spritzer

While waiting for my parts to arrive it was time to clear the batteries and do some more damage to the chassis... I'm growing ever more annoyed by the rear mounted power switches on my gear and a power indicator is a good thing for somebody like me who hasn't slept a good nights sleep for over a year now. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and here it is: Matches nicely with the titanium volume knob. I also replaced most of the caps in the PSU after the whole transformer episode plus put in some slightly smaller EPCOS units.

Fire up the boards and zero out the offset and balance. Not much more to it than that...

One doesn't just jump the putrid shark...

With a PSU this well designed the type of transformer isn't a big deal. Not that it is a big deal with lesser PSU's either...

Yay, my parts are finally on the way here from Bangladesh!! Mouser does get props for great customer service and they even dug up the phone number for the bakery and called me when my email wasn't working. Wait... what!!??!! I demand parts to upgrade my unit to the newest spec!! On a second thought the non-PEEK units might be rare and collectable... Which version soundz bettah??

Almost 0% carbs I do peel off the skin when I eat it but there is nothing wrong with eating that either.

That is indeed dried haddock and some of the healthiest snacks you can find. It's just a tiny amount of salt and protein. The other stuff... ehhh it has some herbs in it as well...

I'd be in only if SumR wasn't already making my transformers...

I think we are all depressed to some degree though not as bad as the Finnish. The real problem here is that 100 years ago we were amongst the poorest nations in Europe and now we are the richest. Despite the economic meltdown and all the bad things it brought with it the living standard here is still very high. This brings a lot of problems since some things change quickly while others stay the same. Lack of roots is a real problem here. Another issue here is that we are pretty much a class less society in the normal fashion as money doesn't buy you better schools, better healthcare etc. People can advance based on their family (not family name though since we don't have them) but it's mostly due to who you know rather then who you are. There is also the massive safety net of the welfare state where you can fuck up pretty much everything but it will all be made better for you. In the US there might be just a bit of resentment to say the least. It's not that cold though. I certainly would never need a snow blower or even see much frost below -7°C or so even during the worst winter can throw at us. Yup... Due to tradition this stuff is mostly consumed in February since that's when food stocks were often running low and it was almost impossible to get out to sea.

The problem we have is being a nation of alcoholics that are easily distracted so when Saturday night rolls around we all get absolutely shitfaced and forget all our worries. We also just don't give a fuck about pretty much anything. One of the things that amazes my expat friend Stuart isn't that we have a lesbian prime minister who is married to her wife in a church, no the astounding part to him is that nobody seems to care one bit about this. She is by far the worst PM we've ever had so plenty of opposition from pretty much everybody yet this is never brought up in a negative light.

To say I'm defrauding the state of something they are due has to be one of the most retarded arguments I've ever read. The simple fact is that the whole customs structure here is as unfair and unjust as they come and run by people who should be taken out back and shot. Take for instance the ubiquitous ipod. They are by far the most expensive in the world here and the only reason is an extra 30% tax since you technically have the option to record with these things so they class it as a sound recorder. The iphone on the other hand has no tax (besides the 25.5% vat) yet has all of the same features plus being a phone. There are around 90,000 ipods in circulation here but only 15000 were sold in Iceland. The lost VAT alone dwarfs what is gained by that 30% tax yet they won't back down and change it. Ohh and the real clincher, anything that is not an Apple ipod yet has all the same features isn't taxed with that extra 30% tax... Another example which I was told about last week. So this company imports wood burning stoves and classifies them as heating appliances. That's what they are used for in our cold climate and they are very popular in all the houses we have scattered around the country side. Years pass with no problem and then somebody from customs sees this and decides wood burning stoves are for cooking and thus have to carry an extra 25% tax. When pressed for how this was a stove for cooking and not for heating they claimed it couldn't be used as a heater since it didn't have anything connected to it that distributed the heat to surrounding areas. IR rays apparently don't count and the company was forced to pay that 25% tax on every unit they had sold over a 4 year span. One can also buy an oil filled stove which is plugged into the mains to give some extra heat (so it does exactly the same as the wood burning stove) and there is no tax on that... One more... TV's are considered a luxury item in the customs laws and carry a 30% tax (same as audio gear) yet if one goes bankrupt then TV's are considered a necessity and it is illegal to seize it to pay ones debts. To say that everybody cheats would be an understatement and it is on both sides of "the law". Why this stuff isn't fixed in a nation of 300.000 is beyond me though. Perhaps I should give our lesbian PM a call and talk to her about it. It's not like she isn't related to me or anything...

Indeed. Even with the BHSE here I still use the KGSS 95% of the time.

Superglue does work well on that. Pretty much the only thing superglue does well...

That's why Kevin is indeed the bestest. I have to track down why the bass sounds a bit odd but otherwise it isn't a bad dac. Still haven't tried the super-duper USB input since I can't find a long A-B cable. Nice to have a remote control for the stepped attenuator...

Have you replaced the o-rings on the rear side of the drivers on the HE60? If those are broken then yeah... they sound like crap. Congrats on getting the amps up and running guys. I'm waiting on some parts and then I'll do further damage to the chassis since I can't just have the heaters to show the bloody thing is on. I was thinking about bottom mounted LED's under each chassis but I might just stick with a latching vandal switch on the front of the PSU. Assuming it fits...

This is the problem with the release of any product that is so hyped up. To make matters worse we have people who have unrealistic expectations due to lack of experience with similar products. Just look at the whole shit storm around the HD800 which was mostly kicked up by people who clearly had no idea how Sennheiser builds headphones. Add to this the whole "newer must be better" BS and it is a right mess... As for HPA, sure I could have been nicer or more diplomatic but that's really not who I am. I call people out on their BS but I also have no illusions that I'm somehow immune to the same scrutiny. My gear or my impressions are also not holy or beyond reproach. Hell, what was the first thing I did with my new 10K$ source, even before I had heard it? Have Kevin rip it apart and give a firm "mehhh" verdict. That's indeed why HC is such a great place, people are called out on their crap but it doesn't go any further than that.

That one was 100% stock. Lovely headphone too...

Sleep is overrated...

If there is a feedback loop which adjusts the input voltage then it should be fine. The sensitivity of these sets is above 100dB for 100VRMS so they will be pushing 115+dB at their breaking point, well out of range. Some people are more sensitive to this then others but while measuring this will be easily evident. I'm more worried about how the bias and ballast resistors will alter the sound even though the change in bias is relatively tiny.

Happy Birthday Marc.

Because the drivers are wired out of absolute phase compared to the Stax sets. The HEV70 might be inverting which is why they did this. Best way to fix it is either install the Stax plug properly or use a an adapter that is wired correctly. One thing that should be noted about these phones (HE60 and HE90) is that there is potential to damage the drivers while under testing. The HE90 clearly states in its specs that max input voltage is 1000V P-P which the BHSE will easily reach when fed a high enough input voltage. Now under normal usage this wouldn't be a problem but testing does expose the limits. What is the output voltage of the test gear Tyll?

Indeed but I deal with this in my business as well (baking). Cheaper can't possible be better and I've found that the general public has very little knowledge of how the retail business actually works (markup, dealer costs etc.). Stax are notoriously cryptic and I've had much better luck with Sennheiser in this regard. There certainly doesn't appear to be a new Orpheus in the works...

It's the age old issue with every consumer product. If you want to be taken seriously then you have to have a price to match. No way in hell the HE Audio Jade cost anywhere near 1500$ to make but since it was setup against the SR-007 then that was the price range it had to be in. Also one of the reasons why the Koss ESP950 is never considered as one of the greats. Far too cheap at 650$ with an amp...

For me this is just yet another instance of HPA throwing out "impressions" with no handle of how things work and with dubious motives. Even if we look past the ludicrous claims of power and take these impressions at face value (i.e. moar loud, moar bettah) then would anybody here not note the gain of the amp, the output voltage of the source and whether the connection is SE or balanced? After all, these are all factors which directly have a say in how loud the amp is. Two amps with the same gain (say 60dB) will sound different even off the same source if one is fed a balanced signal and the other SE just due to the different output voltages. Now there are other factors which come into play such as whether the source is really balanced or if the balanced output is simply fed through a crappy opamp phase splitter like so many of the Japanese players (Esoteric for instance, even for the silly expensive stuff). Now add in different sources, no direct comparisons and even "I once heard..." and you end up with pure nonsense that feels a lot like the crap we are trying to get away from on HF. Others have also pointed it out to me that these are predetermined impressions for what ever reason he may have. Stuff like the "009=he60" certainly has no basis in reality, ditto for his comments on the KGSS. Certainly that particular KGSS since it is just a bit special. Who knows but I for one have seen just how crazy Larry is and there is a reason why he was on my HF ignore list for a long time. Now back to the LCD-3, it on a balanced Dynahi vs. the 007 on a KGSSHV would be a very interesting comparison.

Not sure, could have been in that Stax video or something one of the distributors forwarded my way.