n3rdling

Those things aren't really physically capable of delivering decent bass due to the lamination driver design, which is why they had to use DSP. Even then, they could only increase the SPL of bass frequencies but impact is still limited by their small excursion.

Tyll! Wishing you the best in your new chapter in life. Your espionage traveling tank was a brilliant idea! I think it's a good idea to stick with your retirement plans for a while, but down the road (heh) you definitely have the personality to be a successful nomadic youtube vlogger if you so choose. Thanks for all the hard work you've done for the community over the years, you're the main pillar of the community imo.

If you're only hearing distortion in the bass at high levels that definitely points towards the headphone being the source of failure. As Pars mentioned, it sounds like the driver is nearing full excursion. The lower the frequency, the more excursion. You might also want to make sure that you're getting a proper seal with your headphones, as breaking the seal will lead to an emphasized resonant frequency, which is in the bass region, which will cause even more excursion than in proper operating conditions.

Built this last weekend. Peopoly Moai SLA 3D printer kit. Build took about 4.5 hours, pretty straight forward and well thought out design. For those not familiar, SLA style 3d printers are quite different from regular FDM 3d printers. Where FDM melts and extrudes plastic layer by layer to build a model, SLA uses a light source to cure a UV sensitive plastic resin layer by layer. The resin sits in a small reservoir, a metal built plate presses down to the bottom, and the light source cures a given layer. The reservoir then peels itself off the cured resin, the metal plate dips back into the liquid resin one step higher, and the next layer is cured from the light below. Repeat over and over until your model is fulled 'pulled out' of the rub. The two typical methods of SLA printing are dubbed 'SLA' which uses a laser and galvanometers to trace each layers' design, and 'DLP' which uses a DLP or LED screen to project the stencil of an entire layer. Advantage of SLA type is that it's a bit more precise/detailed, advantage of 'DLP' type is that it's cheaper and can cure an entire layer at once so it can be faster for larger models. SLA resolution is limited to the size of the laser beam, DLP resolution is limited to the pixel size but is jagged in comparison. As LED screens improve in resolution and get cheaper, I expect DLP to become more popular in the future. SLA can be kinda messy, smelly, and is slower and considerably more costly than FDM 3d printing. The resins right now also aren't that great mechanically - they're pretty brittle. The advantage they have is that they're WAY more precise than FDM printers. For this reason, they're used a lot by the dental, jewelry, and miniatures industries. I already have an FDM printer that serves me well for rough prototyping, but this printer should be much more useful for creating production level short run molds. I've wanted this ability for a while now but these machines are typically $4-10k+ all in, so this kit for a fraction of the price (~$1300) is a great deal. Those interested in something similar but even cheaper (~$500) might want to check out the Wanhao D7 or Anycubic Photon, both DLP type machines, but you have to be willing to tweak things a bit more. Anyways, enough rambling. Onto some build pics! Kit came in a big ol' box. Very well packaged. Some of the electronics and the two galvanometers. The laser shoots into those two little mirrors, which direct the laser up to the build area and control the X and Y positions for tracing out each layer. All put together. Liquid resin stays in that clear vat, aluminum build plate dips into it from above to control Z position and holds the model. Gotta keep the door closed so UV light doesn't start curing the resin. In action! It looks really cool in person. One thing I love is how quiet it is during operation - no problems letting this run overnight. The laser is coming in from below. Post processing the final part. This is just a little test ring to make sure things are working to spec and the build went as planned. Agitate it in IPA for a while to get rid of any excess resin, agitate in water to rinse off. Repeat a few times and then put in the sun or under a UV light for a while to fully harden. I might get an ultrasonic cleaner later for this step since I'm inpatient. Haven't printed anything terribly exciting yet, mainly just small calibration models to get dimensional accuracy locked in. I'll post something more interesting later.

Happy bday buddy!

I've heard them on multiple occasions in several iterations. -I know one time was at CJ and he had 2 sets there with different regular Ether pads. Those have much smaller openings, IIRC one had a square shaped opening and one had a round opening. The two versions sounded a bit different in the highs, one being more engaging. -They were at a Wikia meet in the Bay Area at HeadAmp's table alongside the 009. I know they got pulled off the floor like halfway through the meet; I'm not sure if that's because of the negative rumblings around the meet or because of technical difficulties. Pretty sure they were still using the old pads at the time, though @TMoney or @velvetx might know for sure. -Heard them at the Source AV electrostat meet along with the Shangri-La, HE-1 and Stax stuff. They were using the square shaped opening pads and were outperformed by all the other stat systems pretty easily IMHO. In fact, I much prefer Dan's own Ether and Ether C to the Ether E. IIRC the Aeon was there too but had a wonky midrange. Loved the pad material on those though. -Heard them at one other meet since then though I'm drawing a blank on which meet that was. It may have been the big SBAF meet? Not entirely sure which pads he was using at the time.

Heard the prototype a while back and not only was it super inefficient but it sounded about as bad as the early KingSound stuff. Pretty much everybody there with more than a week of electrostat experience agreed it sounded really bad. I know Dan improved the efficiency since but I have my doubts the sonics have improved enough to justify even a fraction of his asking price. We'll see as the impressions roll in, but my price gouging radar is going off.

Frank! Long time no speak! Happy bday

Saw Tom's 3rd to last show at the Hollywood Bowl last Thurs, been listening to nothing but his music since. They were great live, not a single filler song for the 2+ hours and they could have played another hour worth of singles. They did a 12 min version of 'Good to Be King' that was incredible. RIP Tom Petty.

RIP Glen

IMO the $55k one sounded about on par with most Lambdas and was beat out in a back to back against the L700 and embarrassed by the 007/009/HE-1. Those who complain about stats lacking impact would hate to hear that one. If that's the absolute best Fang could pull off, I'm afraid this won't be my cup of tea, either. It seems like his new business plan is to just release really expensive stuff to fool people into thinking HFM is on par with the best efforts from the likes of Stax and Senn, but I think his old model of releasing affordable boutique HPs from China made more sense.

Loving the knob

Went to game 1 with my friend who's a Clippers fan. My first time seeing the Jazz and I picked one hell of a game to go to! Bummed about Gobert getting hurt 17 sec into the game. Here's the game winner from my POV

Let's go Jazz! Can't wait for the national audience to see how special Gobert is. I'll be at Game 1 in LA.

I usually get most of it off by scraping a scalpel or credit card across the plastic.

A properly fitted qualia?

Speaking of measurements, just how much roll off are we talking at 20kHz and at what SPL?

The email I sent you some time back should have pretty accurate dimensions. Birgir, how can you tell the diaphragm isn't gold plated? The sputtered coating should be so sparse as to be almost invisible in order to get really high resistance. Did they use graphite instead?

Happy bday have fun with those drivers

It'll be interesting to see how people take this Durant has been pampered by the media his entire career, westbrook has always been the fall guy. If people turn on him, I don’t think he’ll take it well. He has super thin skin. This is 10x worse than what people got mad at LeBron about. You just joined the best regular season team of all time AND it’s the team that just took you out of the playoffs in heartbreaking fashion. A large part of the reason that even happened is because Durant played like crap. I feel bad for OKC fans. This would be like Karl leaving my Jazz in his prime to join the Bulls after the 97 finals. An MVP joining the best team in the league after losing to them. I’ve always said that it’s the players’ right to join any team they want, this is just kinda sad imo.

Thanks for the EtherE impressions, that's pretty much how I heard them too. They remind me much more of the KingSounds than Stax in terms of sound signature.

Is there anything like that available for a small DIY Stax amp? Say, +/-200V

Which doesn't really mean anything on its own. So are most of the PCBs for parts inside your cutting edge computer or cell phone. Just because something is made in China doesn't mean it's low quality, it's more about what you're willing to pay. In many (most) instances now, China actually has the resources to provide superior manufacturing, you just can't expect rock bottom prices. The 80s are over.

Does he have an accent?

The only way using a new set of plugs makes sense is if they plan to release a line of amps themselves or planned along with other manufacturers. I'm not sure how many amps they'll be able to sell considering they'll only be able to power Dan's stats. Seems like even a noob entering the stat game would be much more likely to pony up for the adapter and use a normal Stax jack amp to open up the possibility of using other stat HPs as well. I'm not seeing how changing the connector (by making it a different dimension or using wood etc) will make much difference in the overall capacitance of the headphones. The length of that bit is miniscule when compared to the overall length of the cable and the total capacitance added by the stators, and the dielectric constant of Teflon is already very low (2.1) and comparable to wood (1.4-2.9 in general).