I'm looking for a new soldering station. I currently have a weller WTCPT (or however you spell it--anyone figure out what that stupid model number is supposed to mean?) and an older version of the weller WESD51. They're definitely excellent irons (i actually inherited the WTCPT, the thing lasts...

Hi everyone =) Haven't been on the headphones part of this forum for quite a while! I almost didn't realize there's a fullsize and IEM forum now! Anyway, I've finally run out of my stock of the old yellow Shure foamies for my E4 (2-3 years old now!) I'm probably going to try the new black...

I was hunting around for an eagle library for FPC connectors, and guess what I found! Cadsoft just came out with Eagle 5.0!!!!! I've been looking through the features list, and it's clear that they've been working a LOT to make the UI better. There's FINALLY a right click context menu and...

Thought I'd just give a heads up--I came across this site with a recommendation for stripping teflon wire, the Imperial IE-180 wire stripper. I kind of impulse-bought it, and it hands down beats both my cheapie generic "hanlong" stripper and my Ideal T-Stripper. I'm not sure if it's because...

I've got a rather senseless project for school to do, and I need a bit of data. I know this topic must have been covered before in some other thread, but it got rather difficult screening out the good and bad data (i.e. "I haven't spent a cent and I've been on head-fi for five years!" =P)...

Just came home from the national semiconductor seminar at AES. Turns out that they're coming out with a new headphone buffer IC that's being announced in two weeks, the LME49600. It's virtually identical to the BUF634 in terms of specs; it's capable of +/-1900V/us, has 190Mhz bandwidth, 3nv/hz...

Basically there's a project going on for making a DIY digital audio player (i.e. "MP3 player", except that this wont' play MP3s, at least for now) http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=246943 It's already been established that the first version, which will pretty much only focus on...

I'm really, really confused with the AD8610 markings I got. There is no visible indentation whatsoever, and the only marking that could coneivably represent the circular indentation (a non-silkscreened square) doesn't make sense. Photo, already mounted on browndog because I got a bit...

[EDIT] New situation: I've got an Alien DAC done, I've got a bit of a deadline for myself on this project, and I'm not going to be able to build anything else serious. The offset on the outputs of the DAC, iirc, is on the order of about 20mV or so from the ideal virtual ground. I'd rather not...

I've seen a couple of threads on this before, but as far as I remember, none of them really come to any consensus to any particular set of songs. I need a small, limited group of music (maybe only 3-5 tracks or even less) to test with because I will be conducting an ABX experiment for a...

I've finally gotten around to expanding my knowledge of electronics past opamps and such to transistors. So far I've gotten around to prototyping a quick circuit and reading a couple pages out of the transistors chapter in the art of electronics (stuck atm bc I can't quite figure a couple things...

I've been looking around the 'net for solid numbers, but the only types of wiring configuration I could find with real capacitance data were for quad and twisted pair cable. Has anyone tried to measure the capacitance of litz braid cables (pf/ft or pf/m)? Unfortunately I don't have a LCR meter...

I'm going to be doing an ABX test for a couple of homemade amps for a project, and I need a high-end pair of headphones to use. I'm thinking about an open, dynamic pair of headphones--no IEMs, since not everyone doing the test will necessarily have a good fit. The price range is under around...

I've been working on a complete ABX testing system for a little project I have cooking up. I'm still on the preliminary stages of designing this system. So far, I've decided that this is the general order in which all the components will go: Laptop => DAC => master volume control for user...

My brother's getting an electric guitar, and he asked if I could make a simple guitar amp for him. I've done a bit of research on it, and I know that many guitar amps are designed to distort (many use tubes) and a guitar generally has a high output impedance (in the tens of kiloohms, iirc)...

what exactly makes a source balanced? I know how it might work for a powered source, like a DAC--just send out a noninverted and inverted signal on two of the wires. But what about a (dynamic) microphone? Are they all balanced by nature, or do you have to do something electrically to make them...

I don't have any tle2426 or buf634s lying around, but I do have a couple of opamps and the intersil ha-5002 buffer. Does doing this make sense? except with the tle replaced with the resistor divider + vfb opamp here: How necessary are the compensation capacitors and resistors in front...

anyone in the diy forums live in new york? are there any good electronics components stores around here, preferably in Queens? all i've been able to find near me are about a million ratshacks.

Is there some way you could use a voltage regulator (lm317, maybe) to output a constant 9V-18V from 3-4 AAs or 3-4/7-8 AAAs? Would this be practical, or would this drain so much battery life that it wouldn't be much better than just using 9V NiMHs? And if this does all work, is it possible to...

which brand AAA NiMH batteries typically have the highest voltage? How long do they typically last at that voltage? Everything I've seen so far seems to be rated 1.2volts (unlike the 9V NiMHs, which seem to be rated anywhere from 8-9.6 volts), although I read somewhere most of them measure out...

I saw this on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Headphone-Am...QQcmdZViewItem It says that the amp turns on automatically when you plug in your headphones. Does anyone know how you do this? I suspect it has to do with those stereo mini jack switches and such, but I have no idea how you...

I was doing a bit of research for different SMD resistors (for the PINT) and thin film appears to have a whole lot less (shot) noise than thick film (something like <-25dB vs. -18dB to -10dB). The metal film THM resistors are rated from -32 to -16dB, and I would suspect that the vishays are on...

I know this is off-topic, but it is still sorta diy, right? does anyone here happen to know any good sources for solar cells? I know mouser and digikey don't and wouldn't sell them. Radioshack sells one, but as usual, it's probably way overpriced ($5 for just one tiny cell)

I was just doing some research on this, and I was wondering if it's possible to use an inductor from the signal to ground (parallel?) to form a high-pass filter without using input caps. I'm specifically looking at the pint design and seeing if maybe this can allow for both offset filtering, low...

I hear about the buf634 all the time, but I've also seen a few references to elantec buffers--what difference do different buffers make in a buffered design (like the pimeta or a buffered cmoy)? There seems to be a few different elantec buffers that are referred to--what are the differences...