i dont know if i am doing this right, but i need a potentiometer for a cyrus2 amp, and any metal casings for the toggle on/off switch variety including the psx.cyrus do not supply spares, having tried on numerous occasions, and getting nowhere. please help, there must be one out there somewhere. my email is scotchb@fsmail.net. awaiting reply in ernest. cheers.

Unlike the mid and woofer - the tweeter doesn't seem to show any gains under current drive.

Some decent reductions in 3rd harmonic.

So - I setup Soundeasy to take some distortion measurements. I don't claim to be a wizard at taking these measurements and balancing the various factors (overloading the mic, etc.) so take 'em with some grains of salt but they are interesting.

Taken with a Behringer ECM8000 mic (uncalibrated) via a UB802 to a M-audio 410 PCI card.

You can pretty clearly see my noise floor. Taken in a living room with computers/fridges turned off, noisy computer in another room.

Mic was nearfield.

There's some clear differences between the plots when driven with current vs. voltage. Ignore the nasty bits around resonance for the current driven one - I clipped the soundcard input with the resonance peak.

OMG, I'm now a blogger!

Went to the gym this afternoon with my iPod (Classic 160GB) as usual - about 15 minutes into a torturous session on the elliptical the left channel just died. PANIC.. I had a further 45 minutes of time to reflect on the meaning of music in my life - in this case it really helps me to get through what I find to be an exceedingly tedious activity. Sonic wall paper to my life outside of my house??

Got home and quickly checked with another set of headphones and determined that my iPod was just fine.The aftermarket JVC folding headphones I purchased a couple of years ago just before this iPod apparently have an open connection somewhere. They never entirely pleased me so I am not too sad to see them go.

Have ordered a set of the folding PX100 made by Sennheiser to replace them - should be a lot better sounding than the failed JVC headphones.

It does rather make me realize just how important a role music plays in my daily life.

As an aside...

sans bypass cap.

Measure 380mV accross a 10R resistors. Therefore the CCS is set to 38mA.

A Wilson type setup - the mid/tweet box is separate from the woofer box. The upper box is open front and back - replaceable baffles on both sides in case I care to change something, either drivers or sealed vs. open back.

The bottom cab is MDF. I had some of that concrete board left over from an outdoor kitchen project and figred I'd laminate it to the front baffle under the woofer. I don't think it was worth the effort. A knuckle rap test on the sides vs. front showed no huge difference.

The top cab is MDF laminated with baltic birch.

For some time I've had the feeling that there was something not quite right about the sound I was getting out of my most recent phono stage. The phono stage in question had never been compared to anything else, so it was difficult to understand what was going on. To add to the complications I use a Grado Reference Platinum cartridge that has a reputation for being rather laid back - so I was not really sure if the often boring sound was due to the cartridge or a problem with my phono stage design.

The design is a two stage with Lipshitz based passive eq., high transconductance type tubes, and gyrator loads. The tube complement is triode connected D3A in the front end, fixed biased 5842 output stage and gyrator loads based on the 5687.

The problem seemed to center around my choice of cathode bias in the first stage with the D3A. This resulted in a 60 ohm resistor and a 1000uF electrolytic cap shunted by a variety of other caps, after a long succession of problems...

Well for me anyway I think I must be borderline obsessive compulsive! It happens every time I start a project (or even before I start it). I spend hours and hours and hours deliberating on whether this would be better or that would be better. Honestly in some ways I wish I'd never become "aware" of alternatives to the kits that were available from the local electronics shops Dick Smith and Jaycar

I got the jfets for my B1 a few weeks ago. I finally started matching them earlier this week, I hadn't started because I was obsessing over the fact I needed a 100 ohm precision resistor and a transistor socket. I hadn't got those because I wanted to order all the other bits as well and only pay for one lot of shipping. But do you think I could make a decision on what parts to get?

First off I obsessed over the resistors (yeah I know).. wanted vishay RN60D's but local sources are 5 - 10 times the price of mouser, problem with mouser is unless...