ironbut

Excellent point! They should put that in a "testimonial" on the web site!

The Audio Circles forum has some excellent coverage of the show. Of course these are member pictures and impressions so the impressions should be taken with a grain of salt (other members generally know the preferences of the folks writing the impressions so their mental filters are running accordingly). The stickied ",.. Member ,.. Show Coverage has tons of excellent pictures. Rocky Mountain Audio Fest

I'm sorry to say that I agree with you 100% Andy. Unfortunately, when it comes to computer audio, the only places I've found with good info have been the Pro Audio forums and there's quite a learning curve to understand what the hell they're talking about there many times. The last couple of upgrades of PM have been bug free (afaik). I use memory play in hog mode with no dithering and most of the other stuff shut off for most music. For classical (I have lots of 24/48 files) I also use upsampling with the highest fidelity option.

I've been using the Pure Music player for a while and I like it. I demo'ed Amara 4 and, straight out of the box, I enjoyed the Amara's sound better. After dicking around with the settings on PM for a while, I founds some settings that emulated the stuff I liked with Amara and considering the price difference, I've been sticking with PM. I like the way you can tailor PM to whatever you like and while it was pretty clunky for a while, it's pretty stable now. I'd still prefer to have the option of native flac support but until iTunes supports it, it doesn't matter much. I still listen to analog of one sort or another the majority of my "pleasure" listening time so spending a ton of money on a computer based player for me just doesn't make sense for me. I'm glad to see an open source player with audiophile aspirations hit the scene. I'll download it and give it a whirl (I saw the Stereophile blog and I'm glad this thread reminded me to download it). "Play" isn't too shabby sounding and I listened to it for a few years.

Me too! Hey JP, be sure and say hi to Doc. He's going to be up in the Magico/Maritani Consulting room showcasing tapes and a killer analog>digital archiving system. They're going to feature a Pacific Microsonics HDCD processor, a Zalman TNN300 dedicated music computer(all SSHD)/ Mykerinos card with Pyramix software from Merging Technologies. I had a chance to play with it and it's not too shabby for digital.

If you're thinking about taking a taxi, get some guys together to split the fare. It's a long ass way and it'll cost mucho $$$ to do it by yourself. ASR's right, the security line and just getting to your gate can take a while there too. It's one big ass airport! I'm sorry I won't be able to get there this year again but money-money-money!

You may have already seen this behind the scenes photo expose David. For anyone who hasn't, the photographer narrates his experiences shooting the fab 4 during the shooting of "A Hard Days Night". Behind the Camera with the Beatles - Photo Essays - TIME Note the heavy phase shift during some of the song excerpts!

Yeah, Corea, McBride, Haynes and Kenny Garrett were the group at Monterey. Just fantastic,.. I think Haynes stole the show! Blades was drumming for Billy Childs,.. the Kronos Quartet joined them for a etherial commissioned piece. Really nice stuff. I just love watching Blades do his thing.

Hmm, OK, I thought that the link would bring up the player but I must be missing something. Anyway, the waveform that comes up when you click on any of the above links is actually an MP3 so if you want the good stuff (24/96) you have to download the original file. All you have to do that is click on the downward pointing pointer in the toolbar above the waveform. 143MB so it will take a bit of time.

I'm trying out this "not so new" music uploader so I thought I'd try and paste a recording I made here. The file is 24/96 so it's a biggie (no,.. not you spritzer!). Let me know if you have a problem with the listening or viewing the player. This is my first try with it so if it doesn't work, I'll delete the post and try again. Like I said, this is a 24/96 aiff file so I'd like to hear some feedback from folks with a decent dac regarding the work I did in post. Jazz orchestra 1 by ironbut28"> Jazz orchestra 1 by ironbut28

Isn't that something! And that band,.. wow! Kinda puts a dent in the old "kids now days aren't making music worth listening to" litany. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it there this year. But what about those Giants!

I think that Nebby's right. For the most part, those rattling tubes aren't anything to worry about. It is worth taking a good look at the bottom of the envelope just to be sure there isn't some metal part that's fallen off. But, I've got lots of rattling tubes and I've yet to find one that has anything in them that could short the electrodes.

Hey David, IIRC, it looks like the wait time is reduced as well. I wonder if Craig found a new assembly house that takes less time and charges him less for the same level of work? In this economy, I bet that kinda service is getting pretty cut throat! (it's not like aerospace is booming right now and US assembly has to compete with the whole damn world too)

If you go to Hardly Strictly on Sat., do not miss Trombone Shorty on the Star stage. He rocked the house at Monterey this year (twice!). Maybe I'll see you there,.. I'm sure that Michael Romanowski will be there for part of the weekend too. Keep an eye out for him.

I see your point Beefy. That's just me imposing my neurosis on other folks,.. sorry. I guess I'm at the opposite end of scale. I have one amp that I'm sure I've made over 50 changes to in the last year and a half. But, I'm still learning so I do lots of trial and error.

"If it don't stink, don't stir it!" In other words, listen to the stock caps for a while, then, if you want to change something about the sound, try exchanging the stock ones for some film caps. The stock electrolytics sound remarkably good and several folks who've upgraded to Solen/Axon have reported very little difference. After (if) you upgrade the caps to film and you find the mids-highs are somehow lacking, you can try bypassing the main caps with 1-10% (uF same voltage rating) caps. Which caps you like is entirely up to your tastes and associated gear (and wallet). Be advised that the effect that bypass caps have depends a good deal on the cap you're bypassing and the circuit. Some caps don't work very well together and some circuits just don't lend themselves to using bypass caps at all. In both cases, you may find that a musical line will have the sonic characteristics of one cap, then when it moves across the "crossover" frequencies, the sound will suddenly change to the characteristic sound signature of the other cap (in other words, a loss of continuity). Always try and get the sonics you want without bypassing. There's always some phase shift when sending the signal through two different paths. It can be very small but all phase shift within a signal is smearing. Nebby, 500 hours isn't the defacto burn in for most caps but for some like Mundorfs, some ollers and most teflon caps it takes at least that much time for them to settle in. I gave 500 hours as the time that whatever caps and other upgrades you do, everything should be fairly well settled in.

Which Erse caps did you use? Have you tried those in any other gear? Keep us posted on how they end up sounding *after 500 hours or so).

Whoa there Nebby! You know there are laws in this country about the size of knob you can use with a given deck plate! It might be a good idea to have "Fish and Game" make a little visit to your listening room. Just giving you a hard time Nebby. It looks great with the black on black.

With dark stains on soft woods it's pretty hard to avoid those kinds of blotches. The softer spots just suck up the pigment so you end up with twice as much stain in those places. One way to reduce that effect is to sand the crap out of the wood with 220 grit or higher. Things like UV rays and crap in the air will "wear" the softer areas on the outside layer increasing the differences in the wood density and opening up more pores which result in blotching. Be careful to "always" sand with the direction of the grain. Crossgraining forms crosshatched scratches which aways stain twice as dark making them stand out. From your picture it looks like you may have crossgrained the outside corners or not removed enough stain. Of course, folks do that on purpose sometimes to give the "aged shellac" look. Different stains also help. I like gel stains. Gel stains don't penetrate into the wood as deeply. Like most stains, you apply it and wipe off almost all of it. There are several companies that make it but "Old Masters" is pretty good, comes in lots of colors and you can usually buy it in small cans. As far as stain types go, I think you like what you're used to though. The key to getting good results is to try your entire process on the inside of the base. Now that you're at the point where you're considering sanding and starting all over you need to take a spot inside and do what you've done on the outside of the base to find the best method of getting back to square one. That's one nice thing about the way the chassis plate just sits on the base. You can do anything you want and not have to worry about masking anything off. So, once you have a decent sized patch of the inside just like the outside, experiment away. If you can't find a way to rescue what you already have on the outside, you'll be able to see the best way to get rid of it on your sample.

Yeah, if the amps running for an hour and it hasn't snapped a fuse, I wouldn't worry about that. You might consider putting some taller feet on it. I've been using mine to burn in a new pair of headphones running it 24/7 for the past week. When I do that, I usually put the amp on 1/4th inch squares of wood to increase the air flow from underneath. That seems to decrease the heat by about a half. I've got some cheapo rubber feet that I keep meaning to install on mine that doubles the height from the supplied ones.

I don't have an IR thermometer but I just felt the bell on mine (which has been on for 10 hours) and it's not too hot. I used Rustoleum American Accents paint that I had lying around. As long as the paint can be used outdoors the temp should be no problem. I've put bare legs on lawn furniture that was way hotter than my bell is right now. Just be sure and scuff up all the surfaces that will be painted with some sandpaper (that includes the edges) and put some good primer on it before you paint.

Everything looks pretty tidy. It's really hard to see any particular solder joint without the ability to move the amp around to see it at different angles. As long as the solder flowed onto the different wires/terminals/components and the fillet is shiny and without any peaks, they should be fine. You may have a little trouble fitting the CCS in between those output caps but where there's a will,.. With point to point connections, you may find that you have to move things around a little bit if you end up with some hum (from getting the signal wires from the RCA jacks to the pot too close to the filament wires) but that's something you have to experiment with yourself. It is worth taking the time to shift the signal wires around while you listen to to the amp with the volume maxed to find the best spot and use some cable holders to keep them there. Once you install the Speedball, you should find a way to secure those caps since they do put a strain on their leads and the terminal strip they're connected to. And depending on how close the caps leads are to anything else, you might want to cover the leads with some tubing so they won't make any untoward connections. You can use the insulation from any spare wire you have.

It's probably better if you wait till after the Speedball is installed. Heck, you never know,.. with a little tube rolling it could be perfect for your tastes!

Having bad channel imbalance is pretty common with well used tubes now days. Lots of gear just uses one half of the twin triodes and so when that half is done, the whole tube is pretty much history. I do myself a favor and just toss tubes like that. Funny, I just pulled a Bugle Boy 6dj8 out of my preamp with the same issue and now I can't remember where I put it! If you want to check out the sound with used tubes, be sure and buy them from a reputable dealer who has a stake in keeping his customers happy. Unless you have an eBay tube dealer that you trust, I'd stick with guys that have a web site. I don't think all of those guys that sell on "the bay" really do the testing they say they do. I've gotten some totally DOA tubes from ads with decent tests and lots of positive feedback.

There are a few tube rolling posts on "that other site" and the Bottlehead forum. Those big sprague lytics insert an unknown into the equation since I'm not sure what the sonic qualities of those might be. Most of the well documented experimentation has been with 100uF film caps or the stock Panasonics. It's still in the early stages of what works best IMHO. I think a good place to start would be a nice Mullard 12au7 or a CBS/Hytron 5814a and a Tung-sol 5998. You just might find that you won't need to go any further (with the Speedball installed).