spritzer

More like solid milled silver housings and shit like that...

I know I look forward to taking them apart.

Happy birthday Kerry!! Now go and build something!!

Since we are on the topic of Darwin awards, turns out Mr. Speakers is now in the front running as he has decided the Stax plug just won't do and we need something new... Ever since he posted this nugget of stupidity a few hours ago my inbox has been flooded with people wondering if he's actually retarded. So his logic is that the Stax plug is somehow difficult and expensive so something cheaper is needed. Well as it stands this is probably the cheapest safe connector possible for the voltages present and its super low capacitance also helps a lot. They are also cheap and pretty easy to make as well even without going the Stax way of using injection molding. They also last for a long time, my 1961 SR-1's still work just fine with everything original. I've never met the man but everybody who's talked to him about his new phones says he has astonishingly little insight into what actually makes electrostatics tick and this further confirms that.

Good point.... "goes off to draw up plans to build a 39k$ amp and then measure it..."

Yup...

...and that signal to noise ratio. Not possible in the universe and nothing can measure that low but amazing none the less...

I love it!!! I also need a mill...

The B+ fed through a voltage divider will work just fine. Just be warned that it is an epic pain to get the Stax sockets out of the chassis.

Bryston and quality? You surely are joking as Bryston is a special level of crap and bad engineering.

There are no windings there. The transformers are now 100V only.

Blown capacitors, blown transistors and other nice things...

Well they would probably ask him to do it and then fuck up the design afterwards...aka the 717. That would also be very different because they would manufacture it, why would they get some way subpar company to make something to their specs which has no good use in the signal path. Just doesn't make any sense. Much more sensible is that this is either pure and utter BS or they share the same distributor somewhere and it was them who asked for the "match" so sell more crap.

I think all of that is untrue in every possible sense. Why on earth would Stax get somebody else to design a preamp for them? Seriously?

It's not the problem if the tubes are within their operating spec.

I have the HF5's and they are quite nice. Silly level of isolation and perfect for casual music listening. Funny story about them, my regular walks usually take me through the grounds of the presidential residence. This is Iceland so no guards but the presidents chauffeur stopped me a while back for a chat (we know each other enough to say hi). He said "I tried calling for you yesterday but you didn't reply. I thought you were so full of yourself that you didn't want to chat!" I showed him the HF5's and just how much they isolate...

You can easily measure amplitude with a function generator and an oscilloscope.

I think the Darwin award might even be out of reach for this particular fucktard.

Not sure, things are moving very, very slowly...

Yeah that isn't likely.

Ahh yes he clearly missed out on not including the sorb!! It think that would make our world explode though, too much stupidity in one session...

Ding, ding, ding, ding.... I think we found the most stupid person on the internet. I mean seriously...how fucking stupid is this shit? This will utterly fuck up the sound of the 207's...

It's true that's been a while but these are also the only transformers that have shorted to the chassis. Not even some of the truly horrific shit I've gotten from China can lay claim to that.

I agree that quantitative measurements are ineffectual and cause more confusion than not. People look at almost identical FR graphs and think they should be the same...but they are miles apart. Draw the same conclusion for amps and you are equally fucked. Doesn't mean measurements are bad, they are just one part of the equation. As for all the inaccurate stuff, well very few people actually know how electrostatics operate down to the core. Even the people who build them often have no idea, they just cobble something together which kinda works so that's a good'n... Long charge time for the diaphragm? No, but sometimes yes. As for the 007 being so difficult, it's all about the capacitance and how it couples to the acoustic transmission. I also wouldn't call the 007 difficult to drive in the sense that they require heaps of power like that Hifiman ortho crap. A much more accurate description would be that they require a supremely stable and linear amplifier, one that isn't fazed by their quirks. Now this should describe any capable amp but we aren't talking about simple dynamics here so even small issues can have drastic consequences. It really doesn't matter what amp Stax make as people will always want more. I'm kinda glad that Kevin talked me out of designing a baby Carbon as people simply don't want budget amps. I've been standing on the break the best I could but what they really want is something crazy expensive and unique. One last thing, anybody claiming that all Chinese parts are bad are just idiots. The worst transformers I've ever used were SumR, none have ever shorted to the chassis like they did (two of them) but among the worst were also Chinese. Now the best transformers I've ever used were also Chinese. That's only because I'm willing to pay for the best, willing to go through multiple test units and let them know exactly what I wanted. Now each unit is perfect and just like every other one. Same goes for PCB's, there are some real dogs out there but once you find a place to work with that actually cares about quality you'll know that it matches anything else in the world.

Sadly not, he uses the other fucked Canadian transformer factory, Plitron.