Happy belated birthday - sorry, with the time difference I missed this
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Happy birthday even though time change may make me late too!
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Happy happy Paul. Enjoy your day!
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Again many thanks for all your kindness and support. You’re all superstars.
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Didn’t know where to post it and since it nothing but headphone, gonna try. If it already have been asked or if it’s somewhere, may I ask for sharing the topic link with me?
How old is this forum? And does it have a history (who create it, why, etc…)?
Still confuse about the somewhat co-existence of this forum and the hi-fi one. Almost the same community but not at the same time (in a good way). It is almost not possible to not switch between the two when you are looking for good review (or looking to upgrade your setup). Both forum have amazing community and really impressive review by individual.
Thank you.
Hey there!
First of all-- welcome to the friendliest place in internet audio. The forum was started in 2018 by Andrew and Taron Lissimore, who along with being really nice guys, run headphones.com.
This forum is supported by them, but with no editorial control or interference. We have a lot of members that move between several forums, but I’m glad you found this one. Also, if you haven’t watched any of their videos yet, suggest you check out the headphone show on youtube. They are doing my favourite youtube audio reviews, and they happen to be people from this community.
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This is a big claim to make and in my experience, totally correct!
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May I ask what do you mean by «supported by them»?
I understand they do not control the opinion of the community (no censure). How they support the forum is unclear.
They are hosting the website on their home server or more in a monetary way?
Thank you for your answer. I was sure this forum was really old (in a good way). I’m impressed by the amount of knowledge it has gain in that short amount of time.
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They have provided web hosting as well as several pieces of equipment for loaner tours.
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Procrastinators Club - I always meant to join, but I never got around to it.
President’s Day Activity. I’d ordered a new Laptop for Barbara to replace the old eeePC that is now too old for anything but a LINUX playtoy. This was on or about New Year’s day, and came first week of Jan, but I never got it out of the box until today.
Not all my fault. Barbara knows I get cranky in the middle of setting up stuff, and of course her ladies’ desk had stuff on it (besides the old eeePC, cute girly thing in red). I knew if I were to fix up that place, it included vacuuming any stuffed creatures, removing everything, taking away wires, vacuuming the floor, under the desk, behind in the corner, getting out the furniture polish, etc.
I carted the 17 inch Viewsonic into the basement. She wanted to try the laptop sans a monitor and sans a keyboard. After vacuuming the Logitech keyboard and cleaning it, I set that aside also. Meanwhile MSI support was off for the holiday, so I was on my own.
Cortana guided me through the first steps, although I could have done that on my own. I still need to call MSI Support as they use Norton to “manage” the Microsoft settings. I’m anti-bloat, and would be fine to just use MS. I hope I don’t get roped into some Norton subscription. Only one odd program came up during setup, and after checking around, it’s a 3rd party HD audio app that apparently MSI uses.
I was able to set up the basics, it recognized my MS Office 5 license subscription, so I was able to configure pretty quickly. There was about an hour of downloading updates, expected as MS had done some big security changes.
When I went to add Barbara as a user, all went well, except for the fact that it seems to think she was a “child” born in 1954. She prefers Chrome as her browser, so I got that set up, and Outlook with her 3 emails, only one of which she uses.
I still need to move some photos from the old machine, and set up iCloud so she can see/use her phone photos. But not too bad for the day. Now she needs to get used to the keyboard, etc. I have a 24 inch monitor and the Logitech keyboard in case she wants to go back to a more space-inefficient configuration.
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Today @ProfFalkin learns about branding and marketing.
This watch retails for $15,000:
This watch sells at many retailers for $100:
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I had the Tuba here for a long time and spoke to Jim Hagerman several times on the Tuba design etc.
Its not a great pairing with inefficient planars…the Aeon 2 Opens at 15 ohms were a difficult match and was sub standard here.
One of my friends absolutely loves his Empys with the Felik Euphoria…its one of the best pairing for him and he has listened with many very high dollar amps…this still amazes me…
For planars an amp like a Schiit Jot 2, Schiit Lyr 3, Schiit Mjolinr, something with a good impedance match for maximum power transfer is very desireable.
There are other good amp choices that have the “power” to drive planars well…tube amps like a BH Crack etc are not really a good match here as well…same for a Schiit Vahalla 2…ya cant deny the laws of physics…
Alex
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There’s more to it that that.
IME
Tuba, not a great match for Planars, despite the low output impedance.
DNA Stratus >> Pendant for Planars - My general preference here is Low Gain, Low Impedance, SE Out, which has the lowest output impedance, can’t comment on the Starlett, since I haven’t heard one, but Donald made the distinction to me when I ordered my Stratus, that the big difference was with more difficult to drive planars.
Even the Stratus doesn’t have enough power to drive the really hard to drive planars well, specifically it’ll get the Susvara loud enough, but it sounds just OK when doing so (but the Susvara’s are a lot harder to drive than most planars).
The WA33 works fantastically with the Susvara, but it’s not in most peoples budgets.
IME until you get into relatively expensive transformer couple tube amps, they aren’t the right choice for most planars.
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I get it. When you buy things like a Rolex, you know you’re paying crazy money for a status item. Is that what we’ve come to in headphones? “Hey guys, let me show you my Euphoria. Sure I could put together one myself for $600, but because I paid $2600 it must sound better.”
Super pricy stuff exists, but it’s always been at the fringe of the hobby, not the center. I don’t think anybody wants to see the headphone hobby go the way of ultra-expensive two channel stuff. $50k for two towers doesn’t even put you in the high end anymore.
Sure, 15ohm headphones will be an issue for a very large number of amps. 50 ohms is more the norm for planar cans though, and so barring the odd exception like the weird Mr speaker stuff and IEMs, I’d imagine it wouldn’t fair badly with Empyrean or Audeze headphones.
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Not that this really justifes anything.
Tub amps tend to be very simple designs (there is a lot of subtlety in the details), so more expensive deigns have better power supplies and better overall component quality.
To see how deep that rabbit hole goes go look at the audionote catalog, and see what they will charge you for a single capacitor or choke.
In more expensive tube amps a LOT of the cost is in the power supply.
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Aint that the truth. Look at the price difference between the Starlett and the Stellaris and I dont think the topology/circuit differs much between them.
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There’s a giant difference in what kind of transformers are in those 2 tho. Including the lack of / inclusion of input transformers. Iron = $
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Exactly. The level of parts quality difference is huge.
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In the last ~10 years perhaps the crazy luxury market invaded the headphone space. In prior generations this happened to Swiss watches and sports cars too. At one time Rolex sold luxury working/playboy/James Bond action watches (e.g., the Submariner for diving, the Daytona for wannabe car racers, etc.) Breitling sold nerdy airplane pilot slide rule watches. They were expensive and aimed at wealthy buyers, but high quality and not ridiculous given their buyer’s needs.
Then the nouveau riche discovered active watches, and wanted solid gold, diamond-encrusted versions for show and collecting. People from Japan, Korea, China, and OPEC nations all wanted to show their wealth and that they also dive and race cars. 
At the same time, cheap G-Shock watches took over the true dive market.
Headphones used to be on the boundary between art and functional technology (e.g., Stax, Beyer, Sennheiser, Koss), and akin to 1960s actives watches. Then the nouveau riche arrived and wanted exclusivity. So, yes that is what we’ve come to in headphones. Pay more for a set made from sold gold and unicorn skin, or hear the same audio output from a set made from aluminum and cow skin.