Treblog

The Hobbit

2011-12-22T19:49:00.001+01:00

I can hardly wait for this film. Looks to be a must-see for Lord of the Rings fans.

Game Change

2011-12-22T19:45:00.001+01:00

My wife saw me reading a newspaper article with the above photo. "What's that woman on about this time?", she remarked. "That's Julianne Moore", I said. What a resemblance!

Ed Harris is actor I can't get enough of and Julianne Moore is underrated IMO. Looks to be an interesting movie, I hope I can get to see this one.

Jeff Lorber Fusion - Galaxy

2011-12-15T20:16:00.000+01:00

Jeff does it. Again. Jeff blew new life into the Jeff Lorber Fusion of ye olde times with Now Is The Time. Again Jeff teams up with Jimmy Haslip (bassplayer extraordinaire of Yellowjackets fame) and sax player Eric Marienthal and brings back some of the old grooves and serves up some new ones too with the release of Galaxy. For good measure Jeff made sure to give Paul Jackson Jr., Vinnie Colaiuta, Lenny Castro, Dave Weckl, Larry Koonse and Randy Brecker a call... Too bad Will Kennedy didn't get to play drums on this one. Conflicting schedules? Galaxy of course a twist on the Galaxian album, no doubt.

Galaxy again is high octane JLF stuff with plenty of funky Rhodes piano, just the way I like it. Oh Jeff, if you should ever read this, when are Tune 88 and Can't Get Enough up for getting the kiss of life?

Floris Santal

2011-12-05T23:49:00.001+01:00

Just got this one delivered today.
Smells like? Warm, spicy, woody, oriental.

I bought this one after having received seven Floris fragrance samples from Floris recently.

Who's that girl?

2011-12-04T21:12:00.003+01:00

DWDD (De Wereld Draait Door) 2 december 2012. Wie is deze charmante verschijning?

Tintin

2011-11-09T21:00:00.001+01:00

The Adventures of Tintin from James Curran on Vimeo.

Absolutely brilliant piece of animation by James Curran. A must-see for Tintin fans. Try to spot all the references to the original adventures.

Coincidence?

2011-10-16T00:19:00.002+02:00

DE shaver

2011-09-10T16:03:00.001+02:00

I recently took up shaving with an old fashioned double edged razor. Why? Using a double edged razor is supposed to give less trouble with ingrown hairs and it's cheaper. Way cheaper. Well you first have to invest in a razor but once you've done that the blades are actually pretty cheap. Much cheaper than the average Gillette Fusion cartridge. Even more so if you buy them in a bulk package. A five-bladed cartridge doesn't last 5 times longer than a single blade.
I bought a Merkur 23C, a three piece razor and some Merkur and Derby blades.
Shaving with a double edged razor is a bit different to shaving with a Gillette Fusion. Whereas with a cartridge razor applying pressure on the razor is essential, with a double edged razor applying presure is something you must not do. You must let the weight of the razor do the work. First shave went without losing any blood. Afterwards some razor burn though. So do I like shaving with a safety razor? I used to shave quickly while showering, now I shave at the bathroom sink. I find it very relaxing. I use a razor blade for three shaves, then I replace it with a new one. This means I'm always having a sharp blade and with the low price of razor blades still save money.

Apparently there's a wide variety of razor blades. Names like Gillette and Wilkinson Sword are familiar but there's a whole bunch of brands I've never heard of. Which razor blades should I buy? I joined the Badger & Blade community and did some browsing. What it comes down to is this: YMMV. Every body has his preference, and one man's trash is another man's treasure. What I did discover is that the Japanese Feather blades are widely recognised as the sharpest razor blades. Yesterday I bought ten Gillette SuperSilver Platinum hardened blades. Nice blades, they seem to be better than the Merkurs to me, less razor burn. Yesterday I found a good deal on twenty Feather blades on eBay. Let's see if they live up to their promise.
Next purchase will be some old fashioned shaving soap and a brush.

Popular demand works

2011-09-07T22:33:00.001+02:00

Hewlett-Packard is breathing new life into its HP-15C calculator. This calculator got discontinued in 1989 and ever since there remained a demand for it. Apparently prices of US$200 to US$400 aren't uncommon for used items.

There's an online petition for bringing back the HP 15C here. Hewlett-Packard actually listened and decided to issue a limited edition HP-15C, priced at a modest US$99. Good news for HP-15C lovers. Even better news is that the new 15C will be 100 times faster than the original 15C. Will I buy one? No, I can't justify its purchase. I've got a HP-10C and two HP-32SII's. I've got my RPN bases covered so to speak. Let's not even mention my Casio's FX-602P and FX-180P...

Dirty English

2011-08-30T21:06:00.012+02:00

I took delivery of the bottle of Juicy Couture's Dirty English I ordered. As with my previous orders @ fragrancex.com it took 22 days to get here, but since shipping was free I'm not complaining.

The bottle came without its box, I bought the last boxless tester bottle because I don't care about the box and because it's about 2 euros cheaper.

The bottle is a big chunk of glass and pretty heavy. The cap is adorned with a metal bracelet pattern and a leather lace with two metal charms. It certainly isn't baudruchage but still it looks nice.

What does it smell like? Well I'm down with the flu so the verdict will have to wait until my nostrils have been cleared. What little that I did smell didn't smell bad at all though.

What is baudruchage? See below. Chanel does this on their perfume bottles only. Wow!

Grant Imahara talks about his giant nuts...

2011-08-24T23:30:00.003+02:00

Take a whiff of this

2011-08-22T18:34:00.021+02:00

Last friday I went to the local Beehive department store to check out a few fragrances. According to Chandler Burr a lot of male fragrances are junk or stripped-down feminine perfumes. There are however a few exceptions. Chandler speaks highly of Juice Couture's Dirty English, Dior's Dior Homme Sport and Hermès' Terre d'Hermès. Marc Jabos' Bang was given a three star rating, not because it smells only so-so but because "Bang has only mediocre tenacity on skin".

Dirty English isn't available in brick & mortar shops in the Netherlands, probably due to regional marketing. Word has it it's been discontinued. The other three however were available. I smelled them all and must say that I was pleasantly surprised.

Bang is very nice and unusual at the same time. I smell pepper, and lots of it! Unusual but I like its smell. Something different for a change. The bottle looks nice but is awkward to handle due to it's dented shape. Next time remember that form follows function Marc. Mental note to self: remember to buy a bottle at a later date.

Dior Homme Sport indeed smells like ginger (as Chandler Burr pointed out), very fresh, light and cool. Proof that not all male fragrances need a (heavy) citrus opening. I like this one very much. This one would be a great fragrance for spring & summer. Nice bottle design BTW.

Terre d'Hermès is not as fresh, cool and light as Dior Homme Sport, somewhat heavier/warmer. But still it's delicate and very luxurious. It's a wonderful fragrance, it smells divine IMO. My 8 y.o. daughter liked this one best.

I took the paper blotters home with me and today Terre d'Hermès still smells so nice. I ordered a cute 12.5 ml bottle of Terre d'Hermès perfume for very little money which I received in the mail today (tuesday).

FYI, here's Chandler Burr's rating system:

(0) Do not inhale
(*) Inoffensive
(**) Eminently sniffable
(***) Breathtaking
(****) Total nose job
(*****) Transcendent

Remember: de gustibus non est disputandum!

Girl with a Pearl Earring

2011-07-26T20:52:00.002+02:00

We went to the Maurtishuis today. I've been living in The Hague for 21 years but haven't been there since today... Have seen some old paintings by great Dutch painters, including Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. I must say I was somewhat underwhelmed by it.

First it's not a large painting. Not that bigger paintings are better, but still. Second it depicts a pretty girl but it's a very polished girl. A bit like those perfect faces of celebrities on the covers of glossy magazines. I expected a lot more detail.

I also viewed The Bull by Paulus Potter. Wow! Now that's what I call detailed!

Etsy - Bracelet

2011-07-22T13:49:00.003+02:00

I bought this really nice leather bracelet on Etsy. The seller has much more nice ones for sale. No affiliation, just a satisfied customer.

OpenWrt

2011-07-16T17:09:00.008+02:00

Not quite happy with Netgears own firmware for the WNDR3700v2 I installed DD-WRT on it. Everything is there again, the DD-WRT web GUI is very familiar to me. The web GUI is sluggigh though, that's not how it remember it to be. It's supposed to be snappy, that's what it was like when running on the WRT54GL. Stability-wise there's room for improvement. So back to Netgears own firmware. I remembered having read somewhere that Netgear's 3700v2 firmware is based on OpenWrt. After a bit of searching I discovered a pre-compiled OpenWrt firmware for my 3700v2, great for Linux noobs like me. Flashing the firmware went smooth. Then followed a bit of a uh-oh moment as the OpenWrt GUI came up... It's much more intimidating than Tomato, DD-WRT or Netgears own GUI. There's so much more you can configure and thus potentially screw-up... Still I managed to set it up into a working configuration. Now it's time to check if it's stable.

What I like about it already is that you're not limited to just two of three DNS servers. I now have six DNS servers it can choose from.

Perfume

2011-07-08T14:54:00.016+02:00

Scent is invisible so the packaging has a lot of work to do. The most potent selling tool of all is the bottle.

Another fine BBC production. All three episodes can be found in alt.binaries.documentaries.

Those Geoffrey Beene men's fragrances come in a bland bottle compared to many others. For those insusceptible to marketing, or as some people say bullshit?

Here's Chandler Burr again. Interesting stuff.

Complete Waste Of Time

2011-06-26T00:41:00.003+02:00

What a great way to waste your time with: http://foxmulderswristwatch.com/

NeoTV 550 with WNDR3700

2011-06-25T14:45:00.004+02:00

My new WNDR3700 router has a USB port called ReadyShare that can be shared within my home network. Together with a newly bought Netgear NeoTV 550 media streamer and a large 2 TB external HDD I now have a nice setup that allows me to put all of our DVD's on a single HDD and view those while they get streamed over my humble home network. Now that I'm (nearly) finished all our DVD's are contained in a box not larger than 3 DVD cases combined. Ripping 150+ DVD's is tedious work though...

Next up: synchronise the external HDD with iTunes, that's 5000+ songs...

How to deal with a 419-scam

2011-06-24T11:16:00.004+02:00

I received a business proposal via email from Dr. Philip Ezoma. Philip works at the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC), and needs me to free up US$83.5 million sitting in a bank account. For my cooperation I am entitled to 25% of that sum. Yeah right...

I sent Philip this answer:

Hi Philip,

Your business proposal comes at time I can really use the money well. My
car broke down and is in need of urgent repair. With my share of the
money I can finally buy a new car! See the picture of my car in its
present state.

So I sent back an email with a picture. But not a picture of my car. No, as with all scammers, I sent him a gory picture. Wanna know which one? Search Google Images for 50 cal headshot. You will know which one if you see it... Please note, not for the faint of heart.

Usually they never bother me again but this time I got back a reply!

i dont like the picture you show to me... and i am not doing this business with you anymore..

Mission accomplished!

M9P

2011-06-23T12:25:00.001+02:00

Forget about the M9, I'm lusting after this one now...

Eau de Grey Flannel

2011-06-19T21:14:00.003+02:00

A really nice fragrance! Apparently difficult to find in bricks-and-mortar shops. Luckily there's the Internet.

If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it

2011-06-19T00:01:00.002+02:00

How much is it? Anyone wanna swap their M9 with my 1992 M6?

Real Tube Screamer

2011-06-10T11:00:00.001+02:00

WNDR3700

2011-06-05T14:18:00.004+02:00

I bought a new WiFi router this week. After some searching I settled on the Netgear WNDR3700v2. A powerful router that's able to run DD-WRT.

My old WRT54GL is showing it's age, it has difficulty keeping up with the ever increasing bandwidth my ISP is supplying. It also hasn't enough memory to effectively run the ad-blocking script. I bought my WRT54GL to run DD-WRT on it which I did for a few years. Eventually I installed Tomato on it and had a very stable router. Tomato is a lean router firmware that I like very much. Too bad development of Tomato isn't going further, there's no Tomato for new routers like the Netgear WNDR3700.

So I said goodbye to my trusty WRT54GL and welcomed the shiny new WNDR3700. The WRT54GL isn't going to end up on the scrapheap though. I'm gonna give it to my mother so she can have her own WiFi network. I'm gonna let it run on Tomato 1.28, the one that has served me so well. Since my mother isn't computer savvy I'm gonna enable remote management on it.

I spent yesterday evening installing and configuring DD-WRT on my new WNDR3700. Flashing the new firmware went well, no nasty surprises. Right now I've set it all up and am doing some tweaking to achieve maximum performance while still being stable.

Sparks

2011-05-20T00:52:00.005+02:00

Browsing through iTunes I came across a glaring omission... Sparks! Where the hell is Propaganda? Why didn't I rip it? I have the 1994 re-issue on CD. My dad bought the LP in 1974. Back then I didn't have a clue what Russell Mael was singing about. The music was great, and Ron Mael was a really weird guy.

Propaganda is a classic album, cover art included. Might be an acquired taste in this day and age though. Wanna buy the music? Search the bargain bins!

I'm off to bed. Propaganda is ripped and on my iPod. Now I can sleep peacefully.

SWR WM12 modified

2011-05-02T19:28:00.004+02:00

My SWR WM12 has served me well over the years. Being made in 1996 means she's getting a bit old. This means that her electrolytic capacitors in particular aren't in the same state as when new. Electrolytic capacitors tend to dry out over time. As this is a bass amp it needs to be able to supply a bit of oomph when it's called for. Therefore I ordered two 10000µF electrolytic capacitors to replace the two stock 4700µF ones with. The 10000µF caps are too large to fit in the allocated space on the PCB, I glued the new caps to the amp chassis and ran some wires to and fro. For good measure I added two 100nF film caps in parallel to the new 10000µF caps. Does it still work? Yes. Does it sound better? It appears to be more punchy. Mission accomplished.

Capricorn

2011-04-22T14:08:00.012+02:00

There's this CD you'd really want to have. But it's not available for download, or to be found in any shops. Now what? I've been there before...

While searching for information and music from a Dutch band called The Frog I came across fonos.nl. Lo and behold, they can supply me with a copy. Yep, that's right, a copy! Fonos.nl sells fully legal digitised music from LP's and CD's from Dutch artists. The copies are burned on a CD and mailed out. No downloads, yet. I ordered Capricorn by Rickey and the Frog. I have some fond memories of that music. The Frog featured Michel van Schie on bass.

IMO Michel van Schie is the best bass player from the Netherlands. Here he is getting side- tracked and discussing music theory with a fellow bass player while playing a DeGier BeBop bass. Interesting Marcus Miller bit at the end: Michel thinks that apart from playing style, the block inlays have a greater influence on Marcus Miller's sound than the maple fretboard on Marcus' Jazz bass. He may have a point here...

My copy of Capricorn got here today. I must say they did a great job @ fonos.nl, even the cover art is nicely reproduced. Cool. The music is still great. Too bad the band never got a real chance from a record label.

Not Exactly Rocket Science

2011-04-05T08:37:00.004+02:00

Brilliant sketch!

Digital roll of film

2011-04-05T08:31:00.004+02:00

Looks like the best invention since pre-sliced bread, but is it a real product? I think it's a piece of concept artwork. Or a really good prank coming late for April Fools.

GrubDAC

2011-04-03T14:27:00.018+02:00

I've made myself a GrubDAC last friday. I'd been eyeing the AMB Gamma-1 DAC for some time, but was put off because it's not available as a complete kit. I decided to buy a GrubDAC instead. The GrubDAC is available as a kit with all the parts needed. The Gamma-1 is more versatile but is more expensive to make. The GrubDAC is much cheaper to build but it's a one-trick pony. It can only serve as an external USB sound card.
The doublesided GrubDAC PCB measures 50 mm x 26mm and most of the parts are SMDs. The package sizes are 0805 and 1206. FYI a 0805 measures 2.0 mm × 1.25 mm, a 1206 measures 3.2 mm × 1.6 mm. Needless to say soldering SMDs requires patience (a lot!), a steady hand, a magnifying glas and a pair of pointy tweezers. Once I got it working after a bit of debugging (mainly removing solder bridges) I was greeted with a great sounding miniature USB sound card. Much better than the popular AC'97 solution on motherboards. It must be the Wolfson WM8524 DAC chip and the lack of output coupling capacitors. In Win XP it shows up as a USB audio device. The GrubDAC is plug & play, no need to install a driver under Win XP. The GrubDAC is USB powered, no external PSU is needed.
What can you use a GrubDAC for? Well, you can connect your powered stereo PC speakers to it or connect a headphone amp to it. It's even possible to drive a pair of headphones right from the GrubDACs output. The GrubDAC puts out a line level signal, that's 2.1Vrms at 0dBFS for "us geeks". Quite an accomplishment. For a high quality setup, connect the GrubDAC's output to the input of a Mini³ headphone amp. Now play some digital audio files from your PC. Wow! Your PC never sounded so good.

Speechless - f*cking brilliant

2011-03-09T21:18:00.001+01:00

Glove up

2011-03-09T20:54:00.004+01:00

Got these in the mail today. Oakley Factory Pilot Gloves. Great looking and very snug pair of gloves. Love the carbon knuckle protector.

Hard drive merger

2011-03-07T22:25:00.005+01:00

Hitachi Buys IBM's Hard Drive Business.

Western Digital Buys Hitachi's Hard Drive Business.

Western Digital tried to buy Seagate's Hard Drive Business.

Maxtor Buys Quantum's Hard Drive Business.

Seagate Buys Maxtor's Hard Drive Business.

What's left in a few years from now? Only one hard drive manufacturer? How 'bout that for competition?

Capsule Classic

2011-03-04T14:47:00.003+01:00

The mailman must really like me today. Received my SwitchEasy Capsule Classic today. I ordered the clear one. I've been using my iPod for a week now and have some "nice" scratches on the back already... Why Apple came up with the idea to make the back polished steel beats me. From a user standpoint it makes no sense whatsoever IMO.

What's really good about the Capsule Classic is that it even accepts the chunky iPod dock connector I have on my LOD cable.

Yellowjackets - Timeline

2011-03-04T12:24:00.008+01:00

It's here! It's awsome. March 15 comes early this year. Now ripping it in iTunes.

It's really great to have Will Kennedy back in the fold.

http://vimeo.com/channels/yellowjackets

iPod

2011-02-28T20:13:00.006+01:00

It was my birthday yesterday. Got a black iPod Classic for it. That's 160 GB of music storage heaven. I copied the contents of my iTunes library to the iPod, which took a bit of time. Now there's 123 GB still free. Will I ever fill it to the brim? I doubt it. Whatever, the thought of walking around with the entire contents of your CD case in a small metal box is very comforting.

I also copied some YouTube videos onto it. I found a really cool one of Herbie Hancock with band.

Back from the brick

2011-02-11T19:18:00.010+01:00

I was flashing new fimwares into my WRT54GL when all of sudden I get the following message: Error writing to MTD device. Error!? Uh-oh...

Symptoms:

a fast flashing power-on LED
router completely unresponsive

I had what's called a brick. Oops!

With the help of the original Linksys firmware, a TFTP tool, a DD-WRT firmware, Tomato 1.28 and my neighbours wide open WiFi I'm now back from the brink. Currently running Tomato 1.28 after I discovered that Tomato RAF v1.28.8515 _RAF ND Std didn't apply the ad-blocking script properly.

Lessons learned:

don't fool around with different firmwares too much
de-bricking a WRT54GL isn't very difficult
de-bricking beats buying a new router!

I think I'm gonna build a JTAG cable, for even bigger problematic situations, just to be sure.

Cheap Chinese Cap Spills Guts

2011-02-11T10:00:00.004+01:00

This is part of a 7600GT AGP (yes!) graphics card. So much for cheap electronic parts. Still not sure if I'll attempt to replace the cap -and the one right next to it too for good measure- with an equivalent Panasonic FC.

Downtime

2011-02-08T23:04:00.005+01:00

I just lost 350 days of uptime on my WRT54GL router... I was tinkering with the ad blocking script that runs on it and that caused the WRT54GL to run out out of free memory. Bugger. Ah well, it gave me the opportunity to install Tomato 1.28 while I was at it.

I've been looking at a new router recently. Currently my WRT54GL is stretched to its WAN-to-LAN speed capability. With more bandwidth coming this year I need a new router to profit from it. The new router is likely gonna be a Linksys-Cisco WRT160NL that's also running Linux software. Unfortunately it will not run the Tomato firmware. Tomato development doesn't include newer N-draft routers. Luckily there's still DD-WRT that's still actively developed.

Evert-Jan Daniels wint Zilveren Camera

2011-01-23T19:12:00.004+01:00

Ik lees net dat Evert-Jan Daniels de Zilveren Camera 2010 heeft gewonnen. Ik ken Evert-Jan van toen hij nog bij Foto Uniek in Den Haag werkte. Ahh, those were the days my friend...

Foto Uniek bestaat allang niet meer maar was een begrip. Enorm veel gebruikte camera's en objectieven in de etalages, en binnen nóg meer. Bij Foto Uniek destijds het nodige gekocht. Voor 't eerst daar een Leica in m'n handen gehouden. In juni 1992 daar, geholpen door Evert-Jan, voor 4400 gulden m'n Leica M6 gekocht. Ooit nog eens bij 'm thuis geweest om naar wat werk van 'm te kijken. Met het verdwijnen van Foto Uniek ook Evert-Jan uit het oog verloren. Jammer eigenlijk, ik had best aardig contact met 'm. Later zag ik dat ie het als fotograaf prima doet. Nu dan de Zilveren Camera. Klasse. Evert-Jan, van harte gefeliciteerd!

Die Leica M6? Ja die heb ik nog steeds!

Albert J

2010-12-22T21:50:00.001+01:00

Albert J was available sooner than the Deacon. Ordered the Albert J instead... Took delivery of Albert J today. Woohoo!

300 days

2010-12-18T20:19:00.003+01:00

My Linksys WRT54GL runs Tomato firmware. Current uptime is 300 days, and still no sign of quitting. Great combination of hard- and software.

A man's plug!

2010-12-09T21:13:00.004+01:00

Ahh my FiiO iPod line out adapter. After having butchered its iPod connector to remove a connection between two pins that caused nasty pops and clicks, I now butchered the 3.5mm jack plug... Long story short, a bad connection resulted in a loss of right channel audio. It now sports a heavy duty plug. A man's plug!

While I was at it I removed two unused conductors from the cable which should make it a bit more flexible.

Deacon frame

2010-12-08T18:47:00.002+01:00

Albert J plays hard to get. Ordered a Deacon instead. The nerd thing still applies.

New frame

2010-11-24T18:58:00.002+01:00

I ordered this one. It's an Oliver Peoples frame, model Albert J in matt black. Essentially I'm a nerd. I might as well look the part... :)

Blow

2010-11-08T22:57:00.006+01:00

I've been listening to Blow by "Patches" Stewart the last few days. "Patches" plays the trumpet in the Marcus Miller band.

Blow is a great album filled with jazzy, funky songs that will appeal to any Marcus Miller fan. Not surprising really as Marcus plays bass, and also produced and arranged all the songs. Other notable guest musicians: Poogie Bell, Dean Brown, Kenny Garrett.

Got or like Marcus' Tales or M² album? If yes then Blow is mandatory listening for you.

My favourites:

I Know What You Like (do I hear a George Benson sample in there?)
Overjoyed (Stevie Wonder)
We Be Gettin' Down
Don't You Know
Cruisin'

Groovy baby!

One Ugly Motherfucker

2010-10-20T12:49:00.010+02:00

Predator

2010-10-08T23:34:00.004+02:00

I've been eyeing this one for quite some time. Today I ordered it. It's a 15cm (6") tall figurine created by Touma.

Predator is cool.

S500 with a surprise

2010-09-28T20:31:00.013+02:00

My S500 racket got here today. A great looking racket, light weight too. Inside the box was a small surprise: a freebie Match Speeder. Nice touch! I got my racket here: speedmintonwebwinkel.nl

Update

The standard Speedminton®-embossed grip is thin, has no "cushion" and isn't very tacky at all. It's exactly the same grip that's also on the cheaper S70 rackets that I have. Too bad they don't put on a better grip as standard on a racket of this calibre. I replaced the Speedminton®-embossed grip with a Pacific RipControl 1.9 I still had lying around. Feels much better now.

S500

2010-09-25T20:02:00.003+02:00

I ordered this piece of gear today.

Starving Student Mk II

2010-09-17T15:03:00.007+02:00

I finished it yesterday evening. Blue tube LEDs this time. The 3-way switch on the right lets me choose two brightness settings aswell as both LEDs off. It now uses the 12AU7 tubes from my first Starving Student. I'm gonna buy 12AT7's for this one soon.

Update

The power switch has broken already and a RCA jack fell apart when I tried to pull off the RCA plug... The switch is a DPDT type so it was just a matter of moving all wiring to the other side of the switch. My Mk I is now missing one RCA jack. Cheap parts are unreliable...

Familiar Logo

2010-09-07T13:11:00.008+02:00

Hmm, that's a somewhat familiar logo there... A happy little coincidence?

New Wayfarer

2010-08-31T08:46:00.003+02:00

My Ray Ban New Wayfarer got here last saturday. The New Wayfarer is a redesigned Wayfarer. A problem with the original Wayfarer design was that it only looked good on very few people. The redesign makes for a pair of sunglasses suitable for a lot more faces. Cool pair of shades!

184 days

2010-08-24T19:44:00.006+02:00

That's 184 days of uptime. Half a year, and counting... Not bad. Not bad at all!

Reuben Tishkoff's brother

2010-08-14T23:15:00.007+02:00

We went to an optician today to pick up the new specs for my wife. I had a look around and soon spotted a IC! Berlin frame I fancied. The female assistent handed me another frame she thought would look good on me. The shop owner and she both went "Wow! Looks great on you!" Me, I wasn't so sure. I felt I looked like Reuben Tishkoff's spitting image with that frame. All that was missing to make it complete was a bow tie, some gold bling-bling and a big Cuban cigar. Who's Reuben Tishkoff you ask? See picture... I politely said I would give it a thought. I did however buy something else. A Ray Ban New Wayfarer in Havana with prescription lenses.

Speedminton

2010-08-13T12:05:00.010+02:00

I found out about it last year, but this summer I bought a set: Speedminton. The Speedminton racket is a bit like a racquetball racket. Speedminton is played with a Speeder: a shuttlecock that's smaller and faster than a badminton shuttlecock. Three different Speeders exist: Fun Speeder, Match Speeder, Night Speeder

The Fun Speeder is a slow(ish) Speeder. The Match Speeder is faster. The Night Speeder is a Match Speeder that can be illuminated with a Speedlight (=small glow stick).

Playing Speedminton is great fun and it's a nice workout too! Playing Speedminton in the dark at 10.00 pm with the illuminated Night Speeder is awesome.

La Marque Jaune

2010-08-13T11:14:00.007+02:00

While on holiday in France I grabbed the chance to get a French copy of my favourite comic strip: La Marque Jaune. I now have it in Dutch (twice), German, English and French.

Regulator booster

2010-07-24T17:01:00.005+02:00

I came across this bit over at Pink Fish Media. What does a regulator booster do? Well I'm no electrical engineer, but in essence it filters out high frequency noise on the DC that a monolithic voltage regulator can't block.

My Azur 540C cd player has four of those monolithic voltage regulators: two 7805's one 7815 and one 7915. The 7805's supply the clock and the DAC with 5 volts. The 7815 and the 7915 supply the opamp with symmetrical 15 volts.

I made my voltage regulators on pieces of stripboard. A quick check showed they all work. I removed all the old voltage regulators and replaced them with my boosted regulators. While I was at it I also replaced the bog standard 1N4002 rectifier diodes with 11DQ10's.

How does it sound now? A very nice improvement in soundstaging, the treble really sparkles without being harsh. Worth it? IMO, yes these cheap to make regulator boosters provide a pretty nice upgrade.

Starving Student version 2

2010-06-27T22:35:00.006+02:00

I got lucky on eBay again today. I snapped up another 48VDC 380mA Cisco power supply for my Starving Student version 2.

I've been slowly assembling some parts into small building blocks so final assembly is made easier. As for grid stopper resistors this time I'm going to add a 1KΩ resistor to each grid instead of one grid stopper shared between both grids. From Hongkong the two Elna RJH 470µF caps have arrived.

Both tube sockets got the center hole treatment so they're ready to accept a tube LED. I also removed pin 9 from both tube sockets as it's not connected in the 12AU7 version.

Starving Student tweak III

2010-06-20T22:08:00.006+02:00

Yesterday evening I did some reading about using grid stopper resistors with tubes. In short, a grid stopper resistor prevents tube oscillation and attenuates radio frequency interference (also known as RFI of EMI).

The 12AU7 version Starving Student schematic has marked the 1KΩ grid stopper resistors (R14 & R15) as optional. Today I installed both of them. The difference is that touching my iPod Nano 4G no longer results in noise. Also, touching the metal volume knob now doesn't introduce noise as it used to do.
I find myself pausing the music occasionally to check where that annoying buzz is coming from. It's never there when the music stops...

So my experience is that the grid stopper resistors work, and very well at that. I don't consider them to be optional. True, the Starving Student will work without them but it will be even better if you add the grid stopper resistors. Resistors are cheap!

While I was at it I also swapped the left and right channel wiring at the inputs... Oops!

F.lux

2010-06-20T00:38:00.004+02:00

I just installed F.lux software. F.lux "makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day."

Indeed it does work as advertised. Good for those late night computer sessions, a real treat for sore eyes. F.lux is free to use. Try it.

DIY Parts

2010-06-18T12:47:00.003+02:00

My Elna Silmic's 470µF arrived this morning together with three LME49720 opamps. The Elna's are bigger than I expected them to be. One of the LME49720's now has found a new home in my Cambridge Audio 540C CD player. Sounds great. The LM49720 delivers a strong low bass, better than the OPA2134. I'm pleased with the overall sound quality.

Homebrew

2010-06-18T00:21:00.001+02:00

I made 2.5 liters of Limoncello last week. Tastes great! A nice drink for those long and warm summer evenings.

Starving Student - No.2

2010-06-18T00:05:00.005+02:00

I'm so delighted with the sound of my Millett Starving Student Hybrid headphone amp that I'm gonna make another one... This time I'm gonna make it with slightly different parts and hardware. I'm using a wood box with an aluminium top plate. All connectors and controls are gonna be placed on top. For this new build I have bought slightly bigger heat sinks, instead of 2" tall they'll be 2.5"tall. The heat coming off the 2" heat sinks is a bit too much IMO. Bigger heat sinks will be cooler, though I don't think it's gonna make a huge difference. For the electrolytic caps I have ordered Elna's. Elna RJH 470µF for C1 and C6 and Elna Silmic 470µF for C3 and C5.

I don't have to buy resistors, LED's, IRF510's and the C2,C4,C3a and C5a caps as I have them in my parts box. Again the tubes and matching sockets will be the most expensive parts of the whole build.

Starving Student tweak II

2010-06-04T16:53:00.005+02:00

I added orange LEDs under the tubes to emulate tube glow instead of going for the popular Cherenkov-look. Both LEDs are working @ 9mA. Looks great IMO.

Starving Student tweak

2010-06-03T22:41:00.007+02:00

This evening I inserted a Kapton insulating foil between the IRF510 MOSFETs and the heatsinks on my Starving Student hybrid headphone amp. The foils were never used for the TO-220 diodes in my mini Aleph because they didn't need insulating. The foils are really cool ones. They come pre-coated with some sort of thermal grease on both sides but keep your fingers clean while applying them. As the MOSFETs heat up it softens and does its heat conductivity work. As a result the heat sinks are now hotter (57°C) than before, indicating a better transfer of heat away from the MOSFETs.

Now Is the Time

2010-06-03T22:07:00.002+02:00

It's here! My copy of the new Jeff Lorber Fusion CD Now Is The Time got here today. Also pictured is the booklet of the Water Sign CD Jeff was kind enough to sign for me.

Bye bye Reader 9

2010-06-03T21:46:00.003+02:00

The last couple of weeks my Adobe Reader installation needed to install an update almost every other day or two days. Fed up with Reader 9 needing updating so frequently and the fact that it has become so bloated I decided to ditch Adobe Reader 9 in favour of a lean mean PDF machine. I settled on Foxit Reader. It's small and fast. Bye bye Adobe Reader 9.

Jeff Lorber Fusion in Zoetermeer

2010-06-01T23:41:00.005+02:00

Just got back from Zoetermeer. I went to see and hear Jeff Lorber and his band with a friend. The audience was predominantly male, aged 40+ (that includes me). Nonetheless we had a great evening with funky grooves and exemplary musicianship. Heared nothing but excellent stuff. Much to my joy some old Jeff Lorber Fusion tunes from the Water Sign album (like Toad's Place and Tune 88) were played. I even got Jeff to sign my copy of it! Thanks Jeff, Jimmy, Eric and of course Will for a highly enjoyable evening.

Afterwards Jeff, Will and Eric took some time to pose for photos and have a quick chat with the fans. I talked with Will for a moment. Told him I was very glad to see him back with the Jackets and that I'll be looking forward to the new Yellowjackets CD. Will more or less promised to come back to Zoetermeer with the Jackets...

Starving Student

2010-05-30T19:21:00.005+02:00

I finished my Starving Student hybrid headphone amp today. I plugged it in and held my breath. Not because of excitement, I just don't want to inhale magic blue smoke... ;)

The heatsinks warm up pretty quick, as do both tubes. OK, now check DC offset at the outputs. Oops, that's ~12.5 VDC. Not good. Check the schematic again. I forgot to add two resistors...

With the resistors installed I get ~3mV of DC offset. That's good. On top of the 2" tall heatsinks I measure ~50°C (122°F), the IRF510 metal tab clocks in at ~63° (145°F). This thing gets bloody HOT. Cool! I plugged in my PX-100's and it works! No hum. Some very faint hiss, hardly worth mentioning. It sounds great already. Plenty of punch, lovely highs. Gotta do some burning in but I really like what I'm hearing already.

I'm a bit disappointed in the Electro-Harmonix 12AU7 tubes: no tube glow as the heaters are enclosed. I might install orange LEDs to light up the tubes. I did prepare the tube sockets for that.

Fashion Trends

2010-05-28T11:31:00.004+02:00

Fashion trends come, fashion trends go. Now here's a fashion trend I won't like to see go: nipple enhancers.

The natural look is back. Nipples are in. From your favourite magazines, to stars gracing the red carpet, women are showing off their breasts with pride. Body Perks nipple enhancers are the latest fashion accessory for your breasts, so take the lead from Sex and the City's Samantha and draw attention to your natural assets. For full effect, wear under a soft cup bra for enhanced, perky appeal.

Available here

Jeff Lorber in concert

2010-05-27T19:32:00.003+02:00

A friend of mine mentioned Jeff Lorber is giving a concert in Zoetermeer june 1st. He's bringing Jimmy Haslip (bass), William Kennedy (drums), and Eric Marienthal (sax) with him. Today he left a message on my voicemail, he bought a ticket and he's going.

Count me in! I'm going too.

Cisco PSU

2010-05-26T19:34:00.002+02:00

I got my Cisco 48 VDC PSU today. The PSU is new and unused and clocks in at 48.1 volts DC, excellent!

12AU7

2010-05-25T20:26:00.002+02:00

I went shopping for two 12AU7 tubes today. I also needed fitting sockets. I came home with two Electro-Harmonix 12AU7/ECC82 tubes and two ceramic tube sockets. The tube sockets have a hole in the center and thus will allow me to glue a 3mm LED underneath the tube to augment "tube-glow". Hmm, what colour should I choose?

CD player mod

2010-05-25T15:55:00.015+02:00

My Cambridge Audio 540C CD player is a good CD player and offered very good value for money when I bought it. I couldn't afford the better spec'd 640C at the time. The 540C however truely lived up to its promise. It sounded so much better than my old Kenwood DP-4020. That is until all of a sudden no sound came out of mine. It was diagnosed with a broken DAC chip, something rare apparently. The repair bill was a whopping €150...

This weekend I thought I would swap the opamp in the output stage of the 540C. Originally the 540C sports a NE5532P opamp. A decent opamp that does its job but is far from spectacular. Better opamps however exist and don't have to cost a fortune. A NE5532 costs approx. €0.80 and falls into the "jellybean" category. It's cheap and thus a common opamp to find inside devices.

Today I popped open the 540C and cut out the NE5532P. Next I desoldered its eight pins and used a desoldering pump to suck the holes clear of solder. I popped in a high quality opamp socket and soldered it to the board. In went my AD8066 on a Doc Brown™ adapter. A quick check reveals that it works. Woohoo! Got to do some serious listening tonight, but my first impression is it's highs are much clearer now and the stereo image is wider.

While I was at it I also noticed something unexpected. My 540C doesn't have a WM8716 DAC chip. It has got a WM8740 instead. The WM8740 is a better spec'd DAC and was used in the 640C. When they repaired my 540C they must have put that one in. Lack of WM8716 chips perhaps? I don't know if the sound quality benefits from the WM8740, the electronics that surround it may need upgrading...

Update

A thought entered my mind today. How much voltage does the 540C supply to the opamp and can my AD8066 handle that? The two voltage regulators (7815 & 7915) supplY ± 15V to pins 4 and 8 of the opamp. So 30 Volts total (I measured 29.8 Volts). A quick check of the AD8066 datasheet yields 24 Volts as highest safe operating voltage and an absolute maximum of 26.4 Volts. I quickly pulled out the AD8066 and inserted an OPA2134. I'm very lucky that the AD8066 still works...

Next tweak will be a change of a capacitor. C32 is a 47µF cap on the output of a 7805 (U1). U1 supplies the voltage for the clock. A change to OS-CON on the digital power supply line could improve things further. Too bad the DAC is fed from a single 7805 (U4), changing C15 to a Sanyo OS-CON means the power supply to the analog part of the DAC will be fed from the OS-CON too. OS-CONs are less suitable for analog circuits.

Jeff Lorber Fusion

2010-05-19T19:33:00.006+02:00

I have a few Jeff Lorber Fusion CDs. My favourite one is Water Sign from 1979. Great album from start to finish. I just love Tune 88. Later on Jeff renamed the Jeff Lorber Fusion to just Jeff Lorber while the music on the subsequent CDs gets progressively smoother. On those CDs there is usually only one track that really interests me.

Today I discover this: Jeff Lorber breathes new life into the Jeff Lorber Fusion! Now this is good news, and good music.

This new incarnation of the Jeff Lorber Fusion includes luminaries like bassist Jimmy Haslip, saxophonist Eric Marienthal, trumpeter Randy Brecker, guitarist Paul Jackson Jr., and drummers Vinnie Colaiuta and Dave Weckl.

The bits of music here are very promising.

Starving Student

2010-05-18T22:36:00.005+02:00

Operation Starving Student is a go! I got lucky on eBay and won the required 48VDC Cisco power supply. Winning bid: €1.16... Let's not discuss shipping costs. I hope it's here soon and that the skies stay clear of volcanic ash. I also bought some resistors and four IRF510's (yes four, so have two spares) for it.

Millett Starving Student

2010-05-15T16:25:00.007+02:00

Yet another DIY project: a Starving Student. Originally designed by Pete Millett the Starving Student is a cheap to make but very good sounding headphone amp. Didn't I make one (Mini³) already? Well yes but this one is different. Whereas the Mini³ is a DC coupled opamp-based headphone amp, the Starving Student is a hybrid design. Hybrid in that it has both tubes and transistors. Pete Millett designed the Starving Student using cheap and freely available 19J6 tubes. Due to the enormous popularity of the Starving Student the availability of the 19J6 tubes has become a problem. What tubes there are still out there now go for a premium price. Basic supply and demand. I tried to find the 19J6 tubes locally. No such luck though.

There's still hope for prospective DIY-ers though. Two DIY-ers modified the original schematic to be able to use the 12AU7 tube. The 12AU7 tube is freely available. Won't it go just like it did with 19J6 tube? No, the 12AU7 tube is still in production today. The 12AU7 and it's cousins the 12AT7 and 12AX7 are still used in amps today. Guitar and bass amps for instance.

I asked about the availability of 12AU7 (AKA ECC82) tubes at two local shops yesterday. No problem, Sovtek's for 10 euro a piece. The other shop sold 12AU7's at 13 euro a piece.

So am I gonna make one? It depends on if I can get the required 48 Volts DC power supply for it. Once I have that, I will make a Starving Student myself.

Mini³ lettering

2010-05-09T17:28:00.006+02:00

I just remembered I have a set of paint sticks. I bought these once for filling in the engraved numbers on my Leica lenses. I took out the white paint stick and rubbed it over the engraved lettering on the Mini³ panels. Removed excess paint with some tissues and cleaned up with mineral oil (baby oil). The result is white lettering instead of silver (aluminium). The difference is small but noticeable.

Yesterday I bought a new knob for it. The silver one didn't fit very well visually. I now have a black knob with a white index mark. Looks better.

Mini³ tweak(ed)

2010-05-01T13:48:00.012+02:00

I'm gonna tweak the Mini³ a bit... The built-in battery charger to be precise. Built per spec the battery gets charged at ~17mA. I couldn't get the stock 75Ω resistor and bought a 68Ω instead. At 68Ω the charge current is ~18.5mA. This results in a charge time in excess of 15 hours, that's a bit too long to my liking.

A rechargeable battery is usually slowly charged at 0.1C, or at one tenth of its rated capacity. For my 250mAh battery this means a charge current of 25mA. To get 25mA of charge current in my Mini³ that means I need a 50Ω resistor (1.25/R = I).

For higher capacity batteries lowering the resistor works up to a point. Maximum charge current is ~35mA so as not to overheat the LM317 voltage regulator. A higher charge current could be done though by using a LM317 in a TO-39 package with a heatsink attached. Then getting rid of the built up heat inside the case becomes another problem though.

Just got back from the shop. No 50Ω resistor but a 47Ω resistor instead. A 47Ω resistor makes the charge current a bit higher than the 0.1C or 25mA I was shooting for. I removed the 68Ω resistor and popped-in the 47Ω resistor. Battery charge current should be 26.6mA. In real life it is now 26.3mA. I'm quite happy with that value.

I saw on the shop's site they might have the 2SJ109 dual JFET. At €9.15 each not exactly cheap but not expensive either for such a difficult to source part. One problem: only one in stock. That rules out making an Aleph J.

Mini³ finished at last

2010-04-28T20:16:00.007+02:00

Today I received some parts I ordered. I bought two 9 volt batteries (one 200mAh and one 250mAh) hoping one of them would fit. They both do. After that I connected both battery terminals to the 250mAh battery and clamped the battery to the PCB. Next I finally soldered the terminals to the PCB. The last thing to check is the battery charging circuit.

Also in my parcel was a DC-plug & cable assembly to charge the Mini³ battery with. A check with my Velleman P1832 PSU @ 15 volts output shows that the battery charging circuit checks out OK. Charging current is ~18.5mA. For the 250mAh battery to be fully charged it would take about 13½ -15 hours. Modern speed chargers laugh at this but slow charging is better for the battery.

The battery on the left is an old 200mAh that doesn't fit inside the case. The right one is the new 200mAh that does fit. The left one is a 9.6volt (8x1.2v), the right one is 8.4volt (7x1.2v).

Butchered my iPod LOD

2010-04-25T00:22:00.010+02:00

I bought a nice line-out cable for my iPod Nano 4G. This way I got to bypass the mediocre amplifier inside the Nano. The difference is indeed remarkable. Teamed up with an external headphone amp my Nano sounds much better using the line-out than using the headphone output jack. Problem solved right? Well no. The nice line-out cable introduced annoying pops & clicks in the audio. Using the headphone output jack there's no annoying pops & clicks. I found the pinouts of the iPod connector and discovered that only three pins are used for audio line-out. But what are the other two pins for in my line-out cable? As it turned out both were connected internally. Most likely pins 11 and 15 if I didn't lose count. I cut away the connection.

I now have a line-out cable with a broken iPod connector. On the upside, now there's silence. No pops, no clicks. Oh, and Loud Jazz. Of course.

Mini³ - it's alive

2010-04-24T15:48:00.005+02:00

I now know my Mini³ works. I still haven't got the proper battery for it, but I manged to power it up. The blue LED lights up nicely, not too bright nor too dim. The amplifier's total quiescent current draw is 24.2mA, which nicely matches the "about 25mA" that the AMB Laboratories site specifies. DC-offset is 1.5mV and 1.4mV for the right and left channel. Both are good low values, and are indeed lower than the specified 5mV. Still to check is the battery charging circuit, which can only be done when the DC-plug & cable assembly I ordered gets here.

That's all very well and groovy, but how does it sound? Clarity, depth, separation, detailed and punchy bass. All at ear splitting SPL...

Mini³ nearly finished

2010-04-23T17:12:00.011+02:00

I started working on my (hi-performance) Mini³ today. It's now almost finished. I still have to find a 9v NiMH battery that fits the case. Soldering the SMD opamps was a bit tricky. With a fine soldering tip and thin solder wire (0.5 mm) I managed to do it. The end result looks OK.

Here's how I soldered the opamps: apply a tiny amount of solder to one of the corner pads and allow to cool. Align opamp on all its pads. Re-heat the pre-soldered pad. Keep opamp aligned in the process. Allow solder to cool. The opamp is now soldered to the pad. Check alignment of opamp. If all's OK solder the opposite corner first then all the other pins. If alignment is off re-heat the pad and re-align opamp. For best results use thin solder wire and a fine tip on the iron. I've got an Ersa 832SDLF 0.8mm pencil style tip.

mini Aleph working again

2010-04-18T09:31:00.004+02:00

My mini Aleph is working again, I put it together yesterday afternoon. I completely rewired the amp and implemented a starground. I also mounted the IRFP250's instead of the original IRFP240's I had in it. After powering it up I started tweaking the bias and DC offset. The trimpots really make adjusting the bias and DC offset very easy. Turn the bias pot up and the voltage drop over the source resistor goes up too. Cool. The offset pot works likewise, for a negative DC offset (gently!) turn clockwise. Over the course of the evening I adjusted the left and right channel bias to 1.1 amps (heatsinks at ~37°C). DC offset in both channels is now below 10mV, one channel was 70mV before the tweak.

The amps bias and rail voltages makes an amp of 2x 15Watts @ 6 Ω.

How does it sound? Well just like before I pulled it apart, only a touch better. A bit more clarity and depth. I feel that the MKP1837's are responsible for that.

mini Aleph mods done

2010-04-13T19:17:00.007+02:00

I bought four blue Bourns trimpots for the mini Aleph today, two 500Ω and two 200KΩ. The 500Ω trimpots will be used to adjust DC offset. The 200KΩ trimpots will enable easy bias adjustment. I soldered pins 2 and 3 together, this way rotating the set screw clockwise will increase resistance. I preset the trimpots to the default resistor values for R8 and R13 before I mounted them onto the PCB.

I also bought four IRFP250 MOSFETs for 1 euro a piece, pretty cheap IMO.

mini Aleph mods

2010-04-12T21:50:00.006+02:00

My lovely sounding mini Aleph got partly disassembled today...

After I built it a few things struck me:

bias current wasn't at 1 Amp but lower (0.86 Amps)
left and right channel bias wasn't equal
left and right channel DC offset a bit too high to my liking

All these things can be traced back to tolerances of all the parts that make up the amplifier. I upped the bias to ~1.2 Amps by installing additional 1Ω resistors in parallel to the 0.47Ω resistors but it didn't make left and right channel bias equal.

So I want to modify it slightly. I want to:

install DC offset trimmers
install bias current trimmers
install 0.01µF bypass caps

The bypass caps are mounted on the reverse side of the amplifier PCBs, every 220µF Elna cap now has its own 0.01µF MKP1837 bypass cap. For the trimmers I'm gonna use those square cermet types. With the trimmers it's probably not needed to have the 0.47Ω source resistors paralleled with 1Ω resistors to increase the bias current so I removed them.

A local store has IRFP250's on offer, at 1 euro a piece, I think I'm gonna pick up four of those puppies to replace the IRFP240's I now have. According to Nelson Pass, the IRFP250's "will give a better bottom end".

My Mini³ parts are here

2010-04-07T19:51:00.007+02:00

My Mini³ parts arrived today, in a sturdy package. Everything I ordered @ AMB Laboratories is here now. I did some test fitting just now and came to the conclusion that the battery snap holders needed filing down, I knew that this would be the case. The pins of the 3.5mm stereo mini phone jacks needed some filing down too. They were both slightly rotated clockwise with respect to the PCB silkscreen. I didn't know that they would need some work too... Doesn't really matter since they now fit like they should.

Still on order are the PSU caps and the Hammond case. I can't do anything yet, I've got to fit the battery contacts and battery first and for that the case is needed. Space in the Hammond case is very tight, also you just can't order any 9v volt battery and expect it to fit. The 9 volt battery must be a slim type so the PCB and battery can slide in and out of the case.

Mini³ parts in transit

2010-04-04T01:04:00.012+02:00

I placed an order for the Mini³ PCB and all the additional stuff on the AMB website, including those lovely front and rear panels. I ordered the Hammond 1455C802BK enclosure and caps locally. I have the rest of the parts needed to make the Mini³ (resistors, LEDs, diodes etc.) already in house.

Mini³ parts, cMoyBB boxed up

2010-03-27T19:36:00.009+01:00

I got some of my Mini³ parts today. Also included in my shipment was a case for my cMoyBB. I bought a transparent blue Hammond enclosure (1593PTBU) with a separate battery door. After some cutting, drilling and hot glueing my first cMoyBB (red) is boxed up. Photo follows later.

I also received the 50KΩ Alps pot, a 470µF Vishay cap, two knobs, two 3.5mm jack inputs and two bass boost caps for my second cMoyBB (green). The Hammond case is too small to place the bass boost pot on the control panel too. A larger enclosure will be needed.

For future soldering of small parts I also ordered a new tip (832 SD LF) for my Ersa MultiPro soldering iron.

Operation Mini³ is a go

2010-03-19T15:59:00.009+01:00

Went to my local electronics parts shop today. Twice. I asked if they sold miniature ⅛W resistors. They did! Bought some for my cMoyBB. John Seaber mentions using ⅛W resistors to improve performance. The shorter leads will lower inductance. So that's what I'm doing with this cMoyBB. New this time is that I will make it DC-coupled, I replaced both C2's (input caps) with 330Ω resistors as per John's modifications instructions. This too should improve performance. Bass boost resistors are 22KΩ, I couldn't get 24KΩ. Together with a 50KΩ pot it will give me a variable bass boost resistor with a maximum of ~15.3KΩ. I also bought four 0.1µF ceramic decoupling caps. I couldn't get 2KΩ resistors for R3, I opted for 1.8KΩ instead. This means an amplifier gain of 6.5. Slightly higher than the red cMoyBB.

Those ⅛W resistors are tiny! Populating the PCB with these is fiddly, but I managed. Still to buy are the jack sockets, 470µF cap, 50KΩ pot and two 0.1µF film caps.

The local availability of ⅛W resistors opens up a new possibility: making an AMB Mini³ headphone amp.

So I went back with my shopping list for Mini³ resistors and ceramic 0.1µF caps . . .

cMoyBB - small progress

2010-03-14T23:04:00.004+01:00

The Alps pot and the AD8397 opamp I ordered from Tangentsoft.net arrived saturday. The AD8397 is going into storage, I may someday make a Mini³ headphone amp.

I just got around to measuring the DC-offset of my AD8066 equipped red PCB cMoyBB amp

bass boost off: 0.8mV and -2.4mV
bass boost on: 1.9mV and -5.6mV

Good, low values! Too high a DC-offset can (and will!) destroy your headphones.

I also soldered in the red LED. The green PCB cMoyBB got its opamp socket soldered in.

Green cMoyBB

2010-03-12T15:55:00.006+01:00

My green cMoyBB PCB arrived here today. I also bought the TLE2426 voltage splitter for it and 100 grams of 0.5mm (~0.02") leaded solder for soldering small components like SO-8 form factor opamps. Still waiting for the AD8397 and Alps pot.

I emailed John Seaber (of cMoyBB fame) about using an AD8397 as the opamp in a cMoyBB. He strongly advised not to proceed in that direction. Not even with added decoupling. The AD8397 is a power hungry opamp that draws so much current at idle the TLE2426 only barely is able to supply it. Using it as an amplifier is out of the question with the cMoyBB PCB. The AD8397 requires a PCB specifically made for it and thus doesn't qualify as a drop-in replacement. Talk about cranky. John Seaber advised me to make a AMB Laboratories Mini³ if wanted to use a AD8397. The Mini³ is an interesting headphone amp... It is however not very cheap to make.

What about this cMoyBB then? Well it's gonna be a little bit different from the previous one. This one is gonna have a variable bass boost knob. The bass boost pot is gonna be a 50K linear Alps RK09. Parallel to the pot I'm gonna use a 24K resistor. This will result in a bass boost resistor of 16.6K maximum and give a maximum boost of ~7dB. Opamp-wise I would like to use a OPA2107 in it if it weren't for the price and availablility of the OPA2107. An OPA2134 will do for the time being.

cMoyBB - part two

2010-03-08T00:13:00.004+01:00

Don't tell the missus but I'm gonna make another one... This one is gonna be a bit different from the previous one. This time I want to use an AD8397 dual opamp. The AD8397 isn't very easy to implement and might need some work to get it to operate properly. I want a variable bass boost as opposed to an off/on switch with a fixed value. This time I want to experiment with higher amplification gains. I ordered the green PCB this time as I envision this to be a green 'n' mean machine.

Galaxy Maggiorato

2010-03-05T09:12:00.003+01:00

Two Hifi 2000/ModuShop enclosures from Italy arrived yesterday. The left one (Galaxy Maggiorato GX383) is for my B1 buffer preamp, the one on the right (Galaxy Maggiorato GX183) is for my K272 tube preamp. The B1 comes first. I've got almost all the parts needed to complete it, it's only lacking a suitable transformer. Now it's time to layout the pot, switches and RCA sockets onto the front and rear panel.

William Kennedy

2010-03-02T21:43:00.005+01:00

I just discovered this bit on yellowjackets.com:

"We want to wish Marcus Baylor all the very best as he embarks on a new musical path after 10 years as a member of Yellowjackets. We are deeply grateful to him for his profound musical contributions to the band...

At the same time we are excited to announce that William Kennedy will be back in the drum chair for Yellowjackets as we move forward with our live performances and prepare for a new CD to be recorded this spring."

William Kenndy back in the drum chair, that's the best news for me as a Yellowjackets fan. Marcus is a fine drummer but if I may choose my vote goes to William. The prospect of a new CD is good news too. Can hardly wait.

cMoyBB - Hot glue

2010-03-02T19:31:00.004+01:00

Since there's no strain relief on the battery clip leads. John Seaber suggested using hot glue to insulated the PCB from the metal casing. Would hot glue also work for securing those leads? This afternoon I applied a blob of hot glue to the leads, effectively glueing them to the PCB. Works OK.

Harry Brown - Krasse Knar

2010-03-01T23:22:00.004+01:00

I just saw the movie trailer of Harry Brown starring Michael Caine. This is a must-see IMO. Move over Paul Kersey, Harry Brown is in town!

cMoyBB - It's alive

2010-03-01T20:49:00.018+01:00

I got my Alps pot today. I soldered it in, hooked up the battery clip. Inserted the OPA2134 into its socket. Connected a 9 volt battery and switched it on. Measured DC offset: a few millivolts. That's good. Switched it off, connected my iPod, inserted my PX-100's and turned on the amp. No noise at all just silence, just like John Seaber promised. Turn the volume up and there's music! Woohoo, it works!

The bass boost kicks in a hefty amount of low end. Some music will really benefit from the extra bass. Roxy Music's Avalon CD is a bit lean on bass and really benefits from it. Other music is best enjoyed pure, without bass boost. John Mayer's cover of Bold As Love doesn't need it at all. The Still Warm CD from John Scofield sounds much better with bass boost on, now Darryl Jones' bass lines really come to life. Don't switch it on on Erykah Badu's Baduizm Live. I could go on (and on, and on) but you'll get the idea.

Bass boost is a really useful feature to have, but don't have it switched on permanently, unless of course you're a bass head. Remember that the default bass boost is ~9 dB, I opted for a slightly lower bass boost of ~6 dB and I'm glad I did.

I built my cMoyBB with an amp gain of 6, enough for my PX-100's. The overall sound is very good and can be tweaked to taste with a whole range of different opamps. Currently I've got a Burr Brown OPA2134 in it. I also have an Analog Devices AD8066 opamp for it.

It will have to burn-in for a few hours, and I'll have to box it up too.

The cMoyBB is fun to build and a great little project if you want to get started in DIY audio (gewoon doen Boudewijn!). It's easy to build, the assembly guide is clear. Apart from the Alps pot and jack-inputs, parts are fairly generic and shouldn't be too difficult too source. Run some simulations before ordering/buying parts to get the frequency response you want. If it's all gibberish to you, you'd better stick to default values. John Seaber is very responsive to emailed questions should you have some.

It's highly rewarding when this cool little amp you built actually works and sounds great. Highly recommended!

Slow Internet connection

2010-02-26T18:16:00.003+01:00

You got to pity the people of Libya. They must have what is likely the slowest connection to the Internet...

november 29, 2009: The Swiss vote to ban minaret construction

february 26, 2010: Gaddafi calls for jihad against Switzerland for banning minaret construction