aerius

I believe this is something the DHS would like to know about. Buy a 'stat, or else a couple guys in black suits with no sense of humour will be along to escort you to the Hotel Gitmo.

Another possibility is the Solen film & foil teflon caps which are said to be very good. I haven't heard them myself so I can't say either way. One thing's for sure, they're a fair bit cheaper than those v-caps.

Granted, my sample size is pretty limited and quite possibly biased, but I've found that Japanese remasters do tend to sound better. The main difference I've noted is that the Japanese versions have better dynamic range and they don't get EQ'd to death. Speaking with people who have far more music & experience than I do, the general consensus is that when looking at the "audiophile approved" remasters alone (ie, Mo-Fi, DCC) there's no real difference between Japanese, Euro, and US versions. But the problem is there's lots of shitty remasters being done in the US by various record companies trying to make a quick buck, which leads to the impression that US remasters are no damn good since the good stuff is drowned out by all the crap. I think that's a plausible explanation.

Stuck the picture on my own webhosting, should show up now.

Clusterfuck Nation

Make sure you never buy one of these Pioneer CD players, it's also an upside down loader.

With regards to the 880, the old one is like getting a root canal with no anesthetic, the new one is like getting a root canal without enough anesthetic. To me, it's just a matter of which one's treble is more piercing and painful. I own a Senn 580 which I'm enjoying a lot on my vinyl rig, and it's actually pretty decent on my tube amp setup. I've heard all versions of the 880 & 990 and to be honest I hated the damn things, and I can't really see how a Senn person could like them. I can see how Grados and AKGs can compliment Senns and make for a good alternate 'phone to listen to, but to me the Beyers are so far out there that they don't make sense at all.

No kidding, the Leafs should just tank it for the rest of the season and next season as well to score some high draft picks. Not that it'll help anyway since their management is retarded and will end up trading away the picks after a year for yet another bunch of washed up players. The way I see it, as long as the Teachers' Pension Plan has a large stake in MLSE, the Leafs will be doomed to mediocrity.

In which case, you must buy some Wyetech Labs gear.

Since I've now heard a balanced phono stage, I can provide info on this topic. The SE phono was similar to this one but with a WE437A as the 2nd tube and a different transformer, and the balanced phono is pretty much the RTP5A but using 7044's on the linestage section. Both are really good, the SE one will run with any commercial phono stage I've heard including the Artemis and EAR-Yoshino 912, but the balanced one is better. There's more of everything and the music is more real and enjoyable. The gap in performance isn't too hard to notice. But, that was on a Nottingham Dais turntable with the Anna arm and VdH Colibri cartridge, you don't want to know how much that costs. On a more reasonable setup such as the Pro-Ject RPM-10 with a VdH Grasshopper IV cartridge, the differences are hard to pick up, the balanced phono is a tiny bit better but the gap is so small that I had a fair bit of trouble picking it out. The consensus is among the people there that day is that it's better to get a good SE phono than an average balanced one, they're going to cost around the same anyway and the SE one is likely to be less finicky and sound better. It's simpler with less parts, so better parts & design can be used which can usually more than balance out the advantages of a balanced phono, assuming it's not an all-out system. They know their vinyl so I'll take their word for it. Also, holy christ is the Colibri ever good. Even better when you have one of the 1st 10 records to come off the stamping presses to play on the turntable.

2 words. Indoor dome. Peyton Manning had a nice warm indoor dome with no wind for all his home games and some of his road games. In other words, ideal conditions for a QB to throw TD passes, especially in the last half of the season when the weather and field conditions tends to turn nasty for outdoor teams. And yet, he only beat Marino by a single TD, and the Dolphins play in an outdoor stadium. Brady also plays in an outdoor stadium, this one in the Northeast where it's cold, windy, and it snows in late season games, and he still beat Peyton's TD numbers. Frankly, I have far more respect for Marino & Brady's TD & passing numbers than I do for Manning's.

It depends on how much checkable deposits the bank holds, for the first $7 million it's 0%, up to $48 mil it's 3%, and over that it's 10%. Overall, the Fed tries to keep the number at around 5%, but as of right now the adjusted figure is roughly 0.024%, and the raw numbers are in the negative. That ain't good.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/Current/ The Federal Reserves Statistical Release, which lists how much money the banks & other financial institutions in the US have in reserve for various purposes. Of particular interest is the column marked "non-borrowed", which is basically the amount of money they have available for when customers make withdrawals, or in layman's terms, how much cash they have in the vault. Note that in the unadjusted tables, this number has gone negative. In other words, when you go withdraw money from the bank, that money ain't there, and your bank is now borrowing from the Federal Reserve Bank so that your transaction can go through. Can you say "bank run" if word of this gets out?

I'm not a bassist, but one of my friends is a guitar & bass technician. From what he's told me, if all things are more or less equal, go with the pickup that has Alnico magnets as they tend to have better tone.

No kidding, this is the first time I remember seeing crosstalk figures get significantly worse at low frequencies.

Simaudio Nova, the baby brother of the Eclipse which was their former flagship player.

It hops like a bunny, but looks more like a guinea pig.

A possible idea, from when I had a ground loop in my system. Get a wire and tie the chassis of the DAC to a ground point on the amp. Try at own risk, not responsible for fires and damaged components.

Because they're made in France, where they have to deal with pesky unions & labour laws, and well, they're French. I think that says it all.

Reference, no, Prestige, yes. The Prestige with CDs might have a slight edge on the regular Capitole, but it's really really close. In build quality though, there's no comparison, the Prestige makes the Capitole look & feel like a cheap toy. I barely played any SACD on it (or any other SACD player) though so I can't really say how good that aspect is, I just don't have enough experience with SACD. For CD, the SE has the best performance of the AA players I've heard.

The best, no, for the price, that's a tough call. The Simaudio Supernova would give it a real good run for the money, and if its brightness could be toned down a bit I'd put it ahead of the regular Capitole. Not quite sure where it stands with the SE though, I'll need more listening with both to figure that out. It does. To me the Andromeda is perfect, it's got a fair sized margin on either Capitole and it takes a damn good vinyl setup to beat it. The Andromeda, I think, is limited more by the CD format than anything else.

Continuing... The main difference I noted between the two is the treble, the SE is definitely better here, and this is where most of the gap is. The resolution up top is better, as is its ability to avoid sibilance even with shitty CDs. Sibilance and hash on the non SE tends to resolve into coherant musical information on the SE, for instance the cymbals on "The Bazaar" by The Tea Party are a bit sharp & edgy on the regular, but not so much on the SE, but it's not getting rounded over nor rolled off in any way. There's more information & detail, and less annoying hash, which makes it less fatiguing and more real. It was much the same idea on "What's Going On?" by Blue Rodeo, the regular leaves a bit of random hash in the cymbals while the SE gets rid of it and turns that noise into music. To use an analogy, it's kinda like what happens when an FM radio tuner isn't quite dead on with the station, parts of the music fuzzes out into static, but when dialed in the static is gone and you get more musical information coming in. The SE is basically the fine-tuning of the radio dial. With the rest of the frequency range there's not really much of an improvement, the SE is a little ahead in all areas but it's not as dramatic as it is in the treble. So I won't talk about it much, lest I start sounding like a magazine reviewer. Just for Reks, I played some Feist on the system, and this is where I realize how artificial and processed "The Reminder" is in comparison to "Let it Die". Which brings me to the next part, how do they deal with non-audiophile approved recordings? Well, the SE is better here, it sounds fuller & more vivid without sounding like it's playing things through rose-tinted lenses. Yes I can easily hear all the flaws, even more so than the regular Capitole, but they don't bug me as much. It's sweeter & better, but in a good way, not in the way of crappily done tube gear. Going back to "The Reminder", the songs are great but the recording & mastering sucks. On "1 2 3 4" they either used a cheap-ass recorder for her vocals or they ran her voice through 50 stages of post-processing, same thing with half the instruments. Yet it still sounds pretty good with the SE, while with the regular I find I'm more distracted by the sterile-sounding vocals & instruments, and I don't think I'd want to listen to it more than once a day at the most. With the SE I wouldn't mind spinning the disc every day. Soundstaging & imaging is pretty close, the SE is a bit more precise and seems to have more depth, but I'd need a lot of listening to tell for sure. Dynamics, frequency extension, and the other stuff I haven't mentioned yet is also like that, the SE is marginally ahead but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do an ABX test with money on the line. To sum things up, the SE is better, crap CDs, "audiophile approved" CDs, and everything in between sounds better with the SE. It gives a little bit more of everything, particularly in the treble, and doesn't have any downsides as far as I'm concerned. Is it worth $700-800 more? For me, no, cause I can't justify nor afford a Capitole. For someone who can afford one, and whose system is good enough, I think it's a worthwhile upgrade to consider. Unless of course that person is saving up for a Simaudio Andromeda.

Teaser: So my local dealer has the entire Audio Aero CD player lineup, SE & non SE, but they were always setup in different systems and I never got to hear them on the same gear. Until this past weekend. In short, the SE is better, but I still don't think it's worth nearly as much as they're charging for the upgrade, which is quite a few hundred bucks. As a person who knows which end of a soldering iron to hold, chances are I could do the upgrade myself for a hell of a lot less. Of course, if one can afford a Capitole at retail prices, money probably isn't an issue. Gear: Artemis Labs LA-1 linestage and SP-1 power amp, with Wilson-Benesch Discovery speakers. I was going to start the impressions today and finish tomorrow, but for some reason I'm a lot more tired than I thought I was, so I'm going to call it a day.

I was waiting till I could borrow a 650 to try out before commenting. Maybe it's because I only have a Technics receiver/integrated amp that I picked up from the pawn shop for $20, but my observations don't really jive with those of catscratch. I also rebuilt my 8W p-p tube amp, but it didn't fare much better than my receiver. The best match is my K340 amp, running 6BX7 output tubes, which I find to be too bright and lacking in bass with any of my own headphones, but even then it still didn't match my K340, let alone my RS-1. I didn't think there was a monumental improvement when driving the 650 with a p-p amp, the Technics was about on par with my DIY Gilmore Lite while the 8W tube amp was a bit better, and my K340 amp was another step up. On the other hand, the 650 out of the headphone jack of the Technics is quite possibly the best match for my turntable out of all the headphones I have. It sounds damn good with vinyl, but with digital it sounds pretty meh. My new working theory is that Senns are voiced for analog playback systems.

He ate them, and they tasted nothing like chicken.