Eric5676

I just took delivery of an Apogee Mini-DAC yesterday and I'm taking it through its paces. http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=238644 ^^ You can see where I'm at with things right now but the long/short is: Good first impressions but need more time with it to see if it's really making an appreciable enough difference or not. $700 can go in a lot of different directions, so I'll spend some good time with it today and probably start getting an overall better idea of what it's bringing to the table or not. I like it a lot so far.

Wow, sorry to see this man.

Anyone have any experiences with the RAKK DAC and compared it to anything?

The "newer" DT880's and DT990's have pretty good word of mouth from what I've seen.

Omega II...Stax, yes? Electrostatic headphones, yes? These have intruiged me but the price is kind of scary. Definitely something to the idea of trying to make it to a Meet of some kind down the road. I suspect that's the only way I'd really be able to get near a lot of this stuff.

Bah, that's all junk!!!! I'm kidding, of course. ?! ^^ Certainly fair enough and I would have joined you in laughing had I read some of that myself. One of these days I hope to try out one of these legendary AKG 340s and/or K1000's for myself. There's a bunch of cans I've been curious about, but money is finite. It's also annoying that a lot of this stuff has long since been discontinued and is incredibly hard to come by. I've seen enough about the K1000's that I'd probably come close to taking a blind leap at those things, given a chance. Pretty harsh, but to each his own. Which cans do you favor? I'm only about a year into the whole head-fi hobby so I'll be the first to admit that my overall experience and demoing is sorely lacking although I'm pretty happy right now with what I have. I do have a very light upgraditis itch going right now, but what else is new? Heck, is there anyone around here that doesn't have that problem? For fun, why don't you all name me some cans that I should try and "shoot out" against the 701's on my system sometime? I don't know if we've (or I) have sorely derailed this thread or if it matters. If so, just go here I guess: http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,1256.0.html ^^ That subject's still open, btw.

That may have been true for you on your gear but it certainly isn't true for myself and many others. Those are some nice cans you name outside of the 701's, but I can certainly tell you that the bolded statement is completely NOT true on my equipment and I'm a pretty picky listener. If I had the problem you're talking about, I would have sent these things right back in very short order. I know that there's talk about "hundreds of hours" of burn in and some such with the 701s...I don't believe it. I think that's a lot of exaggeration, hyperbole, and placebo for some folks. The 701's are a picky and very greedy/power hungry can. Just my experiences, not the "gospel truth of all." YMMV to all of the above.

Among other things, I was halfway giving that Nelson DAC of theirs a look. I see that there's also some additions you can add to that base unit if you want, although it's not 100 percent clear to me which, if any of those, are already included in the Nelson. Seems pretty reasonably priced across the boards over there.

http://www.msbtech.com/ http://www.sound4sale.com/products/nelson.php ^^ It looks like they have a wide variety of nice products covering just about spot along the price spectrum. CD players. Transports. Customizeable DACs starting from $500 on up through $7000+ monsters! Does anyone know or have any experience with them or any of their products?

Neither am I. I'm seeing a ton of "much ado about nothing" all the way around.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=238311 The conversation mostly refers to what's going on in this thread, which I'm still largely trying to figure out the point and purpose to.

Because it's all too easy to hide behind a mouse and a keyboard. Right? "Boo-hoo" is my answer to that. Don't make quality products? People should be warned about it. At the same time, if someone makes a great product? Praise 'em to the moon!

This and "Apple TV" really have me thinking that Apple is spreading their net out way too wide...

I doubt anyone will disagree with this truth.

Agreed.

True enough. ^^ This is along the lines of more specific information that I think a good number of people would be interested in. I just like lots of pretty pictures and doing comparisons between products is always fun. It's certainly a lot easier and worlds cheaper to boot!

Very surprising and troubling.

It probably would have been difficult for any number of reasons, but I really wish someone at that Meet had been able to take detailed side by side exterior and especially interior shots of Justin/HeadAmp's GS-X next to that RSA Apache. I hope someone does in the near future. Among other things, yes.

Wow. You are literally the first person I've ever run across anywhere to express this kind of negativity towards SP.

I definitely agree and share everyone's concerns as Kevin spelled out especially well.

Movin' slick and fast as of right now, boss.

I agree. They seem to be about as close to "on top of their game" as you could hope for. No comment. I think these two pretty much walk on water for the most part, but they need to maybe bribe some friends or folks to keep their websites updated for all the obvious reasons. I'm glad Mikhail decided dip his toe into solid state. That rounds out his product line for the most part. A little something for everyone, as it were. Justin continues to kick ass in pretty much every direction you'd want as far as I'm concerned. It's a glowing testament to both of them that the only real "complaints" anyone comes up with are "need to update your websites a lot more often." It's certainly in their best interest to do so since I think HeadAmp and SinglePower pretty much lead the pack, along with Headroom. Was Drew from Moon Audio at this thing, btw? I felt like I saw a few stray mentions of him. What'd he bring out? Drew is another one that's at the top of his game IMO. Definitely agreed on this point, and not confined to this specific venue, either. I think there may come a time where he rues the day he did that, but then again, considering how popular Zhalous and Ipods are on HeadFi right now...maybe he knows something we don't? Great post! I've been eagerly awaiting to see the posts show up on this forum that "cut to the chase", as it were. I've been eagerly awaiting the "uncensored and politically incorrect" HeadFi meet impressions and feedback. Also thanks to Sloth for his impressions here and at Head-Fi.

I just read your breakdown on that over at Head-Fi. Thanks for the details.

There's this and did I read correctly somewhere that Justin/Headamp is considering a DAC as well?

Nice! I was considering taking something like a Benchmark DAC1 for a test spin, but now I think I'm going to wait on that until I get more concrete information on these things.