spritzer

Very nice read. The Omegas have a similar family sound but even more control and less of a "sound" of their own. Deeper bass, soundstage depth (well as much as a headphone can pull off) plus a much higher level of comfort. Those leather earpads are just beyond comfy. The only "problem" with the Omegas is their demand for better designed amps and insatiable need for more power. Now we never really need all that voltage swing something like the KGSS will give us but it does mean the amp is just idling at normal listening levels. The SRA shouldn't clip at all but I'm not sure how linear it really is once you start pushing it. As for SR-5 earpads, I got a bunch of them from a Japanese source in 2007 but I just checked and it looks like they don't have any left. Now you could try some similar earpads like those designed for the Denon 5000/7000 headphones or even the SR-007 earpads which are roughly the same size.

That one looks like Antonio's unit but I don't think we ever confirmed what the 3 primary wires are. They could be a 0-100-117V taps or one of them could be the ground wire for an internal shield. Only a look under the small PCB and a DCR test of the primaries will tell us what's what...

It's caused by trapped air trying to escape to equalize the pressure. Put the earphones on and with music playing, press them gently towards the head... I don't recommend doing this with the HE90, it's a bit unnerving...

The really odd bit about the Beveridge speakers is their single ended nature.

RIP Fred...

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Matt!! I approve of the doughnuts....

Happy Birthday!!!

No, I love my new knob. Tice industries really should branch out into titanium...

Yup, he needs to remove the front panel to secure the screw though. A bit of a pain but the modular construction of Stax gear makes it easier.

Fair point but swapping in another tube type changes a lot of other things besides just the output power. I take it no adjustment is done to the amp besides changing the tubes?

Something like that...

Well ideally I'd want to fit an amp like that with an active cooling system. Think amp with a freezer attached... It's the only way to get silly power levels from Class A. All the electricity here is green and renewable so I can waste it at will.

Happy Birthday!!!

There is onething we could build that would make the T2 look very small, a liquid cooled Class A speaker amp...

One must remeber one thing about BNC, that there isn't just one standard out there. There is also a 50 ohm version which most of the higher end connectors seem to be designed for... That basically covers it but Toslink has its own problems but not the more advanced optical systems. I for one just use a transformer coupled BNC system with a true 75ohm coax.

A better question would be, what the hell did KG pull that thing out off? Now where is the pic of that insane multi kV supply you sent me Kevin?

Yeah, the fuse blew for a reason. Meets and B22's don't mix well so taking pix of the amp boards for use to see could be a good move. Look for charred parts next to the large heatsinks...

I'm sure it can be done and has been done with the large SS power amps. Is this part of some new collaboration with Rudi?

Ditto. Not great by any means but it didn't totally suck...

Hmmm I could go all Rudistor and attach power resistors to the chassis fed off a spare filament transformer controlled by a thermostat... "Forget preheating the valves, I preheat the chassis!!!"

One thing computers do very poorly is ground plus noise and other garbage riding on the power rails. I for one have a unit that offers the ability to use a separate PSU and there might be a small difference compared to powering it off the USB bus. Now my PSU cost me absolutely nothing (old Iomega Zip power brick) so why not use it...

That's one of the reasons why this is a prototype. The heat has an easy route up and away from the boards but the main heatsinks might be a different matter. There is also the issue of warmup as this massive billet might take a while to heat up...

I do have access to some crazy expensive thermal camera if I ask nicely enough quite frankly I'm not too worried about the thermal properties of this thing. We'll see when I get the boards mounted though. As you might have spotted already, that riser in the side of the chassis doesn't work to fix the transistors in place. I'll have to a spreader and then mount that to the chassis.

The B22's have an annoying habit of burning up under some circumstances so ditto on it just being a blown fuse.