The Headcase Stax thread

[mypasswordis]

Damn, that pic needs a NSFLife tag. Way too many hairs on that ear to zoom in that close.

[swt61]

Well I wouldn't beat myself up too bad about that. He has made himself a legitimate target. In my mind I have posted Donald Trump's face on this clown, and that lets me rage without remorse.

Was responding to your post before the last, and yeah, that guy needs tweezers more than tubes for sure!

Edited November 29, 2016 by swt61

[Voltron]

Yeah, Dusty, don't lose any sleep over this one.

[Dave R]

We have a choice on whether to go on HC or not, I choose to because there are genuine answers to queries, ( as long as those queries aren't ridiculous ) with NO shilling, I'm also not worried about have posts removed unlike what happened to me on that shit site I don't need to mention.

Yes when I first visited HC I did get some unusual posts written about me after I was repeating myself about a certain amp, but that was before I learnt how HC works.

To those that don't like how HC is, my advice is stay on that shit site.

 

[Sherwood]

23 hours ago, kevin gilmore said:

fact is that the holo spring dac probably trounces every single msb product made and only costs $1500 to $2200 and is far better built. The power supply on birgir's dac is a massive hunk of crap.

I've been pretty interested in that DAC.  $1400 or so to your door if you know how to navigate TaoBao, which I do.  Unfortunately, I do not know anything about circuit design or build quality.  If it passes the KG gauntlet, I might just grab one.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Sherwood

[Sechtdamon]

Holo spring is also in my "upgrade" list. Too bad Dollar/TL parity is pretty f.ked up now. I had thoughts between Menuet and this. But After Dr. Gilmore approves it, there will be no doubt.

 

About cyber bullying him. Actually I started to feel bad too but, I was watching random It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia episodes, after seeing that scene, I started to feel sort of alright again.

 

"Nobody loves salting the snail, but she (in this situation "he") gives you no choices."

 

Edited November 29, 2016 by Sechtdamon

[stax fart]

I know it is much more expensive than Holo, but I'm drooling over the new Metrum Adagio, with the new DAC Two modules and the volume control using the DAC ladders...

 

EDIT: They will also launch an amplifier next year, called "Forte", to use with Adagio. To my clueless eyes looks like a nice product but you know, I'm clueless so worthless opinion, would like if someone with knowledge says if is worth it or not:

http://www.criticalsound.co.nz/products/metrums-forte/

Edited November 29, 2016 by stax fart

[Tinkerer]

On 11/28/2016 at 3:28 PM, kevin gilmore said:

i'm sure you can use a c2m1000 as long as you find a way to add some heatsink

So just two of those per tube straight triode replacement and enough sink to dissipate 5 watts a device? No diode and resistor between gate and source for feedback or anything? Just asking because I don't have a clue about the design end of things.

[kevin gilmore]

I think it should work as is. may have to adjust the value of a trimmer pot to get to zero volts output

[joehpj]

The owner of Holo audio is now developing a new flagship above spring. The estimated release time was going to be next year.

Another discrete R2R single board like dam1021 was called "hibiki" was also sold on Taobao. 

There are also a manufacturer called denafrips also making discrete R2R DACs.

If people are interested I could post some more information.

The main problem of those I think is those solutions couldn't achieve the noise level as low as single chip solution because of the accuracy and temp drift of the resistors. Correct me if I was wrong.

[Craig Sawyers]

10 hours ago, stax fart said:

I know it is much more expensive than Holo, but I'm drooling over the new Metrum Adagio, with the new DAC Two modules and the volume control using the DAC ladders...

 

I have a metrum Octave, their first DAC product. It reviewed pretty well (in fact excellent). And it does sound pretty good. But it is single-ended, and I've actually now gone balanced and use the DAC in my Logitech Transporter streamer. I feed the optical input from TV, and a network connection to the router (to NAS drive and Tidal HiFi).

But you know the thing that irritates me most about Metrum? They grind the part numbers off every bit of silicon in there. I'm pretty much certain they do the same in the Adagio, along with the branded modules. That shows a certain paranoia about potential plagiarisation that simply grinds my gears. The only other company that I know of that does this is Audio Research, and they replace the ground off discrete part number with a three colour dot code. In a sense I can understand that, particularly with FET's which might be coded to be band matched for Idss and Vp.

[Dusty Chalk]

ARP used to do that, too.

[Craig Sawyers]

On 11/28/2016 at 2:43 PM, Sherwood said:

Is that better or worse than a dog's dinner?  I need a hierarchy of British animal meals.

Just thought of another - being as sick as a parrot.

[Pars]

Ray (you know who) used to do that as well, or paint them. Just have Kevin x-ray them

[kevin gilmore]

a lot of times it is so much easier than that.  many of the chips in dac's have unique footprints and are easy to identify without having to resort to more unique measures.

The firmware in them however is much much tougher to extract, which makes sanding off the chip numbers even more stupid. Unless they are using super cheap junk opamps etc.

or 5534 chips for the i/v conversion.

[dsavitsk]

11 hours ago, Craig Sawyers said:

I have a metrum Octave, their first DAC product. It reviewed pretty well (in fact excellent). And it does sound pretty good. But it is single-ended, and I've actually now gone balanced and use the DAC in my Logitech Transporter streamer.

Have you tried just sticking a 600 Ohm transformer on the output of the metrum?

[Sechtdamon]

39 minutes ago, dsavitsk said:

Have you tried just sticking a 600 Ohm transformer on the output of the metrum?

Is it something like this sir?

To change single ended to balanced? It is surely more than simple conventer adapter; ground loop eliminator, but I've never seen (never search) such a thing before. Can you forgive me for my ignorance and enlight me more please sir?

Edited November 30, 2016 by Sechtdamon

[dsavitsk]

That probably works, though it might not be my first choice in transformers (not knowing what is inside). Lundahl makes things that will work, as does Jensen.

http://www.lundahl.se/din-unit/

http://www.jensen-transformers.com/pro-audio/

Here's an explanation of how to do the wiring: http://www.rane.com/note110.html

 

[Sechtdamon]

Thanks for the enlightment Sir. Much appreciated.

 

About Metrum 1st gen d/a's dac chips. A guy from diyaudio forum claims they are Ti DAC8581 (based on being voltage out, high speed, and industrial grade I assume). Well I'm not sure about this info but here is the link of the dac chip:

http://www.ti.com/product/DAC8581/description

Edited November 30, 2016 by Sechtdamon
Grammar

[dripf]

What can we say about the perception of sound coming from large diaphragms vs point sources? This lambda pair I'm listening to I suppose is large enough that higher frequencies enter the hearing system across a broader phase range than typical of headphones. Add to that the lambdas being poorly uniform at 8 kHz and from 14 kHz upward.

[spritzer]

While on the subject of crappy dac's... I was sent some internal pics of the R2R Lampazitor dac today (Golden Gate I believe but who gives a fuck).  Well let's put it this way, Single Power was better built than this pile of fail but what makes this utterly glorious is the actual dac...  So this is a multi thousand $ dac and what does the actual conversion... a Soekris DAM1021 diy module.  Yup... output directly off the end of that, fed into a relay volume control (again a DIY off the shelf module) and into what ever the fuck those tubes do.  I'm waiting for permission to post the pics but this is utterly retarded... 

[kevin gilmore]

And the bottom of the thing is wood.  Would love pictures under the board with capacitors in parallel or series attached to nothing.  Even mikhail never did anything in wood (that I know of) although there was a partial wood front panel.

for more amusement there is a company out there modifying teac products replacing regulators with some other regulators and some capacitors with some other capacitors and charging more for the upgrade than the thing cost in the first place.

[Dusty Chalk]

33 minutes ago, kevin gilmore said:

And the bottom of the thing is wood.  Would love pictures under the board with capacitors in parallel or series attached to nothing.  Even mikhail never did anything in wood (that I know of) although there was a partial wood front panel.

for more amusement there is a company out there modifying teac products replacing regulators with some other regulators and some capacitors with some other capacitors and charging more for the upgrade than the thing cost in the first place.

I'm in the wrong fucking business.  "Pay us for what we do!", not whether or not it accomplishes anything.

[Sechtdamon]

54 minutes ago, kevin gilmore said:

And the bottom of the thing is wood.

While searching info about soekris dac module (a guy from the other website, who has reputation of building most 'something' dac ever made) , I've found more interesting usage of wood:

Well wood can be used in very different ways, and I really don't want to call the name of the shits on upside down pcb and caps.

I'm going deeper into being offtopic but,

 

Dr. Gilmore you mentioned kitsune dacs before, and I saw some posts on HF, a guy from kitsune asking for board designs to a guy from another MoT. Do they use that soekris module too? And what Lamp uses so "expensive boutique" shits that price differs 10k? Okey, tubes costs 1-1,5k, what about the rest?

 

Correction: As I see kitsune does not use soekris. But still I don't understand why he asked for it.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Sechtdamon
Correction

[Spork]

Maybe the wood improves the timbre of the sound...