Shawn Kernes Blog

A shiny old Nakamichi Dragon showed up at my house... Purchased from eBay a couple days ago. Shipping was prompt. Unfortunately the unit wasn't quite as advertised, but the seller has been great to work with and we quickly got the discrepancies squared away without incident. In many ways i feel as if i have been waiting 35 years for this tape deck. I'll never forget the many trips to Lyric HiFi in NY with my father to see/hear this deck (among other toys, like the Magnepan Tympani speakers). To me, this tape deck is more than just a piece of audio equipment... It represents the unattainable perfection of my childhood. Always out of reach... until now. The Dragon was produced from 1982-1993, and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of cassette deck technology. It is certainly a TOTL (top of the line) statement deck from one of the premiere players in analogue tape. The list price in 1982 was $2,499.00, which converts to about $6,181.75 in 2017 Dollars if you assume

I have been thinking recently about how my Parasound JC2BP Preamplifier has 6 inputs, 2 Balanced and 4 Unbalanced. For sources, I have: VPI Turntable that I connect to a Parts ConneXion modified PS Audio GCPH connected to the preamplifier with balanced interconnects. PS Audio Directstream DAC with Bridge II connected to the preamplifier with balanced interconnects. I mostly use the Bridge II for streaming Tidal Masters (MQA). Sonos Connect connected via optical cable to the PS Audio Directstream DAC. AND connected to the preamplifier via unbalanced RCA cables (For AB Testing - More on this at another time) A CEC TL-5 CD Transport Connected to the Directstream DAC  I also recently purchased a Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Tape Deck. This was a bit of an emotional-nostalgic purchase since it is arguably the best cassette deck ever made, growing up it was always something that I heard about (and even went to see/hear and hear at Lyric HiFi in NY with my dad many times), and it was

After Thanksgiving feast, a friend and I decided to drink some port, listen to some music, and try to see if we could tell the difference between the two sets of speaker cables he around. The test system: Sonos Connect with Tidal Streaming Peachtree Audio Nova Integrated Harbeth P3ESR Speakers The speaker cables under test: Bluejeans Cable "Ten White" (Belden 10 Gauge 5000 Series Cable with Welded 25 Degree Spades) DNM Design Stereo Solid Core Resolution Speaker Cable With Bananas (Single Cable Split - 1.3MM Conductors - Effectively 16 Gauge) Both sets of cables are 3 meters long. If you aren't familiar with DNM cables, check them out, number 62 on Stereophile's hot 100 products. https://www.stereophile.com/content/40-years-istereophilei-hot-100-products-page-3 The music selection was a bit all over the place. EchoSmith, Norah Jones, Anoushka Shankar, Meg Mac, Lindsey Sterling, Etc... We must have switched the cables back and forth about 20 times.

It's been a really long time since I have had an electronics project to work on. The last few projects were fixing some broken audio equipment shortly after school, before that is was an engineering class, and before that it was probably fixing something around the house with my dad. I decided it would be fun to build a First Watt B1 Buffer Preamp (http://www.firstwatt.com/b1.html). I was a preamp short after selling my TACT RCS-2.2XP and Benchmark DAC1 HDR earlier this year. And having never owned anything designed by Nelson Pass, I figured it was about time. The B1 should be perfect for my needs since the amplifier it will be paired with is a Bryston 4B-SST with 29db of gain (1v input sensitivity). And my sources are a Logitech Transporter and PS-Audio GCPH, both of which have plenty of output voltage to drive the Bryston... No need for additional gain at the preamp. Since it's been so long since I last worked on any electronics projects, the first step was to make sure