aerius

Hi, I bought some shiny new records for my vinyl collection but they seemed a little odd. These things are like shiny silver on one side with graphics and stuff on the other, and they're smaller than my 45's. I put them on my record player and tried the 45 RPM setting, but it didn't work, and I couldn't get music out of them, only a horrible scratching sound. I tried the other side and got the same thing. What am I doing wrong?

If headphones could talk, I wonder what they'd say about being passed around the tribe like the village bicycle...

http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,1541.0.html

It's been down for at least the last hour or so. I clicked on a link from here to there and it was no worky. It's actually a small miracle that it took this long before it went down again.

It's basically the same, but pretty much different.

I get a fair number of similar emails from both Amazon & Paypal. It doesn't quite work when 1) I've never shopped at Amazon and don't have a membership there, and 2) the email account which gets the mail ain't the one that's registered with Paypal.

Thanks for reminding me that I don't own an iPod. I'm going to lie down in a corner and cry now. :'(

The Senn 580 by default, because all my classical music is on vinyl and hooking up my K340 and its amp to the vinyl rig is too much of a pain in the ass.

It's just you. Serious answer? I won't speak for other head-case members, but I for one, having seen all kinds of "this new thing's the best shit ever!!!" threads on more pieces of gear than I can remember, will treat any new claims of "miracle gear" with a healthy degree of skepticism. To me it's nothing to get excited about until either myself or someone whose opinions I trust hears it and gives it the thumbs up.

I expect them to perform at their pricepoint, whatever the hell that is. I remember a craze way back when over the Sony CD780 (I think), which was an under $100 headphone said to be better than the Senn 580/600 and the best damn thing around. I eventually heard one after the buzz died and it turned out to be crap. Then the Audio Technica A900 craze hit and it was said to best 'phones costing twice as much, it was of course a bust and philodox and I had a big part in popping the bubble, I think I also got a ban out of that one. Based on my past experiences with trends like this, I'd stay the hell away for now, then pick up the phones for cheap when the bubble bursts and people start dumping them.

It might be because people are using amps as a tuning device to make up for the flaws in their headphones, and at one time I was one of these people. With my Senn 580's for instance I needed a bit more fullness in the midrange and some added sparkle up top to bust through the "Senn veil", with my Grado 225 that sparkle becomes "crap, that's too bright". I eventually realized it was better to have a more neutral amp and tune the headphones instead. Or it could be that people are just parrots and sheep and just follow along and repeat what everyone else is saying. On head-fi, I think the latter explanation is more likely.

This is something I've been thinking about for quite some time now, why is it that some headphones are automatically assumed to require super-expensive over the top amps while others aren't? The examples I'm specifically thinking of are the Senn 580/6x0 and AKG K701 along with Grados like the RS-1. As most of you have likely heard by now, everyone "knows" that the Senns & AKG "need" the best amp money can buy, and if the sound isn't quite right it's always the fault of the amp because it's not good enough. I've also noticed that scores if not hundreds of people own $1000+ amps for the above headphones. On the other side of the coin we have (John) Grados, everyone "knows" that they sound good even without an amp, and thus they don't really need an amp. I very rarely see someone with a full-out Grado amp, most people seem to stop somewhere around the MAD Ear+ Gilmore Lite or PPX3 level and that's the end of the line for them. As far as I've seen, there's maybe a dozen people or so who've actually spent more than $1000 on amps for their Grados. I find this really strange for several reasons. I own a Grado 225 and Senn 580, and I've recently been using them a lot more. I've found that when fed from a good amp, the 225 scales every bit as well as a 580, and I think the two of them are pretty closely matched in terms detail & resolution. If I add the RS-1 to the mix, it'll handily pull away from any Senn when given a good amp. Which finally leads to the question, just how important are amps to various headphones, and who the hell started these silly myths?

Currently I'm not working on anything, the weather's too nice outside and I'm too lazy to plug in my soldering iron. Recent projects have included the following: 1) Continued tweaking of my Objective-Interim tube amp, mostly playing around with new input tubes 2) A proof of concept parafeed amp using a 12SN7 and 12W6 in triode mode 3) A cRaptor based on KG's schematics just to see how bad it sounds (even powered it with a switchmode filament supply) 4) Various DC filament supplies, trying to make a super-simple super-quiet one As for what's next, these are all still in the thinking stages 1) A tube phono amp of some sort 2) A 2A3 headphone amp of some sort 3) A glowy nightlight using an 872 mercury vapour rectifier

It's a new high in co-ordination, a ghetto looking stand for a ghetto looking headphone.

That's cheapskate ingenuity at its best. Get some pipe, screw it to a board, and then put pipe insulation on it.

Regarding Stereophile. The Stereophile of the last 10 years or so writes better ad copy than the advertisers themselves. The Toronto Reference Library has Stereophile issues going back several decades, I've read through many of them while killing time between classes back when I was in university. The best issues, bar none, were the ones where J. Gordon Holt was the owner and chief editor, since the mid 80's when John Atkinson took over as the editor things have gone downhill, with the worst damage taking place in the last 10 years or so. Let's put it this way, in the Recommended Components list they have more components in Class A+ (so good they had to invent a category above Class A) than they do in Class D (entry level). I flipped through literally pages of Class A gear before coming across maybe 3 or so Class D components. That should tell you something about the honesty & integrity of the magazine. If you honestly believe that dozens of components of each type (speakers, amps, sources) can be rated as Class A, ie. state of the art, best that there is, then you're on crack. What Stereophile does is analogous to handing out 100 gold medals in every event in the Olympics. That's just fucking bullshit.

A couple blowjobs from a Vietnamese hooker. Remember, "sucky sucky five dolla!!"

I think this is true of most high-end headphones, whether they're dynamic, electrostatics, or some other technology. The owner eventually ends up building a system which is specific to that headphone to get as much out of it as he can.

Ha-ha! Postjack's getting sloppy thirds.

Except Billy & Tyrion. Billy we haven't quite figured out yet, but Tyrion is a certified grade A shitbag & apologist for RSA.

Would this be a good time to point him towards KG's and Roam's comments regarding the Raptor?

EnABL works. No, it did not make my piece of shit computer speakers sound better than my headphones, but it did make them noticeably better. There's not as much of the papery honky sound as before so they sound clearer, but I'll be honest here, they still sound like crap. They basically went from mega-crap to crap. I don't have anything else to try it out on so this is as far as I can go. If you want to try it for yourself, the patent info and instructions can be found here.

Nope. Knowledge is power. Ignorance ain't bliss.

To me cables are the final step in tuning the system, once you have the rest of the gear, listen for a while to see which way the sound needs to be adjusted, then get the cables.