n_maher

I really appreciated the time and effort that the author took in explaining how the different components were selected. I may very well have a go at building it with a different input tube. Otherwise there's the ubiquitous gain-clone type amps, I've got one of those completed but have never cased it up and never applied power, yet another thing to get off my bench one of these days. Jebus, I've got a lot of stuff sitting downstairs.

I was going to start out (and have some of the parts to do so) by building the boozhound labs 6SN7/6V6 speaker amp. This was mostly because I wanted to get the theory behind the design at the same time rather than just reading directions and stuffing a pcb. This build is currently on hold until I get some other stuff off my bench but I really hope to get to it this winter. And I have no idea how it would sound, only that it'd be pretty cheap to build ($300ish IIRC) and parts and tubes might easily be transitioned to other projects if I decide I don't like the way it sounds.

I believe you lost him right there, Reks.

First, congrats and good luck on your new venture Ethan. Second, what sort of friends and family discount are you planning.

Happy Birthday! My you find yourself enjoying at least one of your favorite things today.

Last I knew a couple people had done it but those much smarter than me advised against it since there's no provision in the circuit to do so. The optical was always meant to be there, the man'f just decided to leave off three parts and not have it active. It's literally one resistor, one cap and the TORX module.

If either of the above had rolled off anything that was to an audible degree it'd be measurable, right? I have yet to see information of any kind to support that a pot not to mention stepped attenuator has frequency response altering characteristics. Whether or not they affect the perceived sound is certainly something that I've observed but call me a skeptic to freq. response claims.

Let me know if you need anything tested Haj, I picked up a tester a couple of weeks ago and have the hang of it now. I found a couple of bad tubes in my Wheatfield batch, good that I'd never used them but bummer that I bought bad tubes that were supposed to be good.

Not to mention that yours now has an optical digital output.

I think that's less a reflection on the K340s and more of a statement about our relative spending thresholds when it comes to headphone gear. Most of us are (w/ the exception of jay perhaps ) don't really expect them to compete against the $1000+ crowd of headphones.

I probably wasn't clear enough in my original post. What you do is install Musicmatch onto the host PC, add all of your music files to the Musicmatch library and then close the Musicmatch software, never to be used again, it's the friggen devil. The SMC simply connects wirelessly (or wired, if you wanted to for whatever reason) to the PC and uses the Musicmatch library file to create a directory structure for itself which you can then browse directly from the unit. It works almost exactly like the SB3 albeit in a more crude and less polished manner. But hey, what the hell do you expect for $60?

Me too, but I've got two other meters that also perform just fine for basic functions. I'm guessing that all you're doing during the bias adjustment is measuring voltage, which just about any meter should be able to do with enough accuracy to get the job done.

Grawk, I wouldn't go internal with the source, but that's just me. Too many trafos in too tight a space, just asking for trouble. And damnit Stephen, why'd you have to take the thing apart? I know what I'll be doing this weekend now. Say goodbye to PCB mounted crappy RCAs.

Fair enough, I guess I see a preamp as one of those things that should be very easy to do well.

Seriously, if you're going to use the analog outputs for any period of time build even a simple regulated supply (wallwart/TREAD), I think you'll like the results. amb measured the stock switcher, it's terrible.

You don't need a Fluke, or anything particularly special actually. You should easily be able to find a serviceable meter for $50 or so.

Why wouldn't this work, since it does essentially the exact same thing an SB3 does, right down to the fact that both the analog and digital outputs are remote volume controlled?

I thought about putting this in the DIY forum but mostly it's about a modded new source, so here it is. Full credit goes to Brain Donegan (of Twisted Pear Audio) who showed me one of these when I was at his house picking up some other parts. He also pointed me to the thread at DIY Audio where some guys had figured out a nifty little mod for the units, more on that in a minute. In stock form this is essentially a poor man's Squeezebox. It's setup to work with a MusicMatch library file and allows you to stream mp3's from your PC wirelessly and connect it to your amplification device of choice via the unit's analog outputs. Not all that special until you factor in three key points, one, that these things can still be had for around $60 if you hunt a bit (at least that's what I found the two I bought for), two, that they can be quickly modded to have an optical digital output and three, that with a piece of software called tversity that will transcode your lossless files so that they can be streamed via the SMC. So, for about $70 (including the parts for the optical mod) I've now got a second wireless source that'll do lossless, not that I need two but I wanted to have a trial run before modding Ian's. I'll probably end up selling this unit at some point or modding it further, who knows...

Donuts are also the weights that baseball players put on their bats to warm up. I assume that's what he's talking about.

I'm really curious, has anyone ever really compared two like amps one with a PCB and the other PTP? This strikes me as one of those complete bullshit statements, no offense purk, there's just no logic behind it. The only way I can see there being a difference sound would be if one used silver wire to connect the components in lieu of the standard copper traces on a pcb.

Deadwood - Season 3 - Episode 12 It is a crime that this show is gone...

You are one among many. And Mikhail has never been shy around me about showing the insides of his amps. At the first Boston meet that I met him at he had populated pcb's on display, they were very nicely done. Also, PTP wiring always looks a bit ragged unless you go insane routing everything.