Friday Weekly May 23, 2025
Back on the scene, crispy and clean
Happy Friday everyone! I don’t know how it catches me off guard every Friday morning that another week has gone by, but here we are. Probably another sign I’m getting old(er). Let’s see what’s good, bad, or ugly round these parts. Cue the flute and whistle, wa wa waa
The ring leader Kunal has returned from his adventures abroad and reclaimed the throne/grindstone/whipping station he calls home, so vacation is over for the lot of us. Given the unpredictable nature of things right now one of our primary focuses is stability and future proofing so we're working on more pipelines than Mario can shake a wrench at.
New products with old brands, new products with new brands, whole different categories of products. Old products with old brands? If it's high quality and we like it, then we're taking a look. Bonus points if it's made with love.
One of those new brands is D&A and we just launched their Alpha Pro Hi-Res DAC & Headphone Amp. I’m not the most knowledgeable audio guy here, or anywhere, so I can’t speak on it too much, but I do know both Kunal and Tom were really impressed with it which is a strong enough vote for me. It’s got words I recognize like “fully balanced”, “discrete”, and “chip”, but most importantly I think it looks cool. And at the end of the day isn’t that what really matters with our audio setups? No? Well, go take a gander at the page and Tom's fancy words can tell you why it sounds good instead. In case that sort of thing matters to you.
Alright, that's enough from me. Enjoy some good stuff from Andy and Tom. And guest star, John!
Oh that reminds me. If anyone out there has something they want to share, then send me your current obsession at alex@apos.audio and I might throw it in the Friday newsletter. Worst case I get to learn something new. Last week a community member introduced me to the band Transatlantic and I enjoyed them a lot.
Update From Sheriff Andy
In other news, the boys over at Salad have been working hard on a few things and wrote up a nice update. I’m technically one of those boys, but I bring more of that “I didn’t invite him, I thought you invited him” energy to the team so it feels more right to say “they” are working hard. Glad we cleared that up. Here's the update
Hey folks,
I just wanted to provide a quick update regarding the current lineup of Salad Design products.
The SA-XC turntable is getting much closer to completion. We are currently just a few parts away from having a full second revision prototype that will be using all of the parts and manufacturers that the production version will most likely use. Where some of our products were very affected by the current tariffs, the SA-XC has been fairly unaffected due to the fact that outside of the tonearm the entire turntable is being manufactured and assembled in the US using US made parts.
The HALO is a product that was very affected by the current tariff situation. Nevertheless, we are working closely with APOS to help us bring these to market at a price point that we are happy with. As with all of our audio products, we do have the ability to manufacture small batches here in the US ourselves and will continue to look into what that would look like. The FLIP vinyl rack is in a very similar situation as well.
Finally, we are very excited to announce a brand new Line of products next week that are ready to hit the digital shelves for orders within the month. We think these will really blow your socks off…
If you have any questions for us please feel free to reach out to us at contact@salad.design. Groovy.
-Andy / CEO
Quick Apos 𝒙 Updates From Tom
Tom here with an update on Apos x products we have in the works
Merlin DAC: Matt and Andy of Salad Co are helping us create a solution for stacking the Gremlin on top of the forthcoming Merlin DAC. Here are photos of some 3D-printed prototypes. The production version will be made in clear acrylic, but we plan to open source the 3D print files once we get it finalized.
Rock Lobster: We're getting closer and closer to launch. This week we worked with a fantastic London-based maker on a leather carrying case.
Apos x Capra Headphone: I've been working with Brian of Capra Audio on a new pair of dynamic over-ear headphones ever since we met at CanJam NYC in February. With the Satyr 3 as our starting point, we started a months-long process of tuning, pad-swapping, and experimenting with impedance adapters. The latest iteration is, imo, a banger. Very excited to share more news about this soon.
R2R DAC...? We're prototyping an R2R DAC companion for the Gremlin. It's still early days, but we're hoping for a <$150 MSRP with swappable op-amp.
Our Weekly Fixations
These are some of the things we're currently obsessed with around here. Music, science, tools, toys, etc. Hopefully we'll find something new and interesting for you every once in awhile, because knowing is half the battle.
John (via Tom)
Tom here. While chatting with our friends over at Audio-Technica this week, HIFI Sales Manager John Tarulli started gushing about an upcoming show he can't wait for. Excitement like this shouldn't be contained to a call, so we asked him to write up a current fixation for us. He did not disappoint...
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ZEBRAHEAD!! MFZB!! Everyone gets the same reaction when you mention Zebrahead! "Who the hell is Zebrahead?!"
The first concert I ever went to in my life was when I was 13 years old. A friend's older brother took us to see Fuel - The Sunburn Tour in 1997 at the Odeon in Cleveland, Ohio. Zebrahead opened for them and my goodness, they were FUN! Been a huge fan ever since.... I have seen them live 5-6 times and they toured the US regularly until the early 2000's. Then, they played special one-off shows in SoCal or Vegas every once in a while, but mostly toured Europe and Japan since. My musical taste changed throughout my teen years and while Zebrahead showed up on my shuffle every once in a while, I fell out of touch. Until I met my wife.... She was hired at my work, and boy was she a looker. I invited her over for a party/bonfire and when she showed up, she noticed the Zebrahead sticker I had on my bedroom door and said, "You like Zebrahead?! I LOVE ZEBRAHEAD!" Now.... We've been together for nearly 20 years and our 10-year wedding anniversary is this year! Zebrahead announced a tour in 2020-2021-ish and my wife was SO excited! She has never seen Zebrahead in concert. SO, of course we bought tickets, but her dream was shattered when Covid shut down all concert venues and inevitably, Zebrahead cancelled their tour.
With our 10-year wedding anniversary coming up, we had to do something special. We were talking about going to Hawaii or Milan, Italy for a week. We've been tossing around ideas for a while but guess who is playing a one-time special show in Vegas on September 13th?!? ZEBRAHEAD! Not only Zebrahead, but one of our other favorite bands Unwritten Law! So as a Mother's Day / Anniversary surprise, I planned an entire trip to Vegas so my wife and I can see Zebrahead for our first time together! See you in Vegas! MFZB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you're looking for a track recommendation, here are a few of my favorites...
Zebrahead - Waste of Mind - The Real Me
Zebrahead - MFZB - Hello Tomorrow
Zebrahead - Broadcast to the World - Karma Flavored Whisk
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Sean
I've recently upgraded from an Oculus Rift CV1 to a Quest 3, and it's been a great upgrade. It was a huge jump going from requiring 2 sensors positioned properly, 3 open usb ports, and a spare HDMI port, to no sensors at all and wireless. The screens are also a vast improvement and cause much less motion sickness, which I was hoping for after a nearly 10 year upgrade. Video passthrough is great and hand tracking is usable. I would say the biggest negative has been a quality decrease in the built-in headphones, but they're still very passable (the CV1 just has insane integrated headphones).
I generally watch videos or listen to music while I'm playing single player games, and I've discovered sandbox games in VR is a great way to multitask. I can be plinking targets in H3VR with a floating youtube video to my side or attached to my wrist. Not sure if anyone really cares about VR at this point since it's in a very weird spot, but at least they've made it a lot more convenient.