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please stop copying your posts from head-fi.

Hey gang, So, I woke up in post-op recovery about 4 hours ago. I'm having much better pain control than the last few leg surgeries. I've got a 1mg/hour morphine drip and can push a button to get an extra 1mg every 10 minutes, but only need it like every 30-60 minutes. The doctor says things went really well, and if I hadn't swapped the old skinny rod in my femur for this fatter one that I'd probably have never had my bone heal. The old rod wasn't very tight inside the bone anymore, and I was wobbling around on the rod, basically re-breakng any bone that would have been healing. i was very scared to have a fifth surgery after the accident, but I'm so happy that I did. I'll likely go home Saturday, but I'm hoping that if my pain is under control and my weight bearing with physical therapy goes well today that I could go home tomorrow (30-40% chance if I push hard).

Finally starting to get the Forester XT (STI) where I want it. STI Swift Springs, STI Steering Wheel and Nameless Performance exhaust. Drives soooooo much better now.

Well I officially struck out on Van Winkle this year. My one connection that looked like a sure bet (been on a list since July) didn't pan out and I had no interest in scrounging at random stores. It's fitting though. My perspective is that it is time to move on from the "Limited Edition" scene in American whiskey. Four Roses' old master distiller (Jim Rutledge) is retired now and his last LE contribution has been released... and as for all other LE's, most are not worth the price and none are worth the hassle. I've tried too many of the recent releases and spent too much money to think otherwise. Stuff like Booker's, Four Roses Single Barrel, Elijah Craig 12, and (of course) Turkey 101 represent what American whiskey should be. If you like scotch, now's a good time. Things sure are expensive but in many cases more justified than American equivalents. And it's a lot easier to find things here in the states. Bottles that fly off the shelves in the UK linger in my Chicago stores for months, if not years. I've got some specific single malts I need to explore but I am most interested and excited about grains and blends. Compass Box just released two new bottles in the states - "This is not a luxury whisky" and Flaming Heart 15th Anniversary. Both got some great feedback and Flaming Heart's mix of malts sounds fantastic. One random thought - I discovered why I love Black Bull 12 so much (may it RIP). Apparently there was a significant amount of ~20 yr Mortlach in the blend. MUST buy a few more bottles of it while it's still on shelves.

Jude likes them. They're the bestest of the bestest at being the bestest. Although... I suppose I could sell my Orpheus system on eBay (are they really going for $25k to $30k? that's insane)... and also sell pretty much all of the rest of my headphones and amps, and finally be able to claim that I'm a "minimalist" with this fancy hydraulic gizmo.

The price for this so wants me to make a one off amp just to fuck with them. Take a solid block of brass and carve it out. Then have a blurb that says that the brass actually shields while the marble does fuck all. Solid titanium knob as it is nicer than plated brass. Tubes proudly relabled in Iceland. (as we don't want you to know who actually made them).. etc...

after you get one for Bryan (been looking)...

Ya, because it's bad, somehow, that a company like Sennheiser would be trying to push the outer limits of what's possible when they could instead focus on making disposable earbuds for the airline market (and WalMart)... because it's always an either-or proposition and the pursuit of one automatically prevents the other.

I can see it now... Sennheiser abandons it’s lucrative mass market products for the pursuit of excellence in sound for all the 0.0001%ers out there.

hopefully i cleaned this up and its the current versions of everything see updated links on page 5

After the drive home I can say that the XT is finally where it should be as the sportier version go the Forester. Swift Springs ride smoother on regular road than the stock springs and the dual stage springs really kick in on the curves. Did the corkscrew exit twice on the way home. Once the tires are replaced with something non-awful this thing will be a really fun drive that can also haul all my stuff.

I may be their first patient to go in for an "exchange nailing" of the femur rod who went home the next day. Sayonara Swedish Medical Center, hello home with my new tempur-pedic bed... The doctor, physical therapist, and occupational therapist saw how well I was doing moving around, and cleared me for discharge. My fracture doesn't hurt anymore, but boy am I sore around the incisions, with tender and stiff muscles all around my upper leg! So, I get to double my dose of Oxycodone for the next several days. Can you say Buzz?

It's ready for Katie's.

"Halo effect" product/branding?

Quick, someone offer them $40k for that unreliable piece of shit!

Four bottles.

Speaking on behalf of Mikey but he said he preferred HP25 to HP30.... I haven't had Pulteney but Colin absolutely loved the 17 yr... That whiskyfun website I linked in my post above is amazingly detailed and useful. Mikey's pal Serge runs it, and while his notes are crazy (and border snobby), the dude knows whisky. Most whisky you'd want feedback on is probably scored somewhere by Serge.

OK, that's embarrassing.

Black Bull. Looks like I will have to aquire some. Should I get some 40yr?

Yeah didn't even try for the George T Stagg this year (or last).. I have a small pile of early bottles - good enough... I am tired of fighting for whisky - and waiting in beer lines.

I have also given up on the LE American whiskey scene and gone back to searching good whisk(e)y that can be obtained easily. Really sucks for those of us that enjoyed it before it was cool.

Or just get a DIY T2 and bring the SR009/007/HE90 to the next level.

I think once people start hearing the new orpheus, the old orpheus will go WAY up in value.

The consensus of opinion is that there is no consensus of opinion.

I am only interested in whether the phones themselves are any better than say the Stax SR009 or SR007, or my personal favorites the Sigma/404S ( where S stands for modified with sorbothane damping. ) Suspiciously Sennheiser has made this evaluation difficult if not impossible since even if you can get past its DAC you apparently can't avoid the amplification in the earcups ( and we assume it is only straightforward amplification and not some euphonic signal processing.) A better comparison would be one of the above phones range hooked up to $52,000.00 of top class dac and amplifier. I just don't like the concept of being stuck with an integrated system, and a very expensive one at that. It kind of reminds me of Bose' marketing ploys. "Trust us we make great stuff" If I had that kind of dough to splash around I would rather put together my own system components.

I need a Merlin. Badly.

Nice!

Can't help it, you're sort of a wine Christ figure. "Wheresoever cork is withdrawn from bottle. There also shall I be."

You need a BHSE + SR-007 and JH13 to use Tidal.

Happy Birthday!

Maybe. Do you already own JH13s?

By the time 4 years rolls around digital formats will change, so...at that point the C1 will probably cost 60k.

To connect digitally, use your fingers....... or, if very desperate, you can try your toes.....

you can be sure that the amp inside the headphones is a version of the hev70. that is, mosfet current source, mosfet driver. likely gain of 5 to 10. gain will have to be fixed because no feedback on the cable. and no room for output capacitors so the power supply is likely +/-300v or so because anything more would be very unsafe. (like +600 and 0) could i drive this headphone with a better front end, you bet. 8 tubes, how can you possibly use 8 tubes unless 4 of them are for the dac.

I was wondering about you when a co-worker pointed out that nerd money was around $300 non-nerd dollars.

I'd surely like to try the phone out of my BHSE, bypassing the internal amplification to see what this transducer is all about. Having talked to Axel Grell about it, it surely convinced me though that it wasn't just a facelifted orpheus. We can't say if it was worth the extra cost of manufacturing but they certainly seem to have spent quite a bit of effort making an electrode and diaphragm system with proper rigidity and self-damping and I don't believe Stax could have dreamed of spending as much money on a phone design. It looks pretty neat also imo. On the other hand, I find the amp with motorized knobs and all extremely gaudy and, having the chief designer say it was to give a sense of "less is more" made me spit my coffee. If, with a 8 DAC chips, an amp and all these motors in there, he think of it as an expression of "less is more", I can't imagine what this thing would contain if it was an "more is more" effort :-).

I get a massive discount but even then I'm out as I just bought a house.

Get a Yggdrasil.......

The Esoteric house sound has dramatically changed with the "x" designation. I would probably see if you can audition or bite the bullet and upgrade.