TheSloth

This I really don't follow you on. Only the very first few 988/989's were made in Huntingdon. The rest were made in China - all the original production machinery was moved there to facilitate this very shortly after they were introduced. I am not aware of any build quality issue with the Chinese made models, relative to their English counterparts. I owned a pair of Chinese made 988's. As for the current models, what is your beef with the quality? The design makes them far more rigid than their predecessors, unless you load them into a concrete frame of course. And the components in the transformer section and FR network on the input are improved over the previous generation, which in themselves were an improvement on the 63's. And to testify about the 988's relative to the 63's, they are a definite improvement. Firstly and most simply, the base actually supports the speakers so they don't wobble around. I can't imagine using 63's without needing to modify the base in some way to get proper stability. The slight backward tilt seems like nothing but it does actually make a difference as ideally one wants to listen as close to on axis relative to the concentric rings as possible. Again, you could accomplish this with 63's but it's much more fiddly to get it stable. And the grills on the 988's make more sense than the 63's (unless you get the 63 Pro or US edition) that had those silly downward firing slats. For price, I bought my 988's for

I heard them when I was auditioning speakers about 9 years ago (and ended up with ESL988's). I don't remember what the equipment was, but it was certainly top shelf at least in terms of price. The room was rather large, and they were noticeably unable to fill it, particularly at the bottom end. They had a pair of not quite working properly ESL63's sitting round the back that I asked them to pull out just to compare, and they sounded more the business, even in a room that was too large for them. From the little I remember, the sound, though not full, was certainly pleasant and had plenty of air, speed and clarity without being 'bright'. But that woofer really seemed to under-perform. Compared to something like the QUAD's, the only reason I can see for going for these would be aesthetic/cosmetic. They are much smaller in their footprint than QUAD's, however still have the same need to be placed well away from the back wall (which conversely doesn't allow you to get the most out of the cone woofer...).

Doesn't he have an Aristaeus? I never owned electrostats, so I'm not completely with what is good and what is not, but I thought the Aristaeus was an absolutely top drawer headphone amp?

Our cats are a lasting gift from the completely failed attempt by the British to control the rat population. There were originally lots of rats. Now there are lots of rats and lots of cats.

Tel Aviv is a city overrun with cats, but most people are rather fond of them. Cat food all over the place, and usually a small pile of (living) cat underneath or lying on top of every car. Here are two pics of my favourite local, who never hesitates to say hello to me, and sometimes even comes with for a little walk... And one micro cat

I'm really glad to hear they are voiced for moderate listening actually. The 650's to me need to be pushed up a little too high in volume for my liking (concerns about ear safety and comfort). As well as driver optimisations, I'm sure it also relates to those equal loudness curves and all that whatnot. I am still yet to hear the pair of HD800's that I have owned for nearly 2 months now. Just haven't quite been able to get myself and the headphones to be in the same country at the same time. Only 2 weeks to go...

I remember that the original HR graph for the 701's showed more bass than the 650 throughout. Now the graphs for 701 and 702 show significantly earlier roll off. But that would be the wrong way round for your theory...

I read at the back of a Stereophile review of the DAC1 the Benchmark engineer encouraging the use of the digital volume control in iTunes, which at least on a mac runs by default at 24bits with what is considered to be an extremely good SRC. My understanding is that, as long as you are outputting a digital signal greater than the actual resolution of the file being played, you can digitally attenuate the signal without loss until, in the 24bit stream playing a 16bit original, you have thrown away all 8 unused bits.

What does all of this resistorage do to the output impedance of the amp?

I agree with you there, but I don't trust speakers as evaluative tools for audio gear. I'd like to be able to plug my headphones into my power amp to get an idea of how it performs.

You are tying the grounds together, so with a balanced amp, yes you'd be causing big problems. With single ended I can't see how it's an issue - the grounds are usually tied together anyway.

Going back to my question, how did you choose those impedance values? What is the thinking behind the choice of different values?

I'm thinking of making this adapter, and was wondering about the resistor values. If my physics isn't too off (it usually is...), do I understand from the 20 and 2 ohm resistor arrangement that the amplifier will 'see' a 2 ohm purely resistive load, and that the vast majority of the current will take the 'easy' route and be sunk straight to ground? Would one not then want to adjust the value and relationship between the resistors to reflect firstly the ideal load for the amplifier, and secondly the amount of attenuation required to match the phones' sensitivity?

I'm also interested in this - never saw this thread when it was new. Technically, what is a better solution, the Grado resistor technique or the ASL transformer technique?

Syncing voice notes is not obvious if you don't use the iPhone for music. It seems silly that in order to sync the voice memos, you need to turn music syncing on, otherwise it won't sync them. Anyway that's my tip if you happened to be having the same problem...

Don't you love the fake hand in the video?! During the and movie and picture taking section...

I haven't heard much about the CKKIII. I can't work out exactly where it's aimed in the market. < a B22?

If they sound that good as universals, why don't they sell them in that format?

That's what I was asking in a rather round about way...

Depends what you think about Senn's decision to use silver plated copper cabling. It initially suggested to me that they had put some thought in to the 'sound' of their cabling, but then again it might have been marketing junk. I can't really believe that with all the other work they put into these things, they didn't bother to use an appropriate cable...

Well the topic is almost apt again. Just over three weeks we should at least know what the next iPhone will be all about.

The tape loop still works...

ESL988's, so yes, 63's with upgraded components! I'm lusting after 2905's these days - hope to hear a pair soon.

Doesn't the 909 have an input switch on the back to allow it to select either RCA, or Quadlink channels 1/2, 3/4 or 5/6 for use in home cinema. The 99 certainly does... Edit: just looked through the pictures - the 99 has this feature but the 909 doesn't, which strikes me as a bit odd... Edit: gratuitous Quad shot from days gone by... Looks like it should have sounded awful in that setup but it was pretty sublime...

I never found Quadlink to be so bad. I'd give it a chance - it would solve your problem. But you should run it throughout the system or not at all.