I'll take a look at Frank Cooter, Thank You Unk EriK.
bcg27 if my inquiry seemed disjointed I am sorry. You kind of got the idea that I wanted to use old globe triodes from the 30s as the power tubed, not the drivers for building high quality amps for headphones and to use as a preamp too, if I wanted. You understood that I told you that I listen to 300Bs for a reason and I didn't want to use 45s for listening to cans because I think they are too good and that there was a good chance of finding something that would work like a 45 and not cost as much. I hope you understand that with a group as large as this and as dedicated to listening to headphones as much as the people hear seem to that the smarter ones would be building their own to get a better quality product than most amps on the market for much less money besides the simple fact that if you build it you tend to have a better understanding of how it works and how to keep it working since the person who probably built the one you are using is in China having their water and land ruined because their government knows Americans for the most part care how much something costs right now and not what it will cost us all in 20 years.
I will be dead by then but I still care. More of the historically important American audio inovations are now in private theaters in Japan and Hong Kong while we get lead painted toys for our children and dollar store hammers that can't drive a nail straight.
No mistake, the American consumer has decided that they want cheaper merchandise made in China and Korea and now very few things are made in the US anymore.
DIY leads to innovation and that leads to small busineses starting up and small amounts of high quality audio gear being made in the US, mainly out of parts made in China.
I am going to a medium sized audio show tomorrow and Saturday to look at some new and fun gear, some SS and some Tube, some cabling, some high quality horns and hand made field coil drivers, some lovingly restored to better than new American and UK gear using tubes made in the US and Western Music. I have done this in Las Vegas, met the people who hand build the high quality audio transformers, design and roll capacitors, all kinds of things I have seen in a number of audio shows. One thing that is seen very little is headphone only amps. There just isn't a way to compete with someone who sells an amp for les than it costs to buy a chassis to build one on. Of couse you can name some exceptions but head phones are an add on to a piece of gear that was made for something else. Some of them sound exellent but almost all gear that has a jack for head phones, the jack was an add on, and not even close to being the reason for the jack existing at all.
I bought a 7.1 surround sound Denon HTR and it has a headphone jack, but it was made for watching movies on flat screen TVs with speakers surrounding you for kinds of effects and hooking up a subwoofer, has dig, optic, analog AM,FM, hall effects, 100 really crappy watts if you really pushed it for each of the 7 speakers and a pre out for the sub......and oh yea, you can plug in a pair of cans.
I sleep wearing headphones with a CD that does all these cool wave things in an ancient 24 bit DVD player that will play disc repeat for days without a problem that is the source for a reciever that will run speakers A and B, has inputs for all kinds of things and a headphone jack, so I turn the speakers off, leave it on disc repeat and get lots of great REM sleep listening to a disc while I am asleep and there is no way I could stand to listen to it awake.
The thing is that most people have access to quality head phone sound, but never use it. Even less have Head Phone amp/ Pre amps as separate componants and less have head phone amp only componants. Much more than a decade before, but it is for the most part disposable. It is made in China and to pay shipping 2 ways and a repaire bill, it is much cheaper to buy another.
All this gets back to DIY. DIY gear is typically wel made, uses high quality parts that seldom fail, use good tubes vs junk that oisons the land and people where it is made. A great number of the tubes that audiophiles treasure could not be massed produced in this country like they were during and after WWII because of the chemicals and heavy metals, but there is no shotage of those tubes today. Some are far more expensive than they should be, but that is true capitolism operating there. But the DIYers are the ones who keep audio design alive in this country. Almost every succsesful audio company that builds handmade quality products today were not to long ago DIYers, and DIYers are what will keep audio inovation alive in the US in the future.
That is why I was surprised that there was no DIY forum. It seems the best advice that was given to me was where else to look for the information I wanted to try something new in what is an area of your lives you seem fairly passionate about. Keep that but feed it too. There is much more to a piece of gear than knowing how to operate it.
Goodnight all, I have a lot of listening and questions to ask the next 2 days.
DHT and even ordered harmonics are extremely hard to beat. SS can't, the haronics are not the same order as the human voice and most instruments.Some horns are odd ordered
Thatch
