Craig Sawyers

The stunning Mae West. Born 1893 and died forty years ago today

The Reks nuke incident aside - we want photos!

The stunning Hedy Lamar, born Nov 9th 1914. Actress, beauty, and inventor (of spread spectrum communication).

I wish we had a thumbs up option. "Like" is too weak to attach to that Pie diatribe. Brilliant as usual, and makes the point that even dictatorships are remaining silent regarding the orange menace's defeat. And on behalf of the rest of the non-dictatorial world - hoo fucking ray! Bye bye to Trump and his miserable cohort of acolytes, and welcome to someone who is actually presidential.

First film I took my wife-to-be aged 18 was Zardoz, RIP Sean Connery.

I use the later (current version) black bodied Zu Denon DL103, and can confirm its excellence. I use the later (current version) black bodied Zu Denon DL103, and can confirm its excellence. Repeated sentence, sentence repeated.....

Quite a good interview with Tom Walker, the real guy behind Jonathan Pie. He actually trained as an actor, but realized that the best he could hope for was third centurion with three lines in a Shakespeare play. So inventing Pie was a really good thing for him. Although his rants seem spontaneous, he writes them, learns them and delivers them as an actor.

Very, very sorry Fitz. What a lovely cat.

They are crossed over at 120Hz, which has a wavelength of 2.9 metres. which completely ignores the structure (because it is so much smaller than the wavelength of the sound; the structure is acoustically small).

I'd definitely go the M-frame route from that website. Sure you need two drivers per side, but you get the benefit of (at least to first order) distortion cancellation. These were mine during building maybe 5 years ago.

There is quite a lot about OB EQ on SL's website here https://www.linkwitzlab.com/models.htm Regarding Qts, he makes the point that ~0.7 is desirable (hence your comment about high Qts I guess). But since you can EQ that as well, even with a low value.

I use the ones that Siegfried Linkwitz specified for the LX521 - the SEAS L26RO4Y XM004-04. Although this is a 10" effective unit, two are used in a W-frame firing in opposite directions and wired antiphase. The idea is that non-linear distortions are effectively cancelled. Two of the SEAS units has an effective radiating area rather larger than the 12" AE one. One thing you have to watch with OB bass drives is wind noise (yeah, yeah!). So for large excursions, which you always have with the EQ needed for OB units, if the back of the driver is inadequately vented you hear a chuffing noise. That is entirely absent in the SEAS unit. That is not such a big issue with drivers used in boxes, but for OB it is a biggy. Worth asking AE about this specific point before putting your hand in your pocket. Why do you specifically want a high Qts by the way?

Is that just his kitchen system? Else why is there a microwave oven there?

Happy birthday!

Have a great and very dusty birthday, Dusty!

They are different tubes. The only thing they have in common is the pin out and the fact they are both double triodes. Buy an AVO. The manual is quite clear about the different settings for the two tubes.

Excellent. Quirkily it has a tube output stage and tube rectifier. It was also fitted with an Audio Note paper in oil capacitor, which went leaky. Sent a message to Audio Note, the accepted that this was a flaw with that design, and sent me a pair of film in oil capacitors free of charge. That problem was sorted too. So really there was a series of problems with the design, but now everything works flawlessly, and sounds great.

Almost had exactly the same amps. Except I had an LS3, and exactly that power amp - the D125. Mind you because the tubes are fan cooled, I made sure there was enough space above it to dissipate the heat from a whole lot of 6550's. Sold them some years ago; they hold their value very well.

Someone either fast reverse or fast forward. RIP Johnny Nash. Incidentally if you do a US patent search for van halen, he has umpteen granted patents on all things guitar; hum bucker pickups, tremolo effects, guitar design etc etc.

Bloody hell. van Halen. RIP

The Tent seems to have a problem with the SPDIF output that stops a DAC from recognizing it. I have not got round to finding out why. I could I suppose just use the analog outputs the same way that I do with the Dynalo. Might be worth trying. I actually got it for fee from a guy who I did some audio consultancy for - he was strapped for cash and paid me in audio gear (The Tent, a couple of LFD amps, and ESL57's). The Tent did not work; the design was mainly surface mount, and one of the transistors associated with the clock had blown. That had taken out the astonishingly fussy CDM-pro spinner. I replaced the transistor with a discrete one on thin wire legs to the SM pads. Then Tent sent me a new CDM-pro mech FOC - which in spite of antistatic handling failed to work. I sent it back to Guido Tent, and he replaced it free with another one and sent it back; it has worked since. The manual for the Philips CDM-pro says that power rails and clock have to appear in a particular order, or death and destruction will happen. How they let these things out of the factory with such arcane requirements is bewildering.

For me it is that each headphone is associated with a different listening system. The T2 clone is fed from an Audio Sythesis DAC and a Meridian CD transport. The BH is fed from a phono stage, and a Thorens TD 150/SME3009/Shure V15IV with Jico stylus. And the Dynalo from a Tent Labs CD player. So it is what source I want to use, rather than a go-to pair of phones.

Sweet!