MPP

Today it got my Titan back from Mishima San.
It was there for cleaning, adjusting and tuning.
Interesting, they have solved the problem with the Washi paper.
It could happen that fibers from the Washi paper that protects the generator came off and found it´s way under the tiny Ogura needle where it was hard to remove.
Now i see that the Washi is painted with a golden lacquer.
Looks good and solves the problem. Nice detail.
 

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I saw Mishima doing it but i do not exactly know what he does.
Adjusting the suspension for one.
He has a Kenwood table with removable headshell and listens to a special Stax headphone with extremely thin foil.
He listens to Esther Ofarim for example because that record it cut hot and hard to track.
He also listens to Cantate Donino. He claims that he can hear individual voices separated when the tuning is right.
You may be disappointed by this non technical description but it is a process that requires intuition and experience. Call it Art if you wish.
 
I told you many times that i am a PSU dummy but my plan is to change that.
Andrejs tube PSU was just the push i needed.
The difference i heard was simply too substantial to ignore it.
Of cause i know how to design a quiet circuit and my focus zoo far was to improve the PSU rejection of the circuit itself so that the PSU is not that critical any more.
Again, Andrejs design showed that the very good PSU rejection of the Paradise still allows the quality of the PSU to come through in the listening test.
Why that happens is an Enigma to me although i have a theory.
I have discussed details of my examination so far on the Masterpiece thread.
Considering the enormous work done by Salas and Frans i am not in the mood to design another shunt. I feel more comfortable with series regulation, cap multipliers and passive filtering. I also got a bit tired about conventional transformer and rectifier circuits so i will try some AC/DC converters to make the raw DC.
 
I told you many times that i am a PSU dummy but my plan is to change that.
Andrejs tube PSU was just the push i needed.
The difference i heard was simply too substantial to ignore it.
Of cause i know how to design a quiet circuit and my focus zoo far was to improve the PSU rejection of the circuit itself so that the PSU is not that critical any more.
Again, Andrejs design showed that the very good PSU rejection of the Paradise still allows the quality of the PSU to come through in the listening test.
Why that happens is an Enigma to me although i have a theory.
I have discussed details of my examination so far on the Masterpiece thread.
Considering the enormous work done by Salas and Frans i am not in the mood to design another shunt. I feel more comfortable with series regulation, cap multipliers and passive filtering. I also got a bit tired about conventional transformer and rectifier circuits so i will try some AC/DC converters to make the raw DC.
 
The occasion came when i had to build a headphone amp for my son.
I had already build him a simple amp with a Maxim chip that is not too bad and he has good headphones. His favorite is a modified AKG501.
He makes an apprenticeship at the Theater Hagen because his dream is to become a film director. His recent job was to make a trailer for Bizet´s Carmen.
He also is an avid French Horn player and he started to complain that a CD of Bernstein´s Carmen did not sound anything like the sound he heard life. Especially the horns at the final sounded distorted to him.
Anyway, i build a new headphone amp. So far i supply it with batteries and i have Keantoken cap multiplier on board. I modified them slightly by downsizing because i did not have much space. I will try to use a Traco AC/DC converter instead of the batteries soon. Then i will know more.
Please do not at this time ask me about the circuit diagram. I am supporting so much DIY projects already that i run out of time. When you want to build a good DIY headphone amp i recommend the Richard March design. I did something different though.
OK, the head amp sounded fine, there was especially more punch but the distortion and coloration in the horns was still there.
Reading the March article in Linear Audio it came to my attention that Richard recommends EQ. So i searched for the FRD data of the AKG501 on the net.
I found a response curve on Golden Ear.
I then used the 30 band graphic EQ plug in for Foobar to make an anti curve for the AKG501. The result was stunning : my son could here details in the horns he never heard before and the distortion and coloration was gone. He was certainly impressed.
Switching back to the raw headphone it sounded like plastic, that coloration most come from the membrane.
When my son comes back from vacation i will show you how i set up Foobar to make that happen.