^^ careful someone might start writing down some differential equations and then who knows what will happen 

Quote: That may be, but the final adjustment should be made at the operating temperature of the amp. So generally with passive cooling you will let it sit and run for an hour or so and then make the final adjustment. If you do your adjustments without the fans on then the operating...

Just trying to be a little diplomatic    Also HDMan you know you need to be able to access the potentiometers with a small screwdriver to adjust offset and balance right? It looks like your fan assembly is blocking access.

I think it's not a great idea to have a computer SMPS right in there next to the inputs to an amp with 60 dB of gain

That first picture is full of win 

Yea if you are using active cooling you could use much smaller heatsinks.

  Quote: This is simply  not true, unless the potentiometer in the Lyr has a very odd attenuation curve. A typical pot will travel from 8 oclock to 4 oclock. Assuming a logarithmic attenuation curve moving the pot from 11 to 3 will increase the vovlume about 23 dB. Doubling your input...

The Lyr has a gain of 10, so at maximum volume your amp will be putting out 10 Vrms. The hd800s have a sensitivity of 102 dB @ 1Vrms. This yields an average listening level of 122 dB. That is extremely loud, and is off the chart linked by Radio_head, but since 115 dB results in damage after 15...

Very nice! These are the ones that are supposed to sound like sr007?

My khozmo was shipped with only two of four caddock input resistors. After a couple emails they mailed me replacements but it still seems QC is somewhat questionable.

Quote:   Sorry I was reading on my phone and misread your statement - I thought you said that the RK50 was cheaper than the khozmo, which is definitely not the case. Certainly the Khozmo will have better channel matching, but the rk50 should be good enough that you won't be able to hear a...

Quote: Someone told you wrong.

I actually saw a really fantastic video of a guy making his own vacuum tubes. It is in french but I thought it was fascinating and really, reallly impressive. Supposedly the guy made all of the jigs and stuff that you see in the video. Here is the link...

Borbely was/is a master. I think you would do well with any of his designs.

How about some superconducting cables? You will probably have to keep some LN2 on hand but that is a small price to pay for zero resistance