Tachikoma

I've tried all of the DSP mentioned above. While the binaural stuff is kinda cool sometimes, I didn't like most of them. Welcome to head-case, and sorry about your thin skin.

Yeah, I'll probably need another half-decent XLR to eliminate them. Well, variables aside, my setup sounds fucking great. I just can't get my mind set on this lab report I need finished by tomorrow.

Anyway... I received my XLRs, and my first impression is that the sound became "syruppy sweet", and even more detailed (and louder). However, I'm not sure how much of this is because I'm using the XLR inputs instead of RCA inputs. If anyone has experience with the sound changes associated with using XLR inputs on stax amps (I use the SRM-717), please share your experiences here The DAC I'm using is based on the AK4393, so there's another variable in there too since it could be argued that it was really meant to be used with its balanced outputs.

I heard what I heard It doesn't mean I'm going to go out and buy myself a tomahawk, or even consider buying one for that matter.

Woops, meant the tomahawk. Still doesn't make it look any better though does it

Well... I've heard from a close friend of mine (who isn't partial to RSA, really) that the predator is actually better at driving the W5k than the Pico (and a couple other portables). They had 5 people listen to the W5k out of a bunch of portable amps (including the pico), and each secretly voted for their favourite amp of the bunch... 4 of them preferred the predator.

You should rebias the amp everytime you get new tubes in (there's a thread dedicated to that on the other forum, in summit-fi), but thats about it. Biasing can be a bit of a pita if you don't have a steady hand though.

Toshiba, actually.

"Better electron flow" is a marketing department's way of saying "better conductivity" but does polishing the surface of a wire make it a better conductor?

4N, actually. But I don't think thats a huge deal, considering that Audio Note Japan's interconnects are marketed as "only" 4N, too. The description did almost turn me off buying them immediately =P but if its all true (about the annealing and etc) it does seem that some effort is actually expended on the cables.

I did consider both of them, but in the end I decided that I have better things to do than to scour the net for elusive reviews of them

Still, what do you think about those cables? Price aside, of course. =P

I really did break my soldering gun the first time I used it :x Its bent at an angle now. Granted, it was cheap... too cheap I guess. I'll stand to lose about $40 if I do return it, but that isn't too much. I wanted to hear how much of a difference a good XLR would make to my rig, first and foremost. Could you post a link for the jupiter silver wires anyway? I'll take a look at those, and maybe invest some in a half-decent soldering rig. Edit:http://www.partsconnexion.com/catalog/wire.html Hmm, cotton insulated 28AWG solid core silver...

Bah, bit the bullet on those. I got a 60 day money back guarantee so... why not I suppose

These look kinda interesting, marketing talk aside (the cables arrive burned in!): SILVER FOIL XLR CABLES IDEAL FOR AUDIO RESEARCH ETC 1m - eBay (item 170244971283 end time Aug-08-08 04:40:16 PDT) Spaced interconnects, heh.

Cool You have a decent soundcard there, so it should make for a half-decent transport at least, especially if you use it with an external DAC which has a wordclock output. That soundcard could be competitive with CD players in the same price range. MP3s are by no means the end all of music formats but they aren't THAT bad =P But getting a CDP just for MP3s doesn't make any sense at all.

Well, you would hear the refrigerator instead. I wish I had that option =P

If I had $4k to spend on my source, I would spend at least a part of it on silencing the computer. Fan noise and hard drive noise annoys me to no end nowadays.

Nevertheless, a functional search function would be a huge improvement on things.

Erm, what about a male stax plug?

I've just dug my LNS out of storage for a listen again... and while this isn't going to be a very popular opinion (and a little dodgy no less since the LNS are for sale), the LNS is remarkably similar to the O2 out of my system. I even thought I had the O2s on my head before noticing that they were on the table :x

Lol, I'm not anymore japanese than you are =P I just use a better translator than the likes of google language tools (Yahoo!?? - ???)

I don't think I've ever seen an amp neater than the amps this guy builds, granted they aren't headphone amps: Yahoo!??? - ??????? his auctions also have a tendency to end at prices below his parts cost...

Funny, I can't find the blind spot on my left eye.

The SR-Xmk3 farts a fair bit =P