recstar24

Going for the BA will about deplete anything I have in the budget, especially something for a power amp, which may have to wait awhile to recover. My issue with the ZDT is that after talking to Craig about it, may be at best a lateral movement from my moth, though the 8 watts would sure sound extra nice on a set of cornwalls or my hornshoppe horns.

If anyone has comments about how the EC BA compares to the ZDT I would thoroughly appreciate them.

I remember reading in a post somewhere that Frank was nice enough to release his schematic for his DHT amp, the dynamic version not the electrostat version. I would like to take a look at it. I'll send him a PM at headfi as well.

Exactly - compare that to Ultimate Ears, they definitely had way more market appeal to where they were able to be bought out.

I agree...I received similar treatment during my experience with 6moons, considering I was the resident "headphone" user. To "them", "we" will always be portable ipod users. Its hard for them to take "us" seriously. Even if you guys show up there with kilobuck rigs, I feel they will just dismiss the rigs and say "you should put that money towards a real system with speakers". I am very cynical about this I am aware, but my experience with "that" group has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Speakers are great, but I feel headphone fidelity has as much merit as speaker fidelity IME. I understand that the goal of pseudo canjam is to help market real canjam and attempt to expose speaker guys that headphones can be serious forms of musical enjoyment, but I just don't see that happening...

Okay this is weird...I just tried to plug in my shures and voila they fit perfectly in. I swear when I tried this a month ago for the 1st time on the airplane it wouldn't insert fully...a week ago or two I used the stock earbuds to insert and check it worked, and now the shures fit fine. Blame me for being an iphone newb I guess:palm:

Mine definitely looks like the top one, and according to the case, it is a 3g. I do have 3g data access on my iphone of course. However, the plug of my shure se530's does not insert fully into it, which means there is no bass and it sounds phasey, though there is sound.

Weird...I guess I will have to take some pictures later on to show that I am not crazy (at least I think I am not crazy, of course if I truly was crazy, that would exactly be the kind of thing I would say).

At least with my iphone 3g and my shure se530's, correct.

Ok another iphone newbie question...I remember reading on HF a long time ago that the headphone jack is of a different size and that normal headphone/IEM mini plugs don't quite fit. Well that is the case with my shure se530's, then mini plug is unable to fit directly into the headphone jack of my iphone 3g (which sucked for our trip to San Daniego I must add). I believe I need an adaptor of some sort, anyone that can help out with a link would be great.

yes or I believe the technical term are buffered opamps as the opamp feeds a pair of transistors for output (at least with the HR2). The eddie current ECSS is in a similar branch of buffered opamp designs.

^^^ primarily the proto chimera axiom amp, the welborne DRD 300b's and a custom Electraprint 300b.

Yup

Note to self - sometimes sarcasm is hard to convey and/or interpret correctly on the intrawebs. Also, I looked at her feedback thread, and while I do approve of the posts, is that technically allowed in someone's feedback thread? I thought you could only post feedback if you actually were involved in a transaction with that person.

Rob I don't know your amp but in the 300b amps I have heard the EML 300B have always sounded better to me than the WE300B's. The EML has the same midrange richness and tonality but is much more extended on the top and bottom and a bit more transparent as well.

awesome.

I'm tethered! Cooooollllll.....hope I don't get charged extra for this EDIT: Surprised how fast it is. Considering how buggy my comcast modem and netgear router can be, plus how old the network card on the laptop is, tethering may be a feasible option for me.

Nowhere NEAR what the AVVT had. The EML's are much more reliable and stable. I have been using my EML 45's for over a year without a hitch and expect them to last at least another 5-10 years. I don't think any of the new companies can hold a candle to NOS American and British but of the new tube companies EML is one I trust, Shuguang from China is another one.

Be very careful with the AVVT tubes because they have reliability issues, you are much safer to go with EML, same thing as falkon above just posted. You'll notice the build quality on the AVVT compared to EML is much worse. I had on loan a set of the AVVT 2a3's and they would actually arc on power down, sending a huge pop through speakers/headphones (and actually blew out one of my original cicada drivers).

Which one are you referring to that sounds better, ZD or ZDT? (Excuse grammar nazi for coming in as the pronoun "it" is not clear enough:p)

I believe that the ZD/ZD SE also measures better as well. In the same review I mentioned Craig stated "The Zana Deux distortion, square wave response and bandwidth are better than any transformer-coupled amp." I haven't heard the ZDT but would imagine it to provide similar performance. I think if your happy with the ZD then that is just fine, unless you specifically needed the extra power.

The only thing that I have read about a tube design with actual published specs and measurements that seems to even come close to solid state stuff is here: Axiom Project Doug I sent you a link to that a while back, I would love to hear your comments. Some of it I believe you already agreed with, specifically the idea that tubes should be operated as constant current, variable voltage devices. The axiom uses plate choke loading where you have used a CCS for my amp and some of yours, I think a choke however has some non-linearities towards the extremes of the frequency response. I wonder what your thoughts are on his claim about the use of diodes in the cathode circuit reducing distortion. As for tubes vs. transistors the only applicable thing to this thread I can add is that when I asked Craig about it when I reviewed the original ZD, he felt that tubes captured the signal transfer characteristics that resembled music much better than transistors. He also said that if you were to compare the perfect output transformer to the perfect output coupling cap the transformer would be better due to lower source resistance, better drive and bandwidth and less loading of the tube. In the real world that is not ideal especially SE because SE transformers need big cores to allow DC without saturating but big cores means not as good coupling between the primary and secondary, and doing both is very hard and expensive. Good coupling caps with good dissipation factors are much easier and cheaper to build but some people's ears just tune better to one or the other. Again this is for SE pushpull is a different story.

As in the John Grado family? Or the John Grado family of custom headphones that sound good with bowls that don't drill your ears with piercing treble?

ALO Amphora;D