mypasswordis

Happy birthday, hope the remaining part of the day is less shitty

This thread is inspiring me to sell everything and buy a pair of HD600s to stick it to the man. In theory, anyway. In practice, I'm too lazy to package and ship all that stuff out.

Hey Steve, I also get what you mean but just for reference, the Qualia 010 MSRP was $3000+, the R10 was probably around the same, and this is not factoring in inflation. I am sure there are several other expensive headphones that are 20+ years old. So I would argue that it has been the norm, and we're just going through another cycle in history. There's no doubt the profit margin is way higher for some headphones than others.

I thought I was understanding where you were going, but maybe not. Now that the Sennheiser HE1 and Hifiman exist, does not all of a sudden make other headphones more expensive or less valuable. You can buy a HD650 (which you said you liked), same as you always could have. The prices of houses in Monaco don't alter your house's valuation. Manufacturers in any industry make new products and charge as much as they can, but that doesn't mean consumers have to buy. A lot of other markets are normalized in that the outrageously priced stuff simply won't be bought and will eventually stop being sold. This is not the case in audio, where people seem to have more money than sense or hearing ability, and smaller attention spans than that of small fish. There always has and always will be the Ray Samuels and Hifimans of the world; it just so happens that in audio people like these have no problem succeeding in the industry. Also, there is no denying the R&D work that is being done on *some* recent headphones in an attempt to actually improve upon the existing aggregate, for example the HD800 and MDR-Z1R. In fact, one could argue that before the HD800 and the explosion of expensive headphones that followed suit (and continue to do so), there was a slump in the high-end market and headphone R&D because manufacturers decided there was not enough demand.

I think the idea is that it really, really doesn't matter in life whether your audio playback system sounds better or worse than your previous one, or sounds better or worse than someone else's gear. Once you realize that (like I think a lot of HCers have), you can be totally happy with whatever you already have and not give a fuck about any of the new FOTM sheep hypnotizing stuff. I, for one, certainly don't care if I never hear a Focal or Hifiman (or Abyss or Audeze, etc) in my life.

Motorized toobs and knobs > cocktail bar table, that accounts for the 10% difference

I bought the black Delrin one on ebay from knoberik and haven't had a chance to put it in an amp but it looks good quality and Stax headphones plug in fine. It looks like the same guy is making the teflon one... not sure why he made a different account.

Good luck This has been on repeat the past few days. Glenn Gould (creator of "GPAADAK", the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds) died on October 4, only a few days after his 50th birthday. Oscar Shumsky was my former teacher's former teacher

I'd also very much like to know. I was in a similar situation... bought a Sigma Pro and SR-404 in order to do the driver swap, but never ended up doing it because both already sound good. The key to messing with Staxen is to never listen to the beautiful, beautiful music.

Keep your behind the bike shed happenings to yourself please

After buying many headphones from the '70s and '80s, I can attest that cables do make a difference. Most of the dynamic headphones cables I received are intermittent or just plain open circuit on one channel, and there is significant measurable impedance at the solder joints in particular. So I have determined 30-40 years of cable burn in is usually not great.

Thanks for arranging the group buy! Kerry, if you have use for/can make do with a single 50k Alpha pot, I think I still have an unused one I got from Birgir a few years ago.

The headamps are modular, but regular Dynalos are not. An interesting idea would be to lay the amp sections on their "sides" and have them plug in to a horizontal main board, like RAM on a motherboard. The main board(s) would have I/O stuff (input and output jacks and all that jazz). Or you could go full HC and do something like Ayre, with a single milled aluminum chassis breaking everything up into sections and all the boards laying on their sides.

I had big hopes for the MDR-Z1R as a Qualia successor after reading this statement Tsunoda Naotaka gave in an interview: Q: Which is better, Z1R or Qualia 010? A: Well, although I designed Qualia 010, and Z1R is designed by my protégé, I think Z1R is the better headphone. This headphone has Sony's latest and best research and technology put into it. You can't compare the tools and research environment nowadays to 20 years ago. But then I found out it was closed, and I don't like closed headphones. The magnet also seems to be weak relative to its bonkers 70mm diameter radiating surface, but that's probably why they made it closed, or vice versa. Edit: weird, it keeps quoting the entire rest of the post. Removed said quote.

I'm sure Steve is a fan of linear actuators, and their precision linear motion

What kind of linear actuator or other motor and setup would one need to make spoof of the HEV1060 knob and tube raise/lowering wankfest? Asking for a friend, of course.

At $4 apiece I'll take the gamble as well. Hopefully leftover doesn't mean out of spec

Yeah, that's the problem... only Birgir is crazy enough to buy 1000 of these things at a time Hey Birgir, would you be willing to sell some for the Dynalo mini builders? Seems very hard in general to source 4 gang audio pots so I think I'm gonna switch to the digital attenuators.

That's because normally you look at the pins from the bottom. You can't see the pins from the top. We're in agreement. Edit: actually even flipping it 180 degrees works, it's all a matter of perspective

I don't have a 10k alpha pot either but if it's like the 50k the third pin in each gang is not connected to anything. Second pin is wiper and 1st and 4th are the ends. I think I'm gonna end up just scrounging up some k170/j74 if the 50k alpha pots fit, easier than buying 1000 alpha pots

Many thanks, Kerry! @sbelyo want to change the Dynalo board to this version or add these to the group buy?

I don't remember how many years it's been since they changed the site but it still looks like a baboon lobbed its own shit at a wall, except the excrement is ads and reviews which smell less than actual shit but are surprisingly still shittier. What sound do donkey balls make?

If you have the chance to listen to a new Krell with iBias, I'd be interested in your impressions. Especially since these were probably developed after the D'Agostinos were ousted from the company. Check out this pic from Dan D'Agostino's new high-end company, especially the huge heatsink difference between the new and old (KSA-250):

If done right there is nothing bad about it. Krell uses something they call iBias in their new amps, and I'm working on implementing my own version right now (not knowing anything about what they did, other than whatever they mention on their site). Gotta love 65000 discrete volume settings

Above pic looks like a prop out of a Batman movie. Never have I seen as stark a contrast between the aesthetics of a headphone off vs. on someone's head.