the tube is used for both voltage and current. Solid state parts are used for rectifiers, voltage regulators, constant current sources, and biasing shunt regulators. In other words, the tubes do the work, but the solid state parts set the operating points. Also, the clear up a point, the output transformer has 32 and 300 ohm taps (labeled lo and hi on the front). The transformers have plenty of inductance such that any dynamic headphone should be fine -- you just choose the one that is closest. At the extreme, I found that with 600 ohm Beyers, it was helpful to put a 600 ohm resistor in parallel (to make a 300 ohm load) to make them sound their best (and the T1's did sound pretty good, b/t/w/ -- actually quite a nice combination) through they worked OK without. Gain into 32 ohm is actually a little less than 5 -- just a bit over 3. Into 300 ohms it is around 8. These can vary slightly with different tubes. Practical power limit is a little under 1/2W, though distortion will be pretty high at that point.

Happy Birthday!

There is a comment after the review looking for some L-2 measurements. I thought I'd post some here. These are taken via RMAA at ~125mW output, which is 2Vrms into 32 ohms. That is very very loud -- louder than anyone should ever listen. When the level is more resonable, much of that drops into the noise floor, so take these as worst case. At any rate, THD is ~0.14% and IMD is ~0.12%. (The 60Hz bump is in the soundcard.) THD: IMD:

Thanks Tyll, and Nate, for the great review. I am humbled.

The fact that Koss made something less comfortable is not an argument in favor of the LCD's.

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QFT

That's no fun. Some of the best money I ever spent was on an endodontist and getting a root canal done right. Nothing like the year of pain, and the pain of having the root canal that the regular dentist did redone.

That would be sea men.

This is basically what I do. I use small metal spacers between the second piece and the front plate to recess it even more.

400% more open ...

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powerpoint?

For most purposes, it doesn't matter. By the time you use one up, which is realistically at least several years, you'll be able to get a new one that is much larger and much cheaper, and probably faster.

The deals seemed to dry up as the day went on. I picked up a 256 for my X201, but I need the space for running a bunch of VMs.

Newegg is running a 24 hour sale on Crucial M4 SSDs. They are all ~$1/G

You can get a T420 directly from Lenovo with an i3 for under $700 if you are pinching pennies.

I had to do a little bit of server reconfiguration today, so www.ecpaudio.com might be down for a bit. It will come back up as the new DNS settings are updated.

I do not think a single sentence in that opening paragraph is grammatical.

Color pictures from Russia ca 1907-1912 produced by using R, G, and B filters to produce 3 negatives which are then recombined to form a color image. There are lots more at the site.

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The sad truth is that one can probably do more good for the world by working as a corporate lawyer and spending 80% of your salary to hire 4 public interest lawyers than by earning 80% less and working in public interest oneself. Lots of backlash against the law school industry lately, and worth reading about before venturing in: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/the-bad-news-law-schools/?hp http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/legal-education-reform.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=american%20legal%20education%20is%20in%20crisis&st=Search

Have a great one!

Happy Birthday!