The Asus EB1501 is in house. I can't believe how small this thing is.
Review is here

It comes with

• wireless keyboard and mouse
• MCE remote control
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• power supply, CD and usual hardware bits
• slot loading DVD R/W
• VGA and HDMI video outputs
• 320gb hd (enough to rip 500+ redbook CDs)
• 2gb ram
• Wifi

This will connect to our flat screen TV using the Media Player that comes with Windows 7 Home Premium. It can be configured for bit perfect playback and, if all goes well, allow true 24bit/192khz though the USB to our USB DAC, the Cleo.

Homes in Hong Kong tend to be small. Our living room is 12' x 28' with seating along one long wall and flat screen TV on the opposite side. When we got the flat screen TV it opened up the room considerably but left no place for the tube amps/linestage without negating the benefits of the flat screen.

So I packed up the equipment and we've since been without music; not a big problem for me as I get music at work, however my wife Flora misses the music so I've been planning and now we're ready.
Criteria:

• must be one button power up for the system
• computer music playback
• all-in-one-box amplifier/linestage controller/USB DAC 24bit/192khz capable
• must have tubes
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• brian's blog

Why does the edge of the horn block part of the cone?

• First, the cone remains unobstructed. Only the surround is covered. Second, as the crossover frequency is at 600Hz the wavelength of the sound is around 57cm. Any obstruction that is much smaller than 1/4 of this essentially has no impact. The key is the distance between the horn acoustic center and that of the woofer. Due to the large size of both items the distance becomes quite large and approaches around halve the wavelength, so it needs to be minimised as much as possible to ensure correct integration between the drivers.

Given the nice chamfering around the main driver assembly, how does this 'lip' affect the sound?

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The rule, no The Law is: efficiency, small cabinet, bass - pick any TWO.

So we've picked efficiency (100db) + small cabinet (~30L). Of course the drivers used are very special so even with our small cabinet we get down to about 65hz.

What can we do for the rest of the bass, down to 20hz or so? The only way to cheat The Law is to make up for the small cabinet with POWER and clever design.

So we have our compact MLTL cabinet with its special loading. We have the Dynafone which can put out really loud clean bass, handle loads of power (500w program) and be comfortable playing in 30L due to its low VAS.

Each of the parts making up the Crescendo Speaker system have been selected to be outstanding in concept and quality. Yet by careful design we have achieved a whole that is more than the already considerable sum of the parts.

Offering 100dB/2.83V/1m Sensitivity in room (106db/2.83V/1m if we account for the fact that we use a stereo pair of speakers) the Crescendo is the highest efficiency speaker available from Diyhifisupply and it combines this with also some of the highest practical power handling and dynamic range.

6moons no less.

Some things I like about the review:

1. An amp I've long admired - The Border Patrol - is used as the reference. This amp is famous for it's gutsy presentation and is familiar to the listeners. This set the bar high and gave meaningful context to the listening impressions.
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• brian's blog

Our horn ribbon crosses over in the 600hz region. Such a crossover requires big caps but we don't want to pollute the purity and transparency of this awesome ribbon by using electrolytics.

As shown, this is an all-film cap deal, retained with pure copper straps (non magnetic and good damping). Part of the recipe also calls for the tinfoil and silver mica caps shown to capture that elusive 'sheen' quality that is usually only heard in live performance of strings, cymbals and voices.

Add to this silver wire, pure copper binding posts and carbon film resistors.
The inductors are our own, made with imported oil paper and copper foil and of course air-cored.

Just wanted you to see. These kind of ingredients would be at home in a 50K$ system.

Crescendo -- bringing it home, alive.

One big horn ribbon
+ one 8" carbon composite hi eff driver
+ 30L mixed composite cabinet (baffle plate solid wood, sides and back laminar, top/bottom NZ mdf) to kill resonance
+ all film cap and oil paper copper foil inductors
+ physically time align the drivers
+ crossover 1st order at 600hz
= 100db/w in room or 98db/2.83v/1m with a very pretty response 65hz to 25khz, 8 ohm impedance

We will sell this as a kit hopefully with the front baffle plate as that is difficult part. Getting prices on that now.

Cabinet is 19.5" (50cm) tall x 10" (26cm) w x 14" (36cm) deep

Hoffman rusts?

Beat75: 75ohm SPDIF Cable with 75ohm RCA type Plugs 75 ohm cable for digital connections.
75 ohm is the standard both for cables and connectors. Anything less causes reflections and degrades digital signal. Optimum length to minimize reflections is 30cm (~12") OR 5 Meters
* Solderless connections further reduces reflections
* 75 ohm SPDIF cable from Gotham Switzerland (as used in some mega$ cables)
* 75 ohm RCA type plugs
You are not hearing what you DAC can do unless you connect with 75 ohm cable and plugs
Sorry this can not be DIY due to the special tool and die needed to achieve the solderless connections

The concept couldn't be more simple: Use direct heated triodes for linestage duty. Put some signal on the grid, heat the cathode, add B+ to the anode and voila! What could be easier? Works for DHT amplifiers, and parts count is low.

But put a DHT into a linestage where signal levels are in the mv range and we crash into noise, microphonics, noise, possible impedance issues and more noise.

Noise can come from power transformer, filament supply, B+, poor grounding, bad layout, not to mention proximity to outside sources of noise.

The Tram 2 starts with good layout. We wanted a single chassis solution together with power transformer. So transformer at the front, triodes at the back close to input/output connections. Tube rectifier and 6AS7 closest to the transformer.