swt61

This is Fred. He's havin' a bad hair day.

Cut out the middle man!

I knew you two had some kind of relationship!

It will be interesting to see what ALO decides to do if anything, if this indeed is discovered to be Jennifer's reply. I can't feel but that he'd catch a lot more flack for doing business with this company, as he is definitely a member of our "headphone club". Either way she's done him a great disservice, and that's a shame. I'm not crazy about his cables, but he in no way has done anything to deserve being thrown under the bus like this.

I took my camera, but as soon as Marc opened the front door in a Red leather jumpsuit I decided to put it back in the car. I'm discovering I really like HD580s!

It certainly could be a fraud, but I'm not as convinced as you. This is quite inline with the type of personality she has shown thus far. If it is her she's going to find out just how much influence our little community, pardon me "headphone club" really carries. Now where did I put that Stereophile phone number?

I doubted that one would go unnoticed.

He's not kidding! It would have been comical if we weren't under a time crunch. First my transport wouldn't read CDs. This was a pretty easy fix, since I had recently removed the top to take pics for Marc. It was as simple as plugging a connector up wrong. Then after Marc hooked up the AES/EBU input on the DAC we hooked it up and got a lock light but no music. After trying just about everything Marc noticed that the ?22's heatsinks were cold. But the JT had power, because it would go through it's clicking noises when the knob was turned. Hmmm! Well after a bit of hair pulling (which Marc can handle fine, but I don't have enough of in the first place) Marc discovered that the umbilical cable was not quite all the way turned in it's jack. Man it was nerve wracking for a bit. Marc the umbilical is locking fine on both ends now after a little tweaking this morning. And Jim this came about simply because I wanted a little hotter top end to mate better with the Donuts and K340, and Marc wanted to own my soul. It in no way reflects on my satisfaction with your workmanship, as our latest project should indicate.

Today is most certainly a great day for audio! OK, I spent a good deal of time at Marc's place yesterday. The first thing we did was hook my transport up to the Opus DAC and gave it a listen. Well all I have to say is that I didn't even ask Marc to bother modding the Zapfilter power supply back to stock for comparison. It was very noticeably improved with the mods, and not subtly either. The major standout is the soundstage. It's absolutely huge. The ability to place instruments is phenomenal. I'm listening to Billie Holiday and it's quite clear that the DAC can pinpoint instruments much better than before. Oh, and I didn't mention that I'm not using headphones to determine this. I'm powering my new Omega Grande 6 monitors from the ?22's speaker taps. I'm absolutely gobsmacked! I've had these speakers posing in my little studio for about 6-8 weeks now, but this is the first time I've heard them. I had been quite pleased with my Paradigm Active 20s for many years, but these Omegas are in a whole other realm as far as I'm concerned. They have a liquid quality that's just so beautiful. I wouldn't call them neutral. They definitely have their own flavor, but it's absolutely to my taste. The mids are gorgeous! I've got a little work to do with placement, but I'm most certainly on the right track. OK back to the DAC. Marc replaced much of the wiring with solid Silver/unbleached cotton wire. The result is a top end that is quite a bit hotter than previous. However with my Chocolate Donuts, K340 and Sextett it was a great match, and a step in the right direction. With my HD 580 it was almost too hot, but not painfully so by any means and this may be a desirable result for certain genres of music. More on that after much listening. The big surprise were the woody CD3000. I expected them to be almost unbearably bright, but that wasn't the case at all. The top end was quite nice. The mids are a bit different on these headphones, but the bass is very deep. DT990 deep. They have a few similarities to stock CD3K's, but are a very different phone with the giant wood cups. The star of the show here was no real surprise. The mods have had a beautiful effect on the K340, and it's a little early, but I do believe they've regained their #1 status in my system. Marc waited for me to arrive with my CD transport built by our resident Circular Hole Cutter Tech, to determine exactly what flavor of AES/EBU it used. Once determined that it was indeed AES 3 Marc removed my RCA S/PDIF terminal and wired in the XLR jack. A benefit to this new input was the removal of a few more caps. The AES/EBU input is audibly superior IMHO, and I belive Marc felt the same here. Marc also built me a beautiful new 110 ohm XLR cable for the AES/EBU input, and a gorgeous new umbilical cable to go between the ?22 and ?22s. It's sleeved with a fiberglass sleeving that's really elegant. The ?22 was also rewired with the Silver wire (refer to Marc for specifics on this wire) as well as a second input added (switched from the back). I believe Marc performed a few other mods here, but he'd be better informed than I on these. Wednesday my new Consonance A120 Integrated amp is due to arrive, and I'll compare it to the ?22 for a speaker amp. I've heard great things, but honestly it's going to have it's work cut out surpassing the ?22. We shall see.

Happy Birthday!

Truly an impressive looking amp Nate. Can't wait to hear about it from the CanJammers!

Well I'm heading up to Marc's place tomorrow, so Sunday may very well be a great day for audio for me. Not only will the mods to the ?22 and Opus DAC (apparently modding the Zapfilter power supply paid great dividends) be a lot of fun to audition, but I've also got a pair of balanced 600 grilled HD 580s w/APS mods, gigantic woodied CD3000s and my Omega Grande 6 speakers that I've never heard yet. Well I did hear the modded CD3000 a year or so back, but not with my current system.

So how bad was the next day? And any new revelations with your system Mike?

Nate it must be a great feeling to give birth to a healthy amp with the correct number of tubes and traffos! (Hands Nate cigar) But I bet the trip through the birth canal was a doosy! That's a big boy! Congrats on a job well done and a great amp!

Wow! No kidding, that final pic is something to be proud of after the craptastic job that the first pics show. You guys did a great job repairing it!

No, I was just trying to jack with en480c4. I did know a girl named Kinnisue once though.

That's my Uncle.

Sweet! Congrats Nate!

Well you certainly make it look easy.

Cool little desktop system hungrych!

Big Yay here!

Exactly!

Are those the little Blue thingies that go on the Green thingy? Nope I don't think I have any, sorry.

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Guys this whole debacle has intrigued me so much that I have taken it upon myself to get personally involved. That's something I usually never do, but I just had to learn more. I put in a call to JenaLabs and had to leave a message with what I assume was a secretary. She assured me that someone would return my call. About 20 minutes later I received a call back from two JenaLabs technicians. After inquiring about the R-10 case in question I was hit by a barrage of unintelligible mumbo jumbo from one of them. The other was strangely silent. So the truth is I'm no closer to knowing what has transpired than you are. However even though the silent technician had nothing to say , he gave me an odd feeling that there was more to the situation than I was hearing from the other tech. Sorry I couldn't be more help, but I did discover that video conferencing is pretty cool.