So. I loved my ARC SP3 tubed with my Koetsu Rosewood, then better was my Classe’ with a succession of MC’s… but Skoll is special…. Special enough that I’m buyin’ Starnaja=whatchamacallit… day 0. Please @Jason Stoddard let it have a “mono” switch.

Try it, you will be shocked.

Mapleshade. Finger arthritis. They look too close, but trust me they are perfect… room is 15.5’ wide and 25.5 feet long… it’s iPad camera perspective

If only… IF ONLY…. Kara had a mono switch! (Or heck, even if only Skoll had it). World class pre amp so far (since November. To me. My system). But… no balance (ok, deal with it), and no mono (for an lp dude needed)

Just finished a weeks session with a borrowed ZMF Bokeh. Gotta say I could see it in the stable. I slightly prefer my Koss’ Esp 950’s (yeah, I am THAT planar guy). But if (when) I get a closed set of cans… ZMF is top of the list. If nothing else, they remind me of the OG Grado cartridge sound...

Nice. We made home-made beef enchiladas tonight… from beef raised by my neighbor across the street: Temple Mountain Beef. Enchiladas made well… ymmmmm Yeah, I know. There’s “local” and there’s LOCAL

So, with point source? I’m totally with the “you need to measure the F outta it…” but with planars - given a decently large and critically rectangular room - don’t need “room treatments”. And that can be a huge feature.

Rainy holiday - thanks to all who served and sacrificied for this freedom… Sittin in the chair with the Bismarck; listening to a fully month warmed up Yggy rendering an amazing Jazz recording on Mapeshade: Gerard D’Angelo Trio - Not what my hands have done. Epic sound, folks. Ima gonna head...

Feature request on the next Schiit Pre-amp (pretty please)… I can live w/o a balance control, though it’d be NICE. But what I’m reminded again of just this weekend… you really NEED a MONO switch for certain aspects of aligning one’s cartridge… If Stjarna (sp?) is going to be the uber-Pre...

That is a huge (ha) score. I am a huge fan of my MI-250 mount; easily the equal performance wise of the AP’s, and it has held my C11 Hyperstar and Tak TOA130 in side by side mode just fine for imaging (native +/- 2” tracking before guiding… I miss it, it’s been taken apart last 5 years since...

Yeah, this was last year with the tree tween the apogees, when the amp was still there… this year it’ll be cleaner…

This… oh, and yeah room treatments that optimize quasi-point source speakers are very NOT right for those that optimize planar/dipoles… Source: my 40 years doing this… YMMV

Not mine, not anymore… mine pass through an oak floor at optimal perpendicularity… and thence hang in air before gracefully looping in a Fibonacci-sequenced semi-parabolic arc whereupon the lock into the back of the amp (also in optimal perpendicularity to the surrounding wood surfaces… Cable...

I’m going to have to race them against the cardboard… all y’all know that, right?

I think I have been insufficiently precise. I don’t pretend that one can point exactly to a precise, needle sharp “image” of an individual member of the orchestra. In fact, I find overly “precise”/sharp imaging (as in most dynamic speakers I’ve experienced), to be less convincing for symphonic...

I’m with @ArmchairPhilosopher - it DEPENDS on ones room… by a LOT

Not in my experience at all in any way whatsoever… are you thinking of Bookers ,perhaps?

And, in my first-hand experience, break out the Modelo

Yeah so we rented in Wimberley (October 2018 to April 2022). It was interesting following the aquifer situation. Texas’ water laws are, um, rather non-existent. Seems that if one owns the land, one can pump unlimited water up from under it, with NO consideration of underwater aquifers. This has...

Precisely. I’ve a weakness for Midleton Irish Whiskey… not cheap - usually mid $150ish… It’s celebratory only. I make those kinda bottles last for years (usually; when I had to move back from 4 years in Texas, several of the “celebratory” ones that were “low” needed drainin’/…) But $x 100 is...

So, when my second company secured our A round of financing. I celebrated and bought a Pappy 15… I made it last 4 years; sharing it at the end with all my friends for a last cigar and bourbon night out on my screened porch. I have since been unable to replace it. My local liquor store guy had...

Water is going to be the constraint. Mark my words.

Better seats. Better hall. Seriously, though, the point is that the Bose “effect” made everything so freaking huge and “amorphous” that no realistic sense of actual “real sound in real space” was at all possible.

Oh it is (and was) indeed. Best man at our wedding (I’ve known him since 1980) moved TO Texas in around 2010. When I first met him (New Jersey guy), he was like What with the West/South. I was fresh from Arizona. Anyways, now he’s down there, and we tried it, but LIFE made it not work. If you...

EPIC No other word can possibly apply