RudeWolf

In BA I specialized mostly in cognitive sciences and philosophy of science/methodology, wrote a minor paper in Comparing the conceptions of ADD/ADHD between American and European schools of child psychiatry, the thesis was on Daniel Dennett and his theory of intentional strategies. Now I have put that aside a bit and I'm trying to analyze the anglo-american reading of Kantian ethics, namely the texts of Onora O'Neill. So yeah, most likely I'll end up inventing my job. Or work in advertising as most [pseudo]intellectuals do these days...

Cheer up, Crappy! I'm about to finish my MA in philosophy, so compared to me you might have a higher chance of scoring a job that actually pays something. I always keep in mind that if all fails then I'll just start building headphone amps with bigger tubes and fatter cables than everyone else, and use only fancy enclosures with wood accents.

You should be worried when you feel that you know everything. That's when the most troubles happen.

Or Queen Krimsdóttir!

STAX should team up with some celebrities. Philip Glass, Jean Michel Jarre or even Aphex Twin!

Those Sennheisers have big shoes to fill. ELP on SR80i gives me the chills.

Hmm, I don't really like the fact that there will be mechanical tension on the connectors this way. The wire from the connector to the driver doesn't seem to be much thicker than a healthy pube. If I'd wire swap then I'd rather stick to the standard config with one wire going through the headband. My main reason for these is portability and while listening on the go unpleasant things can happen, even if I look after all the time.

Maybe I'll craft my own shorty for increased portability. Adamantium plated long crystal mythril with siren whispers captured in the oxygen pockets that are less than 0.0001% of the whole conductive material.

I want something a tiny bit tamer than the Grado and portability for me is getting more and more important. I tried the HD-25 a few weeks ago and it seemed okay, there wasn't much in the soundstage department, but I could live with that with the Grado. The only thing that surprised me was the size, I thought it to be bigger! In any case when I'll be putting my stationary rig together I'll get something else. And for 125$ resale losses should not hurt that bad. After all I'm getting a full package with boxes, papers and such. P.S. The kind looking man with the Hawaii shirt said on youtube that they are good!

Just pulled the trigger on a mintish HD-25-II for 125$. The SR80i is having it's last days on my head. Now the waiting game has begun, the Senn should be here after a week or so.

Riga, Latvia. 1/2 Latvian, 1/4 Russian and 1/4 Latgallic, bloodwise.

I promised you some more pics from the land of the ice and snow- so here it goes. My first night in Iceland was spent in Keflavik which is south to Reykjavik. It used to have a good fishing industry but now things seem a bit depressing. After that I got picked up and we drove to Munadarnes which seems to be on the north-west of Iceland. There I spent ten marvelous days of studying and hot-tubbing. We went to some field trips as well. ^ Old soviet optics for the win. Then I moved to Reykjavik and got to know that some organization of acoustical variety has a strong grip around there... I'm sure that everyone of these girls have Bieber on SACD and he is listened only through the best electrostatic transducers. Finally miscellaneous Reykjavik. A smallish one, this one is. Enjoy, guys! Will post more, in time.

There seem to be a few good DAC designs for DIY. But they often require precision soldering, chips for example. You might look into Sigma from AMB and others from Twisted Pear. Other than that, there's HRT and CEntrance to name some. I'm sure that others may be able to add some more or eliminate the ones I just wrote about.

Are you on friendly terms with a soldering rod?

The Legend from 6mmons review: "For the last 20 years we have been manufacturing electrostatic transducers and related electronics. We also design transducers and systems for non-destructive ultrasonic investigations. Based on this background we subsequently attempted to design a DAC which would not be based on the regular AKM, Burr Brown, TI, Crystal and Wolfson chips which are ubiquitous in consumer audio. Instead we wanted an ultra high-speed part such as you'd find in industrial applications. After many years of experimentation we finally identified an extremely fast chip that's useable for 16 or 24-bit audio but handles sampling rates up to 15 Megahertz. Of course some glue logic was required to match this chip to the standard audio formats. Due to the very low glitch energy of our resistor ladder network, we need no digital filter or oversampling. Our machines are very deliberately without frills. Paralleling four industrial DACs per channel with integral voltage outputs improves low-level information and noise floor for the digital data which enter via the receiver chip. Because our DAC chips are relatively expensive and usually only seen in fast data acquisition systems for industrial use, we kept functionality and cosmetics simple. We avoided multiple i/o ports and a hefty chassis to maintain instead an attractive price. One obvious advantage of our high-speed chips is that they exhibit excellent impulse response without the pre/post ringing so common in today's oversampling converters. To avoid mutual interference between digital and analog data we use a six-layer printed circuit board. After further developments we eventually asked certain reviewers for performance feedback since they had broad experience with standard audio converters across many different price points. They reported back that our €350 Quad DAC competes up to €2000. We have now managed to duplicate this unfair advantage with our Octave version. It sells for just shy of €700 but performs up to €5000. We ended up with a total of three production models, the Duo (one chip per channel), the Quad (2 chips per channel) and the Octave (4 chips per channel). It is hard for me to describe the performance of these machines in English but we already have a rave Dutch review. This prompted many sales in the Netherlands. Due to exposure in the international audio forums global sales inquiries have followed. Because of our unusual price-to-performance ratio and the uncommon core parts one does not usually come across in home audio, would you be interested in a review?"

Heck, when I'm hung over I just medicate with what made me ill. The tricky part is knowing the right dosage. Speaking of those banana packs, this is often practiced in Latvia as well. Pay about 30$ and get hooked up on an IV for an hour. One of my former bosses has a wife who works at the rehab center for alcoholics and he often used that stuff. Though I'm not sure about how that stuff affects you on the long run. Just makes you drink more until your liver goes to paste.

Alright, I'd give it a shot... Can you suggest some of those songs? Might pop a rum for this evening and give a listen.

I think that I agree with deepak here. I'm all for prog, but more often than not it loses soul and becomes just a show of technique. I'm all in for a cool drum/guitar/etc. solo, but that is just the seasoning for me. It the soul that is meat and bones.

Please don't do the ad hominem. Would it be right to have sex with children if Osama, Brevik, Gaddafi or any other of the modern prime evils would say that it's wrong? My personal view of reviewer ethics is that if it's bad, send it back. But still that's just a compromise.

Finally! Something relevant to my interests.

I suppose it is. But I come from a land of far away where the cheapskate is crowned king and audiophilia (any hobby for that matter) is considered to be transitionary phase to other, more dangerous philiae. And therefore a decent individual of the society should revert to music listening only when he is commuting to work or watching a TV show that includes singing and therefore is imbued with positive emotions/socially acceptable values. Back to the topic- a reviewish text on the PS500 http://headfonics.com/2011/10/grado-ps-500-the-ps-series-gets-affordable-but-is-it-any-good/

Lower end Grados do it for me. I was more concerned how the fabled HP1000 performs in context of other phones at that price point. Because I see Grado as a fun colored can but the HP1000 is said to be of the neutral sort.

One guy at the other forum just got a pair for 1850$. Do they actually perform accordingly to the price?

Aren't the HD650 bigger? He, he.