Craig Sawyers

Have a great one Dan!

That is a very good description. And of course the thing that is often missed is that what comes off the disc read system is very much an analog signal. It looks something like a noisy and several nanosecond jittery sine wave. The jitter comes from the focus and tracking servos work to keep the laser head in the right place taking account of disc eccentricity and out of flatness - and that is never perfect, hence the jitter. It is only after quite a lot of embedded processing in the standard chipsets that come with the mechanism that a digital signal we'd all recognise emerges. Reading several times and summing the results only works if this is done in the analog signal domain - so at raw RF level. If you sum N times, the signal to noise and jitter are reduced by root(N) - so summing four times gives a factor of two. I guess it would be possible to flash digitise at maybe 8 bits at a GHz or so, and then multiple read and sum on the fly, but it seems very hard work, and I'm pretty sure that Parasound aren't doing that. It is only after the analog RF data is processed and reclocked that jitter comes out of the equation. I'm not sure what Parasound's jitter spec actually is - psuedo peak to peak, or rms. I know that the jitter in my reclocked digital output (this is an ancient CDM1Mk2 mechanism and 1990 vintage chipset) is 100ps p-p, so around 17ps rms. That is measured on a Tektronix 7000-series sampling setup (7S11/S4 head and 7T11 timebase, 14GHz BW, 10ps p-p trigger jitter). Incidentally, the CD mechanism that they are using seems to be a car (automotive) unit.

I use tin-lead solder with 2% silver. The lead-free solders all have too high a melting point for my liking, and make a dry-looking solder joint. Plus they are susceptible to tin whisker formation - particularly in high voltage gradients. I notice that Cardas reckon that they have a lead-free solder that is eutectic, which implies that it should solidify without the dull grainy finish of regular lead-free solders - but I haven't tried the stuff.

Ouch! And here is a great set of flights sans crash

I'd agree entirely with that sound on initial switch on. 75-ohm mods give a very worthwhile improvement - but the one that really nailed it was removing the Murata pulse transformer and replacing it with the Lundahl LL1572. A good friend, long-time audiophile and one-time dealer, was across at the weekend. He compared the sound to a Koetsu Red, which is just fine by me! Some Scientific Conversion transformers arrived yesterday. So I'll have a play with those.

Or even this:

Now that is a scary thought - hoards with Birgir at the front wielding a battleaxe

Didn't realise that AC/DC's Brian Johnson is a Geordie. For those for whom this is jibberish, Geordie is a dialect from the North East of England, from an area maybe 30 miles square at the outside. It is where I come from, and after a few beers my accent is pretty much indistinguishable from Johnson's. Yes - he comes from Dunston, and I'm originally from Ryton. They are separated by maybe five miles. And just because I'm like James May, and an anal retentive at heart, Geordie is actually bastardised Scandinavian, from the dark ages invaders who came across the North Sea, and eventually settled.

That looks very plausible indeed. If it is, Cees must have turned off the digital filter entirely, because the lack of said filter is a specific selling point. Whoo! Let us know what you think. Just give it plenty of time to warm up; mine stays powered permanently.

That is because --- they are heatsinks So they are always a pain to solder - needs a really hot and high power iron for those joints. Craig

Well that was the weirdest goddamn evening. Yell from the kitchen - the casserole that had been cooking for three hours has slipped from my wife's hands and was on the (clean-ish) kitchen floor. So rising to the unhealthy challenge, and exuding confidence to stifle wife's sobs, I scooped it up, and with multiple filtering and manual extraction removed the shards of broken pottery. Smashed in some stock and red wine, boiled to reduce and kill off bacteria, and saved the day. After which I promptly lost control of a full glass of red wine and deposited it onto me, the sofa, a cushion and the floor. Mad dash with soft furnishing covers and clothing to the washing machine. I hope that is the end of this shenanigans for the day, It was like being in a Jim Carey movie.

Heh! I use this stuff regularly. Luckily General Finishes is commonly available here in the UK. I've been through several tins of their Danish Oil and Oil and Urethane Satin. Craig

That was stopped in the UK absolutely ages ago, because winos and alcoholics used to buy the stuff and die. So the only commonly available sort has a blue dye added to act as a kind of deterrent. Of course you can buy pure colourless methanol, usually from woodworking suppliers, but you can't just go into a high street store and get it. I've used the water based finish before, and it is pretty impressive how this milky stuff goes clear and hard as it dries. I tend to use oil or wax finish on furniture. I'm a wannabe french polisher, and can make a fairly decent stab at smaller areas - but I wouldn't like to tackle a large area like a dining table and expect to get a mirror finish. The great stuff with shellac is if you make a mess of it, you just wipe it off with meths and start again. If a polyurethane or catalysed coat goes wonky it is a much bigger deal to get back to the wood and try again.

Understood. Just wanted to make sure that there wasn't different terminology across the pond. In this case there isn't Oh -wait. Denatured alcohol - in UK-speak that is Methylated Spirits, or "Meths" (which has a light blue colour) or pure (colourless) methanol. Most cabinet makers just use Meths.

Check. I've been on a quest in recent years to see as many aging rock stars as I can before they drop off the perch (or I do). It is a major regret that I never got the chance to see Queen.

That is priceless! In an odd quirk of geography, Radiohead band members met at Abingdon (Boys) School, about three miles from where we live. Mind you Abingdon School is a so-called "Public" school, which actually means "Private" in that it is fee-paying. Only in the UK could that make sense. Currently about £10k per year. Founded 750 years ago. For a quick look, go to Google Earth and shove in OX14 4LB (us) and then OX14 1DE (Abingdon School)

By laquer, do you mean shellac (ie crushed beetle gum +alcohol) or synthetic?

^ I know exactly what you mean! I'm there too.

Well - that all goes to show that I know Jack shit about Russian! I did warn you guys - and thanks to our Latvian for putting me right.

I most definitely don't speak Russian, but the second word on the bottom sentence is Koralev, and the next word is to do with Cosmo(naut, or something). So it refers to Sergei Koralev, they guy who designed the USSR rockets that competed with the US in the space race in the 50's and 60's. On the top line is a word that is something to do with ModeI, so I suspect it is for a model or toy that is based on some early test rocket of Koralev's. That all seems pretty anal - for which I don't apologise

Hey man - have a great one!

"You looking at me?"

18k gold. Kevin - you sometimes leave me speechless

Looks like low voltage and low current. Which is fine for vanilla transistors, but no use at all for testing T2 transistors, which are all high voltage high current types. When I built my T2 with counterfeit 2SC3675's with low breakdown voltage (but still several hundred volts) I needed to throw a Tektronix 577 at them to diagnose why the T2 was in terminal destruct mode. And then to verify that the new ones were correct according to the specification. I just about had to replace every bit of silicon on the heatsinks (and as you know there is a lot of them!) and most of the LED's.

Heh. My wife has a Ford Fiesta. It has no point in common with that! Other than basic body shape. I reckon that I might have got into 5th gear by the time half that video was over.