pauln

For what's worth, I got new 2005 La Scalas that came with the AL-4 networks, bought Bob's Type A's, put one in to compare, three seconds later I knew the A's were permanent, and 3 minutes later the remaining AL-4 was out, forever. Now keep in mind that I use SET amps and listen at moderate levels where the power to the La Scalas has never been up to the first full watt. And I listen to vinyl records exclusively. I think the Type A is particularly good for this kind of system, may not be so good for high power systems,solid state systems, or digital sources. The big improvement for my system was clarity, pure and simple; they also sounded a little louder, but maybe louder sounds clearer or clearer sounds louder... anyway, there was no contest whatsoever, my system let me know immediately that they loved the A's.

I've never seen a stock chart look like this... is it an artifact of the price so low - some kind of minimum bid increment ? Appears very "unnatural" looking... edit: OK, closer inspection shows the changes are 1 cent, still looks weird...

Don't lead with your right...

In about 15 minutes...

I enjoyed the text saying that the bass control on the amp will need to be set down a bit when the KHorn is the mouth of the system. Since the book was written in 1952 rev56, the author may have not yet been listening to music employing the Fender Precision Bass introduced in 1951 - which may have increased forever after the speaker requirements for low end reproduction - maybe the KHorn was ahead of its time?

“We’re collapsing in on ourselves,” said Eric Ross, director of research at the brokerage firm Canaccord Adams. “Nobody wants to be invested, that’s the problem. I don’t believe we’re at the bottom yet.” When a company's liabilities exceed its assets, it is insolvent, broke, bankrupt, if still operating, it is a zombie. "Nobody wants to be invested" - certainly not true, people want to invest in companies that have value and will increase in value. "That's the problem" - certainly untrue, the problem is not investor wisdom to avoid insolvant companies, it is the insolvency of the companies that is the problem. This problem is not solved by extending credit to zombie companies. "I don't believe we're at the bottom yet" - certainly true, the bottom for insolvent companies is zero. These stocks are not "akin" to penny stocks, they are penny stocks, for now. Soon to be zero and stocks no more.

If AIG goes down, Goldman Sachs goes down, all the banks, the FED, Treasury, and US Government goes down. It seems like AIG must go down, but the powers that be will do everything possible (including alteration of the US government and the definition of banks and money) to prevent it. Technically it has already happened. Gold is a simialr question, if fiat money systems fail there must be a return to gold as money (like it was for 3000 years), but as noted - at current gold price there is way more fiat money than gold to back it. If all the money in the world had to be backed by gold, the price of gold might have to be over $200,000 per oz. This is why gold is being bought by so many right now - as a sort of "lotto ticket" in the event of a fiat money collapse, it only takes a little gold at today's price to insure value when the days come that the fiat money is widely revealed and recognized as paper without value. Now some will say that a portion of "all the money in the world" is tied up in hedge/credit default swap/various other kinds of worthless toxic waste instruments, and they are correct. But once the money system comes under scrutiny it is just a short path to dicovering that all fiat money is intrinsically worthless. Much of the dust that is being stirred up now adays is causing many more to realize this and prepare formeeting the collapse horizon. The creation of the FED and the beginning of US income taxes began at the same time almost 100 years ago. The only stipulation that insures the fiat money is used in circulation is the requirment that income taxes be paid in it... using other than Federal Reserve Notes is not forbidden for any transactions except tax payments. Think about that for a few minutes...

The last US leader that challenged the theives did propose that the US issue its own currency, was preparing to sign the law; was JFK. If gold is no longer money, why do the central banks still hold 160K tons of it in their guarded vaults and trade it daily with each other?

Look at your emphasis on production... Virtually no modern production systems in our debt/credit/money fiat system can rely on just retained earnings to increase productive capital, they have to borrow. Modern production requires some stability of the money supply in order to make market decisions, and in order to aquire credit to envoke those decision. When the money supply is expanding rapidly, as in the period from 2000 - 2007, people tend to make brave investments that don't survive a down turn (like now), and during a down turn people tend to save and hoard rather than invest. Both of these extremes of the business cycle make it difficult for the producers to decide what to do, they are at risk because of the business cycle. The business cycle is a recent development that came into being with the adoption of fiat money. Much of what you call doomsday scenarios are not "guesses", a quick look at a history book will reveal that all, (each and every one) fiat money systems have failed and gone to zero value. It is more than a guess to expect that our current unbacked fiat money system will go the same way, may be preparing to do so shortly, in a very exciting fasion.

Creating more money does not address the problem because we do not have a liquidity problem, we have a solvency problem. The money created and given to banks and companies is being hoarded, saved, not lent or spent. One would see lending and spending of that new money if the problem was simply tight liquidity. But the problem is massive general insolvency, huge leveraged over extension, and systemic failure of business decisions; so all new money is being held onto by institutions, entities, and people. No one is using their oil to "oil the system" even though they are receiving the oil. Extending more credit to the insolvent does not address their insolvency, just makes it deeper, pushes their certain catastrophic collapse a little further down the road.

Yes, the creation of new money is ramping up as fast as the powers that be can create it, BUT, the actual decline of quantity of money ( including credit/insurance instruments) is many orders of magnitude greater. There is over 500 (T) trillion in "toxic waste credit money" that has been created in the last 10 years. This stuff is unwinding now (being discovered to have little or no value) much faster than the governments and central banks of the world can inject more money to balance it. So far, the increase in money is still on the order of a few trillions, but tens of trillions are crashing down as they are found to be of no value, with hundreds of trillions still waiting to be unwound. This is why in spite of the printing, we are experiencing deflation rather than inflation - the overall money supply (which includes credit) is deceasing. When the overall economy recovers... then all the extra money produced will come home to roost and inflation will be the result, possibly hyperinflation; but the recovery is very far off - many years, perhaps decades. In the mean time, producing more money does not address the current problems, probably extends the period of pain, and set us up for an inflationary nightmare in the future.

The purpose of keeping it all secret is to confound appropriate response by the public - if a handfull reallocate their investments its called fiduciary, if everyone does it it is called panic (bank run, flight to quality, etc) In essence, "You can't handle the truth!" For example, few are aware that AIG started in China in 1919 as American Asiatic Underwriters in Shanghai. How many times have you heard that mentioned in news reports about AIG? It is relavent; do a search on AIG, Chinese WTO consessions, and Goldman Sachs to see the peculiar history and current entanglements...

You may play similar thought experiments by knowing that one million dollars worth of hundred dollar bills (the largest denomination today) weighs 22 pounds and will just fit in a modern breifcase. One trillion worth of 100's would weigh 11,000 tons, so it would take more than 360 semi-trucks to haul it...

Faye Richmonde with Saul T. Peter (ha ha...) and the Men of Passion Warning, rare audiophile record with nude cover art

Do you listen to just one station? Like the classical station at the low end of the band? If so, you can tune your antenna reception by trimming the ends of the standard dipole FM antenna, which is default sized for the center of the band. The FM band is 87.5 to 108 MHz. Total length of the two legs of the dipole would be: 5 ft 4 3/16 inches total length for 87.5MHz 4 ft 3 31/32 inches for 108MHz Use proportionality ratios to figure the length for your favorite station...

Short of a vacuum/scrubber system, the Orbitrac system seems very popular except for the availability of the pads... until now! Here

"I'm curious, what do you consider a modest outlay?" In round figures, I would estimate if you bought used gear you could get a record player, tube amp \ receiver, and Heresys for about $1500, which would get you about 90% there. New would be maybe twice as much. Still buying used but getting bigger horns and better tube gear and record player, maybe $3000, getting to a noticably better 98% there. New might be twice as much. The thing about diminishing returns is that if there comes a threshold beyond which you may still be able to tell the difference, but it is no longer relavent to your enjoyment - you hear music. It is for those that feel they can't stop until they no longer hear a difference that I say they are listening to sound, not music.

Why all the questions about equipment? Audiophiles are more distinguished by how they hear and evaluate music, less how they assemble and integrate sound equipment. If you hear music as sound, you may build up the most exotic system and not be an audiophile. If you hear sound as music, it only takes a modest outlay to get into the ballpark of audioplile listening.

High speed solutions you see on youtube may be backwards video - they shoot a video of the solved cube laying on the table and the solver with a big smile, then he grabs the thing and begins making faces as he turns the parts, after a little while he stops and acts like he is waiting for the start signal... then they reverse the video and post it.

Is there something you can put up to serve as a better reflective background ? That looks like a cold day at the beach...

That "reverb driver" and "phase splitter" lingo is in regard to how those tubes are used in guitar amps, typically the Fender "Black Face" designs of the sixties and current reissues of those designs. Those amps use that tube in position V3 to drive the reverb tank (both triodes in the tube being used in parallel - heavy duty service) and as the phase inverter ("splitter") in V6 to drive the power tubes. Those are not typical preamp tube functions in hifi gear, so the evaluation of them for guitar amp applications does sound sort of weird when looking at hifi... See this link for a good explanation of the preamp tubes for V1-6 in Fender amps here What attributes are desired for guitar amp tubes will not really carry over to the hifi world; but rest assured that guitarist are very particular about the sound qualities, noise floor, and resistance to failure of their tubes. I personally have an old Mullard from the late 50's that is just great in V2 of my Fender amp.

Me too. Love the Orbitrac system but can't find the replacement pads anywhere - Alsop seems to have stopped making them. So, I made my own. Here's how: Take one of the cartridges that holds the existing pad and use your fingernail of a flat screwdriver, spoon, guitar pick, or whatever to pry up the thing from the cartridge. What you will find is that the cartridge thing is actually three parts that fit into each other. The most inner part is what the pad material is wrapped around, the second part is what holds the pad material to the first part, and the third part is the cartridge housing itself, which locks the second part in place as the second part holds the pad material on the first part. Just take it apart slowly and notice the design. The alignment columns are assymetrical, so they only interlock one way. It all just snaps apart and snaps back together. When you remove the old pad material, take notice of the way it is cut around the edges. It is basically rectangular, but with extentions. There are four primary extension (top, bottom, each side) that are shaped like trapasoids with their larger bases oriented toward the center of the rectangle. What is really important is that there are four additional extensions of material that go out in each diagonal direction from the corners of the rectangle - these are critical because they ensure that the corners are formed right when the material is pulled around the primary former of the cartridge. It is not complicated after you lay out the material of the pad and examine its shape. Now what you want to do is replace this material that makes the pad by cutting an identical shape from clean pad material. I used the thin foot section of a new cotton athletic sock. I cut the sock open and there was enough area to make two pads with one sock, using scissors to cut the pattern. Get some tape, as you will need it to hold the material around the pad former. Lay the material on a clean surface, lay the former face down on the material, pull the trapesoids up over the edge and use tiny pieces of tape to hold them. Check the alignment of the "grain" of the new pad material, them finish by pulling the diagonal extensions of the material into the center of the former and fix those with tape. The tape only needs to hold long enough to get the primary former inserted into the second peice of the cartridge assembly, which locks the pad material edges in palce with pressure. Then press the second peice into the cartridge proper (making sure to maintain the right alignment of the assymetrical columns (because the cartridge has a rounded end and a squared end that goes into the spinning part with the handle). Now the assembled cartridge is ready to be inserted into the handle spinner thing and go into service. Works quite well.

"I really don't see how this would be possible." Possibly because music trumps sound. Consider the difference between hearing sound as music vs. hearing music as sound... I think you'll come to realize there is something to this... Children tend to have superior hearing, but you know the kind of "music" they like, whereas there are experienced studio recording engineers that have significant hearing loss yet produce material that satisfies even the most golden eared audiophiles.

Dropped off the Stanton kit this afternoon... if you can put into service it's all yours. I looked at both styli under my nifty 80 year old Bausch & Lome medical scope, both look like virgins. Dragging a rock across plastic; and music comes out! Amazing.

Your looking at tubes, so you are on the right path. I'm quite happy with my Wright preamp and SET monoblocks (George Wright in WA, wright-sound.com) The La Scalas don't need much power, but they do enjoy high quality tube gear. Are you including a tubed preamp in your budget? No all combos (tube and solid state) of preamp and power amp work well.