Excellent review. I will be buying an Aurender now. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into this. barondla

Affordable field coil home speakers! Thanks, barondla

Will the Urd play an external hard drive connected to the USB input? Will it send 24/192 files via USB to a DAC? Thanks, barondla

I play 24/192 often using optical cable between Oppo BD105 and Ayre Codex DAC. No problems at all. Just use a decent cable. Thanks, barondla

I bought them about 6 months ago. Amazed at how natural and non spitty they sound. Love them. Thanks, barondla

Thanks for the explanation. Looks like the Freya + will work fine with my amp. Thanks again, barondla

So it would but be "flat" at ~13hz? My amp isn't an Aegir or Vidar. They have 44k balanced input impedance. My amp is 22k. Just want to make sure I'm not messing up. The load is too low for my D. Sachs DS2 tube linestage. Thanks for the help, barondla

Considering a new Freya +. Based on output/input impedance, will balanced amp input of 22k, cause bass roll off in balanced tube mode? Thanks, barondla

Geez,! I hated Minidisc. Sony made us add them to any store order. Couldn't give them away. Then they added a longer playing mode that made some discs incompatible with older players. I have a Freya+ LISST question. Can tubes and LISST be used at the same time? Say LISST in the left side and...

@Jason Stoddard why not Schiit speakers? It would be so easy for you to disrupt the market. Design a floor standing two way with field coil drivers. Mass produced field coil power supplies would be right in your wheel house. Perhaps team up with one of the speaker manufacturers (Salk, Zu...

I had an amp on tour delivered 2 weeks ago by FedEx. It was a $3K amp and I was surprised FedEx made me sign for it. They usually don't have me sign since I'm located in the deep woods and have no porch pirates.

So true. Brother works in high-end audio. He calls them interior desecrators. They don't have to live in the homes they ruin. Thanks, barondla

The Magni 3 should be a great choice. The power specs are Maximum Power, 300 ohms: 410mW RMS per channel. Your headphones are about half the impedance (ohms) and the Magni 3 should put out twice as much power. There will be plenty of power. Hope this helps, barondla

Need a 6by5ga tube rectifier recommendation for the linestage. I have a Philco, Tung-Sol, and Bendix (6x5). Ordered a RCA that is marked 6by5ga on the plain white box. The tube markings have worn off. Is there a way to tell if a tube really is a 6by5? Tube came from AES.l Thanks, barondla

Yes, that is what I had in mind. Leave 1 socket off and lower the height. The preamp is full size and has plenty of landscape on top. Imagine others will want similar adapters for other linestages. The Linlai are ~50mm in diameter, and take up lots of room. I'll pm you in a few days. Thanks...

A question for the tube experts. Ordered Linlai E 6sn7 for my preamp. The tubes are so fat they won't plug in without clanking into each other. I fixed this by using two stacked socket savers for two of the tubes. This works, but makes the preamp crazy tall. Does anyone make an "offset adapter"...

Coaster amp looks great. Are you using a PonoPlayer as source? Thanks, barondla

You nailed it. That was the linestage I was talking about. It finally blew up and I replaced it with a Sonic Euphoria PLC transformer passive linestage. Nothing to go bad. Still works flawlessly, but I've moved to a tube linestage. Thanks, barondla

In a design that doesn't push tubes to the max, life can last many years. I used to think tubes were horrible because of a preamp that used 6DJ8 and the spectacularly explosive Dynaco mk 6 monoblocks. The preamp burned through tubes in a year. The amps were probably the worse design Dyna ever...

According to JGH of Stereophile "one of the least sensitive speaker systems we've ever encountered. It does, however, seem capable of taking astonishing amounts of input power without audible stress, so if the power amplifier can deliver enough low-end belt, the speaker can be equalized to...

Thanks for the info. I don't own a Variac, but a friend does. Perhaps when I retire someday. Thanks, barondla

Thanks for the info and offer to help. They are relatively heavy, but light weights compared to the amps I built from scratch. The mosfet monoblocks are 3ft tall and weigh ~240 lbs each🥵🔥. I had to go for a cooler set up and switched to a VTL amp with 8 6550 output tubes. Also have a bunch of...

Built 2 Dynaco 416 kits while in highschool. Used to biamp Magneplanar Tympani speakers. Still have the Dynas and their matching C100 capacitor banks. Haven't played the amps in years. Perhaps I should dig them out and see if they work. Thanks, barondla

@Jason Stoddard another choice would be to up the courting of Chinese tube manufacturers. If they don't respond ask Chinese government officials why they aren't interested in selling thousands of tubes. They have a lot of people to feed. @OldRoadToad sorry you lost a dear friend. Jason, good...

I use the Loki between the Pono Player and Koss/Massdrop ESP 95 electrostatic headphones. On line measurements made it easy to dial in the proper correction. Wouldn't be without it.