feckn_eejit

Awesome! GUP is really good, though I love PoW more though for what I think is Geddy Lee's most insane bass playing... well I should say the album with the highest percentage of shit I can't play is PoW... HYF is up there as well... and the sound of those wicked Wal bass guitars..... ohhhhhhhhhhhyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssss edit: forgot about The Enemy Within, that bass in the verses on that one's a bit of a bitch! Shit, I remember loving this for some reason when it came out in '96........ i was 12......! gotta dig it out.........

How's this compare to the MoFi CD...? I've got Plastic Ono Band, this, Mind Games and Double Fantasy on MoFi and I actually feel Imagine is the worst sounding of the four... edit: oh and to contribute appropriately to the thread: edit2: I never have a problem with the proverbial Deserted Island Album question. The answer is easy peasy:

The CEC-based mechanism in the Parasound C/BD-2000 is most certainly CLV...

Define "modern"... all of my CD players/transports from the 90's-early 00's vary the motor speed depending where you are at on the disc...

Sounds like an interesting piece of software. Not sure that it's any more useful than what I've done with WaveLab in my particular case, as I'm dealing with things entirely in the digital domain here where they are either perfect or not... it does look like it'd be interesting for comparing the analogue output of a DAC with the various transports hooked up to see what the difference is. An experiment for another day... Yes it's belt drive. It certainly takes a long time to spin up/down when changing tracks. The CEC bumf was always that the belt drive and 1lb puck on top of the CD smooths out unevenness in the motor and provides a more steady stream of bits to the laser ;P

Haven't tried that but seems it does the same thing as WaveLab's compare function - you end up with a file which is the difference between the two files being compared. In my experiment the only ones that stood out were the files that came out of the Parasound - the difference file is basically a bunch of ticks and pops and doesn't sound like music in any way shape or form......

How 'bout some La Bouche?

you forgot milli vanilli

Thirding Pat Martino's _East!_ on MoFi (only know the redbook layer but it's great!), and seconding _We're All Together Again For The First Time_... A bit late, but some more suggestions: The Dan - _Aja_ or _Gaucho_ I find Kate Bush's _The Dreaming_ is very illuminating for all the crazy layers of shit going on... I'm not a big fan of _The Division Bell_ but it does sound good... Sting's _Brand New Day_ sounds quite good, and wicked bass. Dire Straits - I love the original self titled album, _Communique_ and _Love Over Gold_, the most, but _Brothers in Arms_ is always a classic and sure to get more love than the others... I have the Sony SBM remasters of all the old Dire Straits albums and they all sound great. The redbook layer of the SACD version of Roxy Music's _Avalon_ is fabulous. Joe Jackson's 1984 album _Body and Soul_ sounds (and is!) AWESOME. In the incredibly unlikely even you can find it, Duncan Browne's 1979 album _Streets of Fire_ sounds unbelievably good... MoFi's UltraDisc version of _Songs from the Big Chair_ by Tears for Fears is awesome. The early '00s remaster of XTC's _Nonsuch_ sounds great. Two China Crisis albums (largely produced by Walter Becker) - 1985's _Flaunt the Imperfection_ and 1989's _Diary of a Hollow Horse_ - both (save for the tracks on Hollow Horse which WB didn't produce) sound absolutely awesome. Speaking of Walter Becker, _Circus Money_ sounds awesome. Public Image LTD's 1981 effort, _The Flowers of Romance_ sounds fucking amazing... the drums on the first track will reorganize your bowels on a good system. This is the second album to feature the signature 80's "Gated Reverb" drum sound (the frist being Peter Gabirel's third). Strongly recommend hunting this down if you can tolerate Mr. Lydon's wailing. Air's _10,000Hz Legend_ (Radian!) and _Talkie Walkie_ (Run!) are quite fun to hear on good systems. _Pocket Symphony_ isn't quite as good... To really fuck shit up in the bass department, I have been using Justice's _Cross_ lately... piles of low frequency content and overall ridiculously abrasive sounding, sure to torture any system... Speaking of silly (proper!) bass, Radiohead's "Packt like Sardines into a Crushd Tin Box" from _Amnesiac_ is quite fun! Finally, while it's probably not the best of Bobby Short's output musically, MoFi's release of _Live at the Caf

Let us know how much you love the SD880 when you buy it

I have a handful of redbook CD digital transports. For the purpose of this post, I'm going to concentrate on three: the Sonic Frontiers SFT-1, Micromega Drive 3, and Parasound C/BD-2000. It's interesting to note that both the SFT-1 and Drive 3 use the same Philips CDM 12.4 drive mechanism, while the Parasound of course is a belt-driven CEC jobbie. I have always felt they all had their own sound, however I was extremely happy with the Micromega Drive 3. Either way, I bought a Genesis Digital Lens for yuks to see if it would make them all sound the same, because I really like using the Parasound thanks to its unique user experience of sliding open the door and placing the lead puck on the spindle... kinda vinyl like in a way. Further, I hoped it would make my Airport Express a great sounding digital source (which it does). Prior to the insertion of the Digital Lens, the SFT-1 and Drive 3 sounded demonstrably different. The SFT-1 simply sounded much more "digital" than the Drive 3 - much colder and harsher in the highs, and light in the loafers in the bass. The Digital Lens closed the gap to the point where I couldn't tell the difference between the two. Confusingly, the Parasound still sounded demonstrably different. After this experiment I'm fairly certain my unit is actually broken, but we'll get to that... the Parasound always had woolly bass, rolled off highs, and a recessed, almost distorted midrange but an incredible imaging and great sense of "air" around the instruments... the bass and treble extension certainly improved through the Digital Lens (though did not approach the performance of the CDM 12.4-based transports...), however it retained its strange-sounding midrange. To try and figure out what (if anything) was really going on, I decided to hook these three transports up to the S/PDIF input of my RME HDSPe AIO sound card, and record the output of a CD track. I'd then do the same again, but with the Digital Lens in the chain. I did all of this twice to see if I'd get identical results in each configuration over two passes. Finally, I'd rip a copy of the track using cdparanoia. As a bonus, I used iTunes to stream an ALAC-encoded rip of the same track to a latest-generation Airport Express and recorded the results of its mini-toslink output both straight into the RME and through the Digital Lens. As the RME doesn't have BNC S/PDIF jacks (.......yet.....), I used a 1.5M Kimber D-60 RCA-->RCA cable to feed the RME from either the source transport or Digital Lens. I used an extremely shitty 0.5M RCA-->RCA coaxial cable between the transports and Digital Lens. For the Airport Express, I used a mini-toslink-->toslink adapter and a $1/foot 6' toslink cable. The Digital Lens was configured not to do any dithering. Monitoring was done with the balanced XLR outputs of the RME feeding a Pass Labs X250.5, feeding Stax SR-X Mk.III/Pro cans through an Illusion ESC-1001 transformer box. The test track was Steely Dan's "Negative Girl" from their Grammy-award (best album!)-winning 2000 effort, _Two Against Nature_ (hard to say whether I hate this or 2003's _Everything Must Go_ more, musically speaking...), picked for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's a completely digital recording so I wouldn't have to contend with tape hiss taking me off digital zero when trimming the offset. Secondly, it's an audio benchmark track for me - particularly Tom Barney's bass track, played on a 5-string MusicMan StingRay through a gorgeous Eden rig. This is a reference bass guitar recording as far as I am concerned - the nuances of his fantastic performance are captured in a level of detail I've rarely heard from other highly-produced multitrack recordings. Finally, while I do take pretty good care of my CDs and this one shows it, it is not without imperfections as it has logged considerable car time. I wanted to use a less-than-perfect CD in attempt to coax more read errors out of the transports to magnify any potential differences. After some trimming to get the offset right on all the tracks (simply got rid of all the lead in and out digital zero in WaveLab...by hand...), it was time to run some comparisons! I used both WaveLab's compare function and EAC's just to confirm. The results when compared to the ripped track, as reported by the number of "differences" in WaveLab's compare function: Straight into the RME: SFT-1 - 91 differences (averaged between two takes) Drive 3 - 75 differences (averaged between two takes) C/BD-2000 - 4625 differences (averaged between two takes) Airport Express - identical With the Digital Lens in the chain: SFT-1 - identical (both takes) Drive 3 - identical (both takes) C/BD-2000 - 5040 differences (averaged between two takes) Airport Express - identical I haven't ABX'd it, but casually, the tracks recorded from the Parasound transport sound demonstrably different on playback, while everything else sounds the same. Though it could easily be down to prejudice due to previous experience, the various configurations exhibited similar sonic flavours through the monitoring system during recording compared to what I'm used to feeding my DACs. I've come away with the following conclusions: 1) The difference in sound between the two CDM 12.4-based transports is down to their differing jitter signatures -- a difference which is eliminated by the Digital Lens 2) The Parasound transport is either a) seriously broken or considerably shitty 3) The Airport Express sounds shitty straight into a DAC because it's a jitter monster, which is solved by the Digital Lens I remain confused as to the reasoning behind why the CDM 12.4-based transports produced errors going straight into the RME, but were bit-perfect going through the Digital Lens. Interestingly, while to me the Drive 3 sounds the best without the Digital Lens in the chain, the Digital Lens reports it as having the least accurate clock speed - 162ppm slow (enough that the second PLL in my Assemblage D2D-1 won't lock onto it, though no other receiver seems to have a problem...), while everything else I have is within 40ppm of "correct". I assume this means that while it's slow, it's mighty stable, while the SFT-1's clock is not as rock solid though on average closer to correct. *shrug* I have a Micromega Drive 1 and Drive 2 as well, which again use the same CDM 12.4 drive. I haven't tried but I bet they would produce the same results as the Drive 3 through the Digital Lens.

GIS sans safesearch, result #2&5?

waaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh what, break off center pin, then ZAP!!!!!!

Natch, but are there any Stax that are a shitty match with the BH? note to self: hawk SR-404s on HF, sharpish.......

Those Unicomps look exactly like an IBM Type M..... ripoff/homage? I have several, they are certainly big and loud but nothing beats the feel...... okay, maybe a Northgate OmniKey..... I've been tempted by the letterless Das Keyboard several times but can't see the point until I kill all of my IBMs... which should be another 30-40 years.

I may be partially joking...... plus I don't even have a pair of O2s......... and I'm deliriously happy with my X250.5-->Illusion ESC-1001-->SRD-X Mk.III/Pro rig.......

OK let's get rolling... anyone wanna buy a Pass Labs D1 (with 24/96 upgrade so CS8414, DF1704, 8x PCM1704, currently visiting its father for a checkup...) or a Sonic Frontiers SFT-1?

i think i meant for d to fall under e, really........though i think someone did try to sell a soul on fleaBay once...........

Should I sell: a) my car at least 3 of 6 guitars c) all audio equipment that is not strictly necessary d) my soul e) any combination of the above in order to get a BHSE?

The Tesla is very impressive but engine noise is number one when it comes to car requirements for me...

Bit of a stretch from the Panamera, no? ...McLaren F1 for me please - still the ultimate driver's supercar... and with sound by Kenwood, fuck Burmester

SD880... have several SD870s in the family (predecessor) and they are fantastic.

...healthier looking penis? edit: what if it's a she!!?!!?!!!?!??!?

Last login: Thu May 21 22:00:05 on ttys000 iMposter:~ jeff$ man real life No manual entry for real life

What happened to Carl anyway?