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Icarium

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Posts posted by Icarium

  1. I like the Aeron and have one at home. I have a steel case at work and its pretty good too and in fact may be more comfortable.

    The problem with the Steel Case for me is that the build quality doesnt feel nearly as durable as the Aeron. The Aeron feels like itll last me for life (And as I'm a heavy ass mofo ~245 pounds) even after ~3 years it feels as solid as the day I got it. My steel case which I've used for about as long at work feels only slightly better and more durable built than your average office chair and has definitely broken down a bit since I first received it.

    I am looking at buying the new Herman Miller Embody chair which is their new top of the line office chair... it looks extremely comfortable and even more sturdy than the Aeron chair. I probably will audition it with my hindquarters when I am ready to buy.

  2. The only thing that matters is jitter + drivers and how painful they are/supported they are.

    And frankly while jitter is audible to me the driver thing is more important to me personally.

    That being said I've found used prices on the RME 9652 to be my sweet spot. That musiland thing though might be a great deal I should pick one out to shootout esp since my filthy hagusb is flaky these days.

  3. Just talked to Alex and he says 1 month from now +- 1 week. Larger production run than with the LCD-1s should be plenty to go around. There are going to be some cosmetic changes from the prototype.. hopefully for the better :)

    The last piece of the equation is yet again the cable... they are still exploring options as far as wire and if anyone has suggestions if they could shoot them an email or pm me about it and I can forward it to them.

    In fact they are somewhat interested in farming out the assembly if anyone is interested ;p Let me know and I can pass details.

  4. Can't you just set it on repeat?/quote]

    It's not the same there's always a little bit of lower frequency noise right when the clip starts and it's like 2 seconds long so it's tough to tell if I'm just hearing that and if I'm hearing any of the tone at all.

    Yes

  5. Dunno I should talk to Alex tonight I'll check with him.

    Just got my first set of foam and put it in.. listening now :) Hrm I think I can hear 17khz now, but it's tough to say I need a longer test tone grr.

    Oh yeah this definitely helps.. I guess I am now a full believer in headphone modding grumble.

    Now to move on to dbel84 mods ;p

  6. On the contrary, I am not disregarding it in anyway, just saying that I haven't found a SPDIF converter that shows me how jitter can affect sound signature yet (remember, all I've tried is the trends and the musiland).

    I'm hoping that something worth $900 as discussed in this thread would show a clearly discernible difference. My point is that, if that difference is measurable via scientific means, but my ears cannot hear it, it really becomes a moot point for me. If you lend me $900 I'll definitely find out first hand though!

    Well of course I don't care how much jitter is in your chain... moreover I am not championing the wavelenth product by any means. In fact if you've read my posts carefully you'd know that my stance is that this product may not be better than your 70-75 dollar Chinese doohickey.

    Mostly I am highly skeptical that most manufacturers who quote jitter specs really measure how much jitter their product has and I bet many merely quote specs from parts they use. I'd expect Gordon Rankin to be legit in his measurements along with a few others, but... well a lot of people make claims like 0 jitter or jitter-free and it is those I'm skeptical of.

  7. What I can tell you is that if I hear a product with jitter in the single digits, and another in the double or low triple, if I can't hear the difference, I am not going to shell out extra hundreds or thousands for something I cannot hear anyway, even if it is scientifically measurable. The thing is, I have not experienced those single digit jitter products yet.

    I dunno I've never personally been all that willing to accept a manufacturer's jitter specs. I'm not sure there is a standard and universally used methodology to measure actual jitter performance. I bet most companies don't even really measure it they just quote the specs on some clock or part they use (This seems to be the typical modus operandi for manufacturers like the many who quote the SNR performance of the dac chips for their dacs performance when who knows if that's true or not)...

    I certainly wouldn't advise to you to totally discount jitter as something that matters to your ears prior to doing some tests yourself. I can definitely hear the difference. It is something i min-max to optimize? No. I'd say it certainly matters less than stuff like actual pieces of the chain (headphones/amp/source), design, output stages/devices, tubes, i/v, etc etc.

    But it's certainly more important and less subtle than say... cables of any sort.

    Well to my ears anyways.

  8. Well you are already kosher since you have it in your Ayre dac ;p I don't in any way dispute that async usb used in conjunction with a solid dac isn't one of the best possible ways to transport some digital. It is just too bad that Gordon's dacs aren't as sexy as the Ayre and more sanely priced.

    I am only questioning the sanity of someone paying more than 300 bucks for something like this. I mean you might as well buy a squeezebox touch when that comes out (Both will transport 24/96. If you only want redbook than a SB3 should be fine). The difference between the two is pretty much going to depend on which has a better clock and even if one has a vastly superior one then the differences may be exceedingly subtle as reclocking from usb is already probably going to be the main benefit from either solution.

    More experimentation with the chinese doohickey should be done... January when my self imposed ban on buying audio crap and I'm in :) I wouldn't expect it to be as good as an in-dac async usb dealio, but if it stacks up well against my RME card and an M-Audio Transit (Which I can borrow for the purposes from my brother) then it is a winner for shizzle.

  9. WTF there's a $70 Chinese thing? That's got my attention.

    Musiland Monitor 01 USD 24/192 USB to SPDIF - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

    This thing... and I think screaming oranges has one and talks about it somewhere on these forums, but I'm too lazy to dig it up.

    If the drivers don't suck, which they surely do. Plus if it really is async usb, which as bad as ghetto chinese coders are... it really isn't that impossible to pull off (Supposedly easier than the standard synchronous usb but just not in demand by the rest of humanity lulz) it could be....

    So even if like it is async.. the Gordon Rankin thing may be better because it probably doesn't require install of drivers.. but that's more a convenience thing then anything else, but 70 dollars is worth a gamble. It may be a better deal than an M-Audio Transit which is my go to USB -> SPDIF converter option at about the same price.

  10. We'll have to see, but if there is someone who can get this right it's probably Gordon Rankin, since he obsessively measures everything and apparently hates jitter like I hate running out of beer.

    PS: Nobody gives a shit about BNC. Sorry. :D

    Eh.. I wouldn't throw that much props to Gordon Rankin. Having owned and heard other dacs of his.. I haven't been overly impressed especially for the MSRP. A lot of people are obsessed with jitter. The Empirical Audio guy for one.... sure I think Gordon is a lot more legit, but I wouldn't kneel to him as jitter-god ;p

    I'm sure this product is pretty good for what it does, but at 900 dollars?

    My understanding is that writing some firmware to do Async USB doesn't require a genius, but the overlap between competent coder + familiarity with the painful USB spec + interest/design in audio is a rare thing. Fortunately j4cbo is going to do his own solution based on a less outdated chip.. of course he isn't doing something silly like making a spdif reclocker so it'll inside his own dac.

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