What's in the box!

Haha. It was a happy accident, or coincidence more so.

Sweet cans!

Are those the planar version? Really curious as to your impressions.

Enjoy. :+1:t4:

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What other amps do you have in your line up to compare against, besides the DAC comparison which will be an excellent piece to look forward to.

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A cheap bag of fun from Amazon today:

Raspberry Pi Zero W kit.

image

Bag’s contents laid out, the Pi Zero W board, Case with 3 lids + Data Bus, Power Supply, Heat Sink, HDMI + USB Adapters and Pin-Out Diagram for the Data Bus.

Several hours and one old defective micro SD card replacement later. Volumio is running reading my DLNA server and feeding a cheap Signstek USB Dac tied temporarily to my main system.

Actually sounds quite good for the less than $50 that I have tied up in it.

Mark Gosdin

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My current stable is pretty modest relative to the Stratus, but my primary options are BH Crack w/Speedball, ECP T4, Hagerman Tuba, Woo WA3, THX 789 and a SPL Phonitor X. Headphones will be ZMF VOs, Senn. 6XX and Dan Clark Aeon 2 Closed. It would be nice to have a Stellaris and a Pendant in the mix, but that may have to wait for a post-covid listening meetup.

My capabilities as a reviewer are minimal at best, so what I share will probably be closer to the caveman “food good, fire bad” level. Keeping that in mind, I’ll be happy to provide my thoughts when I’m done.

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That’s a big part of this grand experiment. At some point I either won’t be able to tell the difference between the equipment or the differences will be so subtle that it won’t matter.

The “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” adage applies here - there’s no need (at least for me) to justify spending a lot of money on gear if I can’t quantify the benefit.

Clearly there are enthusiasts out there that can appreciate subtleties far beyond my ability. I’m just looking to max out what I can discern and draw the line there.

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You have enough varied gear to make a general subjective opinion from simply even a comparison point of view - Stratus good, THX bad (no offence to the THX crowd… I think).

I’ll be interested if you post re your DAC findings, if you choose to do so.

Just to throw a big monkey wrench in it you also have to keep in mind, that at least with the Stratus, you are probably only listening on stock tubes. Donald sends his amps out with tubes that sound good but they wont be indicative of what the amp is truly capable of. Of course, diminishing returns applies to tubes as well. Its all just a wonderful game of chasing your own tail. Im hoping to catch mine some day.

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How funny, I also have this little OTL too. It was my temporary solution as I wait for my Stratus to be built.

I would say my capabilities are similar here, not only with audio but in most areas of my life.
Please share your thoughts on the DAC options you are using, I have the BF2 and am curious how wide or narrow the gap is with the Yggy.

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Per the link above ^, I moved my response to the Schiit thread

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Now that is a set of toobs that are NSFW

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“What the heck is that?”, asked the Fedex delivery person.
“It’s a gigantic red suitcase”, I answer, because I was expecting a package on my front porch, not a giant red suitcase, sitting in the back of a Fedex truck.
“Well whatever it is, it’s too heavy for me to get out of the truck”, she says.
“Hmmm, heavy giant red suitcase”, I respond unhelpfully, but after looking at the glare on her face, I realize that she’s expecting me to get it out of her truck.

Wow, this thing weighs 100 lbs. I get it down and roll it to the back of my house, because there’s no way I’m carrying that thing up a flight of stairs to the front porch.

Let’s see what’s inside. A power cord and a lot of packing foam. Interesting…

After removing a layer of foam, there’s a big hunk of shiny metal. Is it a new grill? But those look like tubes…

Another layer of foam is removed. Now it looks more interesting. I just need to get it out of the case to take a look. Wow, that thing is heavy…

Trumpets sound and fireworks explode all around me. :fireworks: :trumpet: :partying_face:

It’s the ampsandsound Nautilus that Marcello @MRHifiReviews was reviewing, which I somehow managed to purchase while on vacation in Costa Rica, with no way of talking on the phone with him or Justin @ampsandsound. That’s a whole other story, but one of the highlights was locking my bank account because I got the password wrong 3 times when I wanted to check if I could even afford this. Anyway thanks go to both Marcello and Justin for helping to figure out the logistics in a combination of emails and PMs.

Edit: I also need to thank Zach @ZMFheadphones for his advice because I knew he had one, and asked him to describe the differences between the Pendant and Nautilus.

But back to this story, there’s now a huge smile on my face, looking at this thing of beauty. I just have to get it back into the case, carry it down a flight of stairs, take apart my carefully put together current setup, and put up my new shelves, which I now realize probably won’t take the weight of this beast. But I’ll figure out how to make it work. And it’s a nice problem to have, as Justin said to me later this afternoon on the phone. More to come…

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Amazing!!! Congrats buddy!!!

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Congratulations @PaisleyUnderground ! What an awesome amp! I am officially jealous!

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This song title summarizes my feelings. Congrats!

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At least cook up a nice porterhouse on it before you drag it inside!

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That looks like a beast! Congrats! Need help carrying it into my house…I mean yours? I got you! :joy:

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Nice pick up, no pun intended. Hope the discount was a god chunk, any other upgrades to coincide with the amp such as DAC?

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Holy ffffff***, man !!! That is some serious gear! Congrats.:champagne:

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Well I hadn’t planned on buying the Nautilus, at least not this year (it was on my shortlist for end-goal amps sometime in the next 5 years) so it’s going to slot into my current system and we’ll see how it goes. But expect to see a bunch of questions on various threads about DACs and tubes.

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Slippery slope, I have been there as recently as August.

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