Holiday party at Chateau Bottlehead Dec. 13

[Doc B.]

Eileen and I figure it's time for a party. Let's shoot for Sunday Dec. 13, noon to 3 or 4. I have our Bottlehead DAC project further along than last time, with new stepup transformers and a tube output stage. Romo has supplied me with some very high quality 24 bit 88.2K and 96K files that show the potential of the setup and I might be able to get my headless Linux server up and running in time for the meet.

I will also try to have some of our latest home-infused gin available to sample.

As usual BYOB, BYOGear, BYOSigOther, BYOSoftWare (digital this time)

[Doc B.]

I should add that an RSVP here from anyone planning on coming will help us to plan this.

I moved the conversation about the new DAC to a thread titled DAC progress in Digital

http://www.bottlehead.com/smf/index.php/topic,278.0.html

[Paul Joppa]

I plan to be there.

[edfallon]

Sounds good. 

I'll bring the Paramount II prototypes along for discussion and listening.  For those who don't know, these are running 5670 drivers and new C4S/Shunt reg boards with soft start for the output tubes.

[Paul Birkeland]

I will come along and bring something interesting along... but I'm not sure what that is at the moment.

[richardl]

Hi Dan,
I will try to come.

Richard

[Aural Robert]

I'll be there, pending weather. Count me in for 2 please. Looking forward to it.

Any other B'heads in the Vancouver area looking to carpool, ping me at melnykrob at yahoo dot com. I have room for 2 more. I'm in the Surrey Fleetwood area.

Aural Robert.
... this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around ...

[Mossback]

Dang it, gotta work wish I could join you guys it's been much too long. Annabelle says "Hi and Merry Christmas".

[Aural Robert]

I'm afraid we have to pass. Have a great time all, and thanks Doc & Eileen for the invite.

[Doc B.]

For those who are coming today who may be on the fence about the weather, it's above freezing here this a.m. and I see no frost anywhere, so it looks like we are off to a dry start. Supposed to get all the way up to a blistering 36, so if it rains later this afternoon it should not be a problem.

These are the days I appreciate having 18 tube amps in the living room - toasty!

Eileen was up until 2 cooking and decorating and I am just finishing up a batch of gin.

[dbishopbliss]

I mean, PG tips are great, but might be nice to try some DIY gin.  :-)

[Paul Joppa]

For those who missed it, the gin made a darn good dry martini - Doc is getting the recipe down!

Oh yeah - and the latest digital effort sounds pretty damn good now that the transformers are breaking in. This is the first time I can say that the high treble is closer to analog than to CDs. Of course, Michael's remix of Jacqui's latest album in 24/96 hi-res helped! But I've heard this resolution before without hearing such clean high treble.

Ed's prototype of the Paramount driver re-design sounded great, though we didn't get a chance to really wring it out. But he's been living with it for several weeks, hopefully he'll post his impressions. The totally silent startup is really sweet!

[Doc B.]

Thanks to the homies who came, it was a very fun afternoon. The DAC setup is definitely getting to sound good. I agree with PJ that one of the more difficult aspects of good digital is a smooth and open top end. This setup seems to be doing that job well. Now that we have a prototype that I feel sounds like it should we will begin to work on getting it packaged into a finished product. Kudos to John Swenson and PJ for coming up with their respective parts of the design.