mypasswordis

I was filled with nostalgia and googled fuglyphones... found an epic pic of the two fugliest headphones in existence, together in the same shot! Amazing. And surprisingly it isn't even Duggeh. Third ugliest goes to the Abyss so maybe the above guy could consider getting one if he doesn't mind spending $5000 on a half-finished piece of junk: And number four: Original Jecklin Floats don't even break top 5 ugliest anymore, amazing how fast technology moves!

You only have to worry about dust if you have to open up the actual drivers or if there are holes in the dust covers and dust got in (in which case you probably would have already heard some buzzing or squealing). See the infamous SR009 ant thread on HF for disassembly pics along with some pretty hilarious posts.

I'd keep them for the same reason! Damn, so sorry to hear. That's really the worst of everything. Maybe you can find another pair one day and a better friend to share them with. I think they're coming back down in price when you can find them because they've become so rare that not a lot of people have even heard of them. The pro bias version with the L-Sig drivers is a lot more balanced in frequency response, if you're into that sort of thing. Very interesting, thanks... not sure why they decided on closed headphones for a dipole driver, but they are the original designers of the AMT so I guess they might know a thing or two. Will keep a lookout.

Couldn't have put it better, totally agree. On top of that, wualta's quirky humor combined with his seemingly infinite knowledge about lots of different things made that thread really special, along with some of the OG regulars. I feel bad for the people that are just getting into the hobby these last few years. Loving those Jecklins and Sigmas (I acquired my own, natch).... Teams Fuglyphone and Not Too Extreme Tweaking unite! Are those Ergos the AMT version? Really wish I could hear a pair, but most people wouldn't be caught dead wearing one let alone buying it so I haven't seen any at meets.

<old cranky dude mode>As a somewhat OG member of the crew from the original Orthodynamic Roundup thread (started by the true OG wualta on HF), I'm quite saddened by the state of orthodynamics today. They used to be a fun, cheap way of getting into the planar sound and learning about acoustics through modding, guided along by guru wualta himself, without the huge cost of electrostats. You could feel good about getting a good deal on some vintage headphones for like $50, spend a few more dollars for some felt, foam, and blue tack for modding, and get sound on par with dynamics costing a few hundred bucks. Now, they seem to represent everything that is wrong with the audiophile world. Maybe that's why wualta disappeared from HF a few years ago. </crank>

Awesome! How does it sound? And what discrete i/v were you planning on using? You wouldn't happen to have some of the borbely stuffed saved up would you?

Been going through some of the old threads on old multi bit dacs. Is Filburt's favorite opamp THS4032 (with the fancy decoupling) still the one to go for if you have to settle for an opamp i/v? Or are there other opamps that are better now? I haven't been able to get Filby's modded Assemblage sound out of my head, ever since I listened to it.

Brings back fond memories of your ripping apart the pile of crap that was the HE audio Jade

Hehe I'm gonna keep it low key this time, Ken. Still never gotten a hangover before, and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Sorry for the aside but Jacob, have you found anything that helps with a bad back? Someone I know was rear-ended a few years ago and she also has a bunch of bulging discs and horrible back pain. I've had my fair share of injuries, thankfully none in the spine, and wouldn't wish the experience (including what passes for healthcare in this country) on anyone.

Sorrodje/Ali-Pacha, I don't think anyone would mind if you posted some updated measurements in the Stax thread here. Tyll only has a couple Stax measurements up on Innerfidelity, and some of us are big fans of vintage Stax.

The originator of the Superdupont mod makes his presence here! Nice first post. Was the SRM-727 feedback modded?

Happy goat simulating day!

Got some Chicago and Van Halen on deck after Joshua tree

I believe the rough plan is to go on a crazy HC adventure all of Saturday, try not to have too bad of a hangover that night into Sunday morning, when we actually go to the meet. So if you actually want to go to the meet then leaving later in the afternoon or evening Sunday would be best.

The dude needs help. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2016/09/16/gene-marks-21-percent-of-ceos-are-psychopaths-only-21-percent/?utm_term=.d380193c9429 The audiophile industry is definitely way above average, but even then 21 percent seems a bit low. Mylan, Wells Fargo, Theranos... the list of massive scandals goes on and on.

He also needs to keep race out of it. Chinese people are perfectly capable of making products that aren't horrible unreliable pieces of crap, and people of other races are perfectly capable of making aforementioned garbage. Audeze headphones are poorly built and need driver replacements at least once a year and the lcd3 and lcd4 are pretty much identical to the lcd2. There's ray samuels, Lampizator, jps Labs, cavalli, and a whole slew of other crooks taking advantage of people who don't know what they're buying. In fact it's hard to think of audiophile companies that aren't scams. Hifiman just seems to be the most egregious one at this point in time. I'm sure Tyler knows already but da bian means shit. I hope to never know Fang well.

That thread is comedy gold. 19 pages of people roasting Hifiman and fang suddenly showing up trying and failing to do any sort of damage control. Even brings up some unknown back story about some people at sbaf LOL

Has anyone actually measured and posted results about the claimed diffraction and turbulence caused by the stators of ESLs or magnet structure of dynamic planars? The distance from stator to diaphragm is almost infinitesimal compared to any human(ly audible) acoustic frequency. Even at 20kHz it's about 17mm compared to the ~0.5mm distance between stator and diaphragm. Hifiman straight up copied the Fazor design from Audeze with the Edition 6, and Ether has its "flow" magnet structure, so "fixing" it is clearly the FOTM. But how much difference does it actually make, and what are the tradeoffs? Clearly for the single-sided Abyss, which seems to the dynamic planar version of the Sonoma, the tradeoff is it measures like crap with a lot of even and odd order harmonic distortion that's very nonlinear (based on distance between diaphragm and magnet) and epic underdamping becaus no isodynamic restoring force. Maybe @arnaudcan bring some light to the whole situation. At headphone driver distances to the ear (maybe an inch or even less) vs. the size of the radiating surface, what exactly does the acoustic wave propagation look like with a planar? Can they in fact be approximated with plane waves, and how much is affected by the magnet or stator structure? Obviously the magnets need to be larger than stators so the effect is more pronounced. I did briefly skim over the HF discussion about the Shangri La using a mesh stator.

Is that you crappy?

I hope they did a better job of it than the people who did the Abyss, which measures horrendously as expected. And yet there's like a 300 page thread on the Abyss on HF....

The REF102 is series only and you need shunt. I had the same issue and used the lowest noise grade LM4040 instead of just ordering the LT1021 from digikey, but the LT1021 is still better. I just did it out of convenience.

^ interesting, will be curious to see how many more adopt it. I would love to see proponents of MQA attempt a single or double blind with 256kbps mp3, 16/44, MQA, and 24/96 versions of the same track. So would the people at Schiit and Benchmark, I'm sure.

I read a couple paragraphs beyond the first paragraph, so not much more. From what I read, you must have a DAC with the special decoder to hear an MQA file the way it was intended. Otherwise, it is just a 24-bit 48kHz file with noise on the 3 LSB, lowering effective resolution to 13 bits. The MQA file decoded claims to have "folded" into it the upper 48kHz I believe, so generates something akin to 24/96 (lossy). There is also some other metadata which tells the DAC what filters to use on the fly and maybe some other stuff, with some typical mention of the pre-ringing/apodizing stuff that Meridian love to talk about, and something about proprietary sampling/convolution. I just found this article after I wrote above post, have not read it yet but the title is pretty much as expected: https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa

They want to make you very aware that there was no r&d involved whatsoever so they can't be any less reliable than He1000 These new offerings are perfect for lastinaudio. Moar money always means Moar quality in audio, all he has to do is hear them once with his golden ears and spam the hifiman ad copy verbatim everywhere, then pony up $80k.