episiarch

For me a transportable-sized amp is actually a little more friendly to my armchair or couch use case than a teensyportable - especially if it constitutes a rig that I might actually drive full-sized cans with. So personally I'm not put off by that. YMMV of course. And if I love it enough to swap it in for a desktop amp, the next one can be the desktop version. RudeWolf, where'd you see the lukewarm reviews? Assuming they were informative (and not merely "meh, I didn't love it"), I'd be curious to read them.

I assume others have been following the O2 amp, though I haven't been able to find it discussed here. After a fair amount of reading, I've become interested enough that I've gone on the preorder list for a UK-built example of the amp, due in 2-3 months. (Yes, it does look easy enough to DIY, but I haven't built anything in an age, and I have enough distractions in my life already.) Anyone else have thoughts on this amp? Intents to build or buy one? Disclaimer: I hope it doesn't need to be said, but just in case it does, this post is not intended as drama-bait. I know NwAvGuy has raised some hackles with his opinions. In particular I know he has harsh things to say about the Mini3, an amp which I continue to enjoy quite a lot and which I heard in several stages of prototype form during its design process (which, to my eyes, was long, thoughtful, careful, and highly solicitous of community feedback). My interest in the amp doesn't constitute my taking sides against Ti, or Mini3, or anybody else.

Macsales/Other World Computing (good Mac-oriented upgrades vendor) says they've got the 3rd-party SSD problem licked, at least for certain brands of controllers. http://blog.macsales...id-state-drives http://blog.macsales.com/11734-mac-compatible-sandforce-updater-now-available http://blog.macsales...owc-ssd-updater I've bought from them in the past and their goods and advice have been reliable, though I haven't used any of their SSD products.

For those who are choosing drives for their NAS, RAID, media server, or what have you, have a look at the BackBlaze Blog (they're an online backup company). They really like the Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630 3TB drive -- way lower failure rates than they're seeing with anything else. For those of you who are truly, truly insane, check out that same blog post. It (combined with an earlier post) tells you how to build your own 4U 135TB RAID6 storage server for around $7K.

Al, I'm really sorry for the loss, and I know you and your family must feel it beyond the power of words to express. You have my absolute sympathies and best wishes.

Even if you can't get it directly from Apple, Colorware does a nice job.

I remember loving those Ions when you showed them at the San Jose national. There's an ex-dealer pair with some cosmetic imperfections that I can get my hands on for about $600. That's officially way above my budget (which is officially zero since I have something pretty adequate now), but I am weakening. Tyll, I remember you were playing them pretty loud in San Jose. Are they similarly good and clear at low volumes?

To what melomaniac said, I'll add that I can get the ACS tips inserted a whole lot faster and with less fuss than I ever could with foams.

Only just now noticed this thread. Huge Eye-Fi fan here. I have the X2 Pro in the D90, and lesser cards in all the other cameras. Upload speed hasn't been brilliant (we shoot JPEG+RAW, excuse me, +NEF), but that's OK with me. What I really care about is the automation - once photos are taken, they'll wind up in our master iPhoto library at some point, and they'll wind up on our SmugMug sharing site (in a "to-be-reviewed" folder where Kristiana can organize them and decide what to publish to the friends and family), without any further fiddling on our part aside from making sure the camera gets turned on when we get home. I also love the geotagging. When it works, it works well. When it doesn't work, it doesn't work in predictable places (like in the middle of Windsor Great Park with no wi-fi around). It's very nice not to have to add locations by hand. Dislikes: - for practical purposes there is no integration with Aperture. iPhoto integration is quite good, so I use that and then manually slurp stuff from iPhoto to Aperture from time to time. It's fairly lousy, but not quite lousy enough for me to dive in and figure out how to automate it. - seems to be fairly dumb about knowing when to give up on finding a hotspot. The D90 has a stay-awake-until-EyeFi-is-finished setting, and the Eye-Fi's reluctance to give up and go to sleep means the D90 stays awake also, a battery drain. (In fairness it's possible this has been fixed in firmware at some point but we're so paranoid about it now that we always manually shut off the D90-stay-awake feature when we go away overnight, so we wouldn't notice if this were fixed.)

Thanks for the pointer, Duggeh. I don't pay too much attention to television, but I'm gonna iPlayer that.

Moral of the story: don't make overblown, unproven claims for your products. Get a rapper to do it for you instead.

Don't accept any boneyard Macs that don't have Intel processors. From 2006 onward you should be OK. The pre-2006 Macs with PowerPC CPUs won't run the current rev of the OS, nor software that depends on it.

Mere parts are irrelevant. The entire point of these headphones is that they are made special, nay, transcendent, through their blessing by Dr. Dre. Only headphones sold though authorized channels bear the Dr.'s own authentic blessing. Copies, if they are ever even blessed at all, are given only a cost-saving perfunctory blessing by some underpaid shift worker at a factory. Sensitive buyers will easily be able to detect the difference in blessing quality between the Dr.'s headphones and any other. Others will simply have to be guided by those better-bred souls who have felt the stirrings in their loins left by the Dr.'s touch* upon their headphones, and have fallen to their knees in marvel and rapture at it.** Those who cannot feel the blessing must therefore choose their road: be guided by Faith, and pony up accordingly, or suffer the soul-deadening nihilism of buying lesser-blessed headphones for "parts," "construction," "value for money," and "sound" alone. *or that of his duly-appointed and contractually-designated representative. **and, because they are generous and sharing individuals, have posted and tweeted their positive reviews accordingly. Note: nothing in this satirical post is to be construed as being in any way derogatory of our own Mr. Blessing, who is in an altogether higher league of blessings than those others mentioned herein.

I actually have had the problem of software not being easy enough to buy -- specifically, that some of the small software vendors used various crappy payment systems or shopping-cart systems. Not only do I dislike giving my info to (yet another) poorly-written, seedy-looking payments processor on general principle, I had an incident a year or so ago where PayPal required me to go through an irritating revalidation process after they decided one of those payment processors was possibly not legit for some reason. I much prefer being able to just buy something and have my Apple account debited for it.

Thanks for the heads-up on the McIntosh app, guys. Nice to bring a teeny tiny bit of class to the Altec Lansing speaker dock we have in one of the rooms.

A thumbs-down from this quarter on the AudioEngine 2's. I purely loathe mine. They have exaggerated midbass (in a "look! despite the small size YOU CAN REALLY HEAR THE BASS!" kind of way), to the point where it obscures the music. For kids who think of their tunes as merely a bass delivery mechanism this may be OK, but like the music in my music and the AE2s make me foaming-at-the-mouth hostile. With incredibly aggressive EQ I can make them almost sound reasonable, but I never got them to the point where I actually enjoyed them. If you were in the UK I would ship mine to you for free. As it is they are just taking up space in storage. I am currently running Swans S3W's which cost me $50 on Amazon and which I like much better - but the only deal I can find on them any more is this eBay auction. They sound better than their price, but they are not competition for really good computer speakers. However they occupy very modest desk real estate, and I've gotten to really like that big, convenient separate volume-control knob. I really, really loved my Swans M200's, but somehow I lost track of them when I moved overseas. Really lovely, even if a bit large on the desk. The current version starts at $289, so it's a bit above your range, but there is an eBay auction on the original version, with a buy-it-now price of $250 and open to lower offers. You could do a whole lot worse than making an offer on those and waiting to see what happens.

Darn it, when is someone going to make one endorsed by Brian Blessed? I need some shouty, beardy headphones.

This is a seriously sexy idea. Though if you knew you were recording, you'd probably feel obligated to hold your head really still. Could take some of the fun out of it.

Okay, you shootin' types, who's going to get and test these EtyBlast active earplugs?

Hario halogen heater for syphon brewer. Pretty enough to be hi-fi. (not mine, btw)

*adds Apogee Duet to his long, long I-want list*

No, it's good you didn't include my blather.

I think the ACS tips improve comfort, but mostly what they improve for me is the ability to get an isolating fit, with equal insertion depth / perceived volume on both sides, without endless fiddling and without needing to readjust every so often. For me (and perhaps I just have weird ear canals) that improves the listening experience hugely. I use an amp with 4S always. I haven't really seriously used the 4P for music for a long time, but when I've occasionally re-compared it, I felt it needed an amp with iPods up through 2nd generation Touch. Subsequent iPod Touches and iPhones seem to have much better driving ability and I think the 4P is okay unamped with them. YMMV of course since a lot of people have claimed that the 4P has always been just fine unamped with every source under the sun, and I may be substantially in the minority claiming otherwise.

Dress chelsea boots. I've been harboring a theory that these might be my ultimate travel shoes, and finally picked up an inexpensive pair in the post-Xmas sales.

^ What Ric said. (Well, except he didn't blather about ACS custom tips too, the way I would have )