spritzer

That thread is a gigantic clusterfuck and I just love NoNoNoNoNoNo calling me a child when I was just replying to Jude's accusations. Sure, I'm a hothead but If Jude had any clue then he'd ran for the hills when the sociopath (NoNoNoNoNoNo) agrees with him. I guess I don't have any idea how the Exstata sounds since my own version was better from day one (better PSU and higher rail voltages with hand selected, non Fairchild, transistors)...? What many people don't know is that Jude's utter lack of understanding amps and their design caused Single Power to claim a bit more victims back in the day. I posted a thread a full year before I got my ES-1, stating serious concerns about the ES amps based on internal pics and talking with some of the owners. I pointed to all the known issues, single filament supply burning up the tubes, parts way out of spec, improper bias supplies etc. Same day Jude stepped in and removed the thread when Mikhail complained that these were all lies. Mikhail claimed he had done extensive alterations to the SRX circuit and Jude bought it all. I offered to send all my data to impartial designers and have them look at it (Pete and Ti were a couple of names thrown about) but no, change a few resistors and it's a whole new circuit and minor details such as 400V caps seeing 800V isn't a problem so the thread was never allowed back out in the open. I didn't have a ES-1 here to "verify my findings" so things were allowed to continue as if nothing had happened. We all know how that one turned out... My point about the SR-009 is that it's a very impressive transducer, certainly one of the best in the world so if one isn't used to this level of clarity and lack of distortion, your findings will be of utter amazement. Same deal with the HE90, plenty of people have been mesmerized by it and never spotted the obvious flaws. Doesn't really matter what amp you use them with, the HEV90 is certainly no feat of engineering and the early examples are just piss poor IMO. As for HF, I really don't know why I bother to go there any more. Most of the PM's I get I never bother to reply to and most threads are just the same useless crap they were years ago.

Just going by memory the speakers are about 100x100mm and the diaphragm-stator gap should be around 0.65 to 0.7mm.

Yup, bias of +1200V for the PS1 and PS2 series, -1550V for the PS0. Crazy levels but then again these were originally speaker drivers fixed to the plastic frame.

It is, I don't think anybody has heard what they really can do due to crappy enclosure design and crazy power requirements. The latest transformers have a ratio of 1:120 which is five times what Stax were using... Now for the second problem, find a set of Floats that fit my head...

What about it? For the stylus to be able to track properly then the groves must be within certain limits, not too big and not too small. To achieve this with full frequency response (or close to it) then a EQ curve has to be applied to the signal before it goes to the cutting head. This curve is then reversed on playback.

The whole "vinyl is better" being pushed by the younger generation is indeed being driven by people who have never heard digital done right, only crappy mp3's or cd's off some minisytem. I'd love to pass a digital source through the RIAA eq twice and see if people like the sound better then...

I'd say the "moar watts" argument isn't as straight forward, at least if we look at the amps out there. The LCD's are sensitive enough so voltage isn't the issue but how many headphone amps can supply any real amount of current into 50ohm? Same problem as we have with the electrostatics, a Koss E.90 can swing a crazy amount of voltage but there is no current to back that up. The ouput stage is biased at 1ma but no hope in hell for the PSU to keep up with that. That's why a Dynalo can drive the LCD's but something like the Single Power Extreme will fail horribly.

There is no way the LCD's don't have back emf since it's all down to how the diaphrams interact with the air around them, the effect of the diaphragms mass (which is small but still substantial in this context) and how the various structural modes interact with the drivers.

Ahh the things I'm responsible for... As Kevin said, going past +/-600V would be a very bad idea since the amp would have no problem burning up drivers. On the plus side this one has no problem driving Jecklin Floats...

As with everything in life, nothing is free so while we get ruler flat impedance from the planar drivers then we have to deal with the back emf instead. This has proved to be substantial enough to upset amps so it should certainly be taken into account. The ringing people are reporting with certain amps (OTL tube amps etc.) is caused by this to some extent. When Kevin got my LCD-2's he reported back that they needed current and not voltage (4V rms being way too loud) and I concurr, you need an amp which can deliver the ever so elusive current. Low output impedance is also a must which rules out most tube amps. High bias Class A solid state amps being the natural parter then. I'm getting good results with the Dynalo but a Dynahi should be even better, the new version even more so. Some good speaker amps wouldn't go amiss. Know anybody who owns a Pass XA-30.5?

Rather simple. The 2A input current is a bit odd but something like a LM338 based psu would work for this.

...but is it any better than the >100$ amps you can buy with the same circuitry let alone something that is not a dirt cheap chip amp? That is the bigger question...

The energizers work from pretty much anything. I regularly use a 10W Class T amp (very optimistic 10W at that) when I can't be bothered to connect some of the "proper" amps and it sounds just fine. I must say though that I wasn't very impressed by the WEE. I just don't feel that it is a upgrade over the SRD-7's and I have a large question mark over the quality of the transformers used.

You know what they say about assumptions... When selling audio gear people very rarely give compatability even one second so high output impedance sources are paired with low input impedance amps all in the name of using the hottest products out there. Same deal with the LCD-3, it was the headphone to have so naturally everybody wanted a set to demonstrate. Whether it was compatable or even sounded any good isn't really a concern. Just take the RWA amp "designed" for the LCD's. That's just marketing BS and couldn't be further from the truth.

It's probably off due to small differences in manufacture and different line voltages. I believe those SumR numbers are calculated and not measured though...

High-ish output impedance and these circuits don't like the back emf given off by the LCD's. We must not forget that ortho's have specific amplifier demands and a quad of OPA541's with a moar loud switch doesn't meet those...

I'm guessing you can't spot what's wrong with this list? None of these amps would be considdered a good match to the LCD's particular requirements. The EC and Pinnacle are both good amps but I'd never use them with the LCD's, they simply aren't a good match. The rest, well there is a reason why we make endless jokes about those manufacturers...

Quality sound and RSA in the same sentence? Yeah... not happening...

The SumR spec sheet should even state the unloaded voltage.

What about zebra wood to drive the LCD-3 fanboys nuts...?

Well Fremer is borderline retarded so this doesn't surprise me.

I do have some ginger bread dough left over from Christmas that I was just going to store until next year...

Bread will always have mold issues in the end but there are ways of slowing it down significantly. I have thought about baking a case for an amp but it would be a lot of work since there is no way to do it without something to manipulate the dough into the correct form. I'm not sure if a braided bread would work since it is far too thick. I once did a 4 piece litz braided loaf though....

Same deal here, dac with a full volume control (remote even) yet I put a volume control on everything. Wait until you see my pathetic attempt at a wooden case until you call your stuff ghetto...

That does look brilliant. I've also been thinking about bulding a second F5 to drive the LCD-2's. I'd probably add a buffer on the the input with some gain and a volume control to make it fully self contained. I could also retrofit it to my current F5 but what would be the fun in that...