I have a few of those as well. If I may say that I-Robot copy you got is the absolute best you can get.
The Heartbeat city album from the Cars is awesome as well. Agh! hell! Who am I kidding? It’s all awesome! Great haul, man😉
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Congrats! And yes, our systems are VERY much alike. 
I look forward to hearing how Sus on HM1 compares to Stellaris. 
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Not your typical What’s In The Box, but I was cleaning out the closet and found a completely new SME 3009 mkII tonearm. Strange story but my dad gave it to me maybe 25+ years ago as he knew I was getting into hi-fi; for the next two decades after that I never had a turntable so this was packed away in some boxes that moved with me throughout the years.
I still don’t have a table that can use this, so will probably find someone who can give it a nice home.
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Schiit out of the box 
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Before….
And After….
My system is definitely more complete now and I’m very happy with the KARA performance. Integrates so nicely with everything I have and that was the plan and idea all along. Not to mention. The Headphone output is great! At least with the headphones I have. It won’t drive a Stealth or a Susvara, but acting as a pre amp into my other existing amps it will. 
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You can’t beat Schiit’s value prop, Ever. Period.
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I think I’m fully inclined to agree with you on that. Even when I got the $150 USD Loki Mini + I was absolutely amazed for what it can do at its price tag. So far, the KARA is no different. I still have more to explore with it, but so far I’m very very impressed. So yeah, Chris. I think you are absolutely right. Schiit chooses sound quality and functionality over all those little bells and whistles that drive up the cost. An example I can give with the Kara is that the remote driven stepped attenuator cuts out and slightly distorts the signal chain when you ramp up the volume really quickly. So what. In the end everything still sounds fantastic.
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I spent ~3 years in this hifi thing with a Schiit dac & amp, and after going WAY upmarket I’m not sure I got more than a few percent benefit. Diminishing returns are a very real thing. Schiit strikes a really good balance between value & performance that cannot be denied.
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Really nice tone arm. Your Dad was a stand up guy on this one.
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That was a really thoughtful, considerate gift!
I remember the tonearm from when I was a hifi “kid” (college), and it was a “high end”, aspirational thing for me at the time. I don’t remember what they went for, but it was out of my league in terms of price.
What a cool find, talk about “new old stock”! 
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It’s so convenient! Rega says the felt mat has the best sound, but it sticks to the records even after zapping them with a Zerostat.
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100%. I haven’t had to deal w the whole mat sticking to the record thing since the Herbie.
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Unfortunately now I kinda want to listen to a SME table…
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It’s the Eversolo DMP-A8 giving me some freedom from my computer. It’s connected via I2s to the Holo May. With a RadioShack (RIP) HDMI cable. A replacement is incoming.
So a lot of unused connections… But after trying to decide between the A6, A6 ME, and A8, I went with the latter because of its linear power supply upgrade, and I2s output. I also considered the Innuos Pulsar, the Holo Red, the PS Audio Airlens, and more. But I decided that the OS on the Eversolo trumps the possibly better (but not by much, I would think) audio quality of the others.
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Very nice! Serious question, though (as someone with a very similar audio chain and very similar interests): what about up/oversampling? Do you just use NOS with no up/oversampling? I use HQPlayer from my laptop with my gpu doing the upsampling work. What do you do straight from the streamer to May?
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Right now it is in NOS, but I shall experiment. I just got everything connected. It already sounds great. I will need some time to get used to the sound and then I will explore the options.
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unfortunately, Eversolo cannot offer NAA for HQP, due to it being based on Android. This was a dealbreaker for me, and pushed me to return the DMP-A6ME in favor of a Holo Red.
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The use case for that is [Streamer] > [NAA/HQP] > [DAC], right? In other words, have HQPlayer in the signal path.
Surely it’s not because of Android. It must be possible to just open a socket and send whatever data one wants, even on Android. What’s the source of that claim? I’d like to understand it better.
I’d love to be able to use HQPlayer in the signal path with a streamer, but on the other hand, part of the point for me with a separate streamer is to avoid needing my 13900k/4090 computer to be running.
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I can’t think of any use case for a streamer upstream of a PC. You eliminate every possible benefit (noise reduction, better output implementations, and sometimes upsampling). The PC is just as capable of receiving the desired streams, and is probably more capable of doing processing / upsampling. It’s just super noisy (from an RF perspective) and will have a poor output clock (though, not always relevant).
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In terms of audio quality, yes. There is a convenience factor also. (And I don’t use Roon.)
And if the PC is in another room I could see a benefit of having Streamer > PC for HQPlayer up-sampling > DAC and having sound quality benefits as well. The Eversolo has a great UI and app.
I’m not sure I follow. You’re saying [streamer] → [PC in another room] → [DAC]? If so, how are you connecting those? What is the benefit of the streamer vs an iPad running whatever software you want controlling the PC?