n_maher

I can only speak for myself as a non-MOT but building power supplies doesn't seem like anything anyone is interested in doing. I get requests reasonably often (considering I don't solicit anything) and usually the only way that someone gets one built is to post a WTB thread.

Ugh, those are only an hour or so from my house... Must. Not. Buy.

Happy Birthday!!

MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT!!!! ;D :dance:

I'd just make sure you get one with adequate battery life. I borrowed one from a friend for a vacation and the kicker of it was the ~2hr battery life. Nothing like getting 95% of the way through a movie only to have the battery die. Oh, and the optional extra battery cost as much as the player itself!

Just slow, his amps are quite nice. He's also always been a really nice guy when I've interacted with him at meets. I just think demand has always outstripped his capacity and that he takes on way too much custom stuff that requires mountains of time.

I think you have to be a member to view that picture, or once again my browser refuses to show me anything other than the Audiocircle logo.

Peter, I'd say try and find a pair of K340s and have them reterminated with spades/bare-wire/whatever. I think at least a few folks around here have ran them direct from speaker taps with good results and even with the FOTMness of them you should be able to buy them and have the cable modded comfortably.

How hard is it to make a PBJ in the morning? Seriously, making your own lunch is one of the easiest ways to save a couple thousand bucks a year.

Why not just get one of those devices to provide timed-lights and have your DVD player hooked up to it? That way you could have the outlet automatically shut off at 2am (or whatever) to shut off the DVD player. I don't think it'd come back on when the outlet got power again and shouldn't be all that hard on the unit itself. I'm thinking something like this:

ok foobar people, i downloaded this this morning and it's up and running. Is there a way to get the interface to be significantly smaller, i.e. Winamp size so that it doesn't take up my whole damn desktop?

Ok, time for some more detailed impressions: The Pico - I actually spent a good amount of time with the prototype at both the Boston and NYC meets last year and knew full well what to expect. But what I hadn't got the chance to do at those meets was listen critically (both loud meets) so this time I brought my Etys and spent a solid 45 minutes listening in 'P' mode. My sentiments echo a lot of what has been said already, the amp's size belies its amazing level of performance. I had no issues with volume range or adjustment on both high and low gains with the Etys and in both cases the background was amazingly black. And as some of you know I listen at very low levels, typically in the mid to upper 60s, especially with closed cans. Rockhopper Beta22 - *sigh* I miss my beta. The first thing that we did with this amp was to wire up the 4-pin jack that Haj had Stephen include for future balanced consideration. Incidentally, Stephen did a great job on the internal layout of this amp. Anyway, I managed to not f anything up and had the amp back together in short order. Once again this amp thoroughly thrashed everything I threw at it. Both my HD650s and HF-1s sounded great sourced by the 840sea and I even briefly checked out Haj's K1ks on it but once I started with them I knew I'd better stop before I ended up looking for yet another out-of-production headphone. This experience reinforced my desire to get my balanced version up and running sooner rather than later. KGSS / Sennheiser HE-60 - Not much to add here, I simply love this combo. What was very good driven by the Stax trafo-box in Boston only sounded better out of the KGSS. I ran a wide variety of source material through this (piano, female vocals, Opeth) and I enjoyed it all. My motto for '08, must not buy electrostats.

Note that this time frame is also usually measured in years.

Just to re-emphasize what thrice said, with the previous amb designs permission was always gotten by the two builders I mentioned. What I found unique about this case was that given that the design is essentially being produced with Pass's permission it might be a bit different if someone wanted to build them for sale, which would be a bummer. I happen to think that both thrice and MisterX provide a valuable service to the community at large. I hope that in no way my comments cast a disparaging light on either of them since that's the furtherest from what I intended.

Just a few more pictures from today's little meet. The guts of the KGSS, NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCE! Some shots of Ian's place What's this, a Rockhopper power cord??!?! Don't jump kitteh, don't jump!

Yes, it does, just on the inside. As far as I know this was a one-off build that started and the head penguin's personal amp.

A few quick pictures, more later... The famous accent wall!!! call me Vince, eh? Vince's craptacular rigs Haj's Rockhopper Beta22 (sounding fantastic out if its now-wired 4-pin jack) Dave's Rockhopper KGSS (soon to have a new knob) Pico (holy hell this thing is small and makes big sound) The world's most absurd MS-1s? Ian's rig (should have made him move it since the rest of us all schlepped gear here) There were a few Grados in attendance (across the top - HF-1, HF-1, HF-1, botom SR225, RS-1, MS-1)

Yeah, having a good time despite the 4" of snow this morning that threatened the meet. Pictures are incoming for the impatient. Only impressions so far: 1. Holy crap the pico is good. I don't know what all the belly-aching over at Head-Fi is about with respect to issues using it with IEMs and volume control. It was fine with my ER4Ps and tracked evenly down to nearly inaudible levels. I honestly wish that Justin would make one that's about twice as big so it wouldn't get tugged around on my desktop, that's one of the few things holding me back right now since I don't need a portable amp, but a desktop version sure would be slick. 2. God damn I love the HE60s. :'(

Agreed, that is really good news. I do wonder what will happen if someone like Rockhopper or MisterX decides to build and sell the finished product. That might not go over so well.

You going to give him the one that you won in this contest?

I said tough, not impossible folks.

If you are speaking with respect to price than yes, the GS-1000 price stomps other dynamics. In terms of performance, sorry, not to my ears.

That's a really tough budget in my opinion. My experience has been (through friends) that at that pricepoint laptops aren't really worth paying for. You're going to get something that is absolutely stripped in terms of hardware and software and is really just built so that the company can advertise a laptop under $1000. It'll have integrated everything all sharing the same RAM and none of it using it particularly well. And the longevity of the thing will definitely come into question. You know what, I may have jumped the gun. If you could live with a used/refurb notebook Apple currently has 13.3" Intel Core Duo MacBooks for $749. That would probably be about the best thing that you could hope for.

Size/weight is another key consideration. Based on what you've said so far I'd think you could choose just about anything in your budget and be fine and for that matter stating a rough budget would help too. And I'd run XP if I were you until Vista gets a bit more support and a major service release from Microsoft. Any reason you're not considering a Macbook?

What are you looking for in a laptop? A general idea of what you expect to do with the machine would be a good place to start.