aerius
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Posts posted by aerius
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GE 6SN7GTA's, they look a lot like the '52 Sylvania GT's. Doesn't have the detail, soundstage, refinement, smoothness and all that of say, the RCA grey glass tubes, but it has great drive and nice impact. It's a fun tube, I use it when I want to headbang to hard heavy music.
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I ate a pretzel
It gave me diarrhea
Pretzels fucking suck
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down again. somethin's goin on!
Your membership contributions were embezzled and thus the 3rd rate server can only be run for about 100 hours a week or so.
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CD player for the Orsa was the Shanling T-200 using the tube outputs, and amps were the Vasant_K Final Edition and then the Shanling STP-80 integrated amp. It was marginally better with the tube amp but I felt it still completely sucked, and the shop owner agreed. The shop guy said he's tried it with a bunch of other amps and that's just how the speaker sounds, he doesn't like it but one of the other employees does and so do some customers. I think it's made for fans of dead lifeless studio monitors, or idiots who don't know better. Did I mention I hate Dynaudio? The only speaker of theirs I can stand is the Special 25, and even then I don't like it much anymore.
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I took another trip to the local audio store so I could drool over the Shanling T-200 & T-300 CD players in person, but the main purpose was to check out small floorstanders & largish bookshelf speakers. I wanted to see if there was anything that could match the Living Voice Avatar at a lower cost. The summary is unfortunately not, but I did find a couple nice surprises. Keep in mind that my standard for good sound for small floorstanders is the Living Voice Avatar OBX-R, which is the tweaked out version of the Avatar.
Anyway, first speaker up was the Elac FS 207 Limited Edition. These are German speakers with some kind of ribbon midrange/tweeter thingy. Well, the only good thing I could say about them is they had very extended highs, everything else was mediocre to sucky. The bass sucked, there was a hump in the 80-100Hz region and pretty much nothing above & below it. On basslines I could hear the notes fade in & peak as they hit the hump and then fade out again as the notes continued up or down the scale, same thing with piano, and drums, and any instrument with bass. The midrange was flat & dry, and this is out of the Shanling T-200 tube outputs and with a tube amp, and the highs were sibilant. Soundstaging & imaging was nothing to write home about either. In short, a very unsatisfactory suck-ass speaker. I hated it.
Next was the JAS Audio Orsa speaker, a small bookshelf with a ribbon tweeter & Dynaudio woofer. This speaker served to re-affirm my hatred for Dynaudio drivers. The highs were pretty good, fast, clear, extended, unfortunately with a slight touch of sibilance which could probably be tuned out with tube rolls. And that's all the good I can say about it.
Midrange & bass completely sucked. Veiled, undynamic, sterile, slow, it just sucked. Vocals sounded like someone had put a blanket in front of the microphone, drums had no impact at all, and piano was completely unlistenable. With piano, from the midrange up you hear a "plink" as the key is struck and that's it, no sound from the piano's soundboard or body, no resonances, nothing, just a sterile "plink" that might as well have come from a $50 Radio Shack keyboard.
The bass was just overly tight & completely lacking in body. Drums have absolutely no energy, electric bass barely registers above the background noise, and the low notes on a grand piano are blended into a mushy mess. Slow, dead, lack of detail, absolutely fucking awful.
Next up was the Oskar Aulos, featuring the Heil Tweeter, which I've heard of but never heard before. Holy crap is this tweeter ever good, very clean, detailed, and extended, and not a trace of sibilance, very smooth & easy to listen to. Unfortunately, the rest of the speaker, though good, doesn't quite match up to the tweeter and as a result there's a bit of a discontinuity in the frequency range. Midrange & treble is good, but the bass doesn't keep up in speed & detail, and sounds a bit too boomy & slow.
My standard test for bass speed & detail is "In the Springtime of his Voodoo" by Tori Amos, only the very best gear can cleanly separate the low notes of the grand piano and keep them from blending into each other, and on top of that keep the electric bass in balance and not blending into the piano. As expected, the low piano notes blended, but at least the bass stayed separate. Tone wasn't bad, a bit too thick & boomy in some places which didn't help with the separation either, but at least it's on the warm side instead of being cold & sterile, I could live with that.
Midrange was pretty sweet, balanced on the warm side, male vocals had nice weight & depth to them and Jeff Martin of The Tea Party doesn't sound castrated like he does on some speakers. Next up was "Plenty" by Sarah McLachlan off a promo CD, somewhat similar to the Freedom Sessions version but better. Multi-tracked vocals from all over the soundstage, fun for checking imaging capabilities. Sarah sounded pretty sweet, not the most detailed I've heard since some of the subtle shifts in her voice were lost but still quite satisfying. Nice soundstage & imaging too, especially in the highs. I'm liking those Heil tweeters.
Put on "Space Dog" by Tori Amos to check for dynamics, did pretty well here. Not the hardest or fastest bass impact I've heard, but it has good body & weight to the sound. Drums on all my music finally sound complete, and I finally have a bass groove. Overall, a darn good speaker, especially given the cost of about $2400 CDN.
Last speaker of the day was the Aurum Cantus Leisure 3 CA speaker, definitely the prettiest of the bunch. Soundwise, pretty similar to the Oskars, but the highs weren't as clean and the bass was a bit tighter & more detailed. It's another ribbon tweeter design, but the highs get a bit sibilant, especially noticeable with any song off Tori's "Little Earthquakes" album. Like the Oskar, it's on the warm side, but it is a bit closer to neutral than the former, and sounds clearer from the lower midrange on down. Basically, the Oskar has the edge in highs and the Aurum's a bit better on lows, and are pretty close in the midrange.
Overall it's a tough choice between the Oskar & the Aurum Cantus, the former has slightly better sound but god is it ever fugly. The Aurum Cantus is damn pretty but I'm not sure if I can deal with the slight sibilance over the long term.
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You have more control than I would have had!
He was on the same floor but a few rooms down from me so it wasn't too bad. But if he was my roommate I probably would've shoved the CD up his ass.
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Anything by Cher... her voice actually hurts when I hear it
There was a guy in my dorm when I was in university who played "Believe" by Cher at least 5 times a day, if it weren't for the fact that he was a chick magnet I would've kicked his ass on general principle.
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Head-fi is down again?
Yup, isn't it wonderful?
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"My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion. Even though I've never seen Titanic, and plan on never seeing it, the song still makes me sick. "Achy Breaky Heart" edges it out on my hate list, but if I had to watch the music videos for both it would be too close to call.
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He also carried the isotope in a beaker in a brown paper bag, on a public bus, and managed to spill it on his trousers while on the bus.
I wonder if he's able to have kids...
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Boobies! I demand a booby forum!
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I had no idea there was a time limit...how strange. What is the purpose of it?
See the Sovkiller crybaby thread...
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At this rate, probably never. I should have new transformers coming in tomorrow. Toroidal output transformers, that should be interesting.
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am i the only one that noticed the box of lifestyles in his drawer?
And a 100-pack too. Damn that guy must be busy, how does he have the time to post?
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Is that really uglier than this?
You can't really appreciate how cheap looking this amp really is from a picture. The plastic case dyed to appear as "wood grain" is just tacky.
At least your amp has a case. Mine probably violates at least a dozen electrical & wiring safety regulations. Also note the liberal use of blue sticky-tack and hockey tape. On the bright side, it does sound pretty good.
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6 moons is just as bad.
After their "review" of the Fab Audio Model One I gave up on a lot of their reviewers. Mid-bass suckout, agressive tweeter, lack of bass weight, what a load of crock. I've heard the speakers in 3 different setups now and they're nothing like that.
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Oops...
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I agree. If you haven't read this you should: http://www.high-endaudio.com/reviewers.html
I dropped by at his store once in '99 or 2000 and got introduced to the Apogee Centaur speaker. I like his writings because he seems even more skeptical and cynical than I am.
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But it's princeton! Cmon man, you've been there!
I'm sleeping with a Princeton swimmer chick, and I don't even live in the US. How hard could it be?
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Yes I'm a virgin, an ass virgin that is, and I hope to remain an ass-virgin for the rest of my life.
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I dropped by the bookstore today on my way home from work and leafed through a copy of the Stereophile "Recommended Components" issue. It was depressing, and quite unbelievable. For one thing, there's an average of 10-15 components in the "Class A" list in every single category of gear. This is close to and in some cases exceeds the number of components listed in "Class B", and in all cases it exceeds the number of "Class C" components.
That ain't right. Am I supposed to believe that there's more "best of the best" gear than solid decent bang for the buck stuff? That for every piece of "above average" gear there's 5 pieces of "best of the best gear"?
I also noted that the "Class A+" categories are growing at a nice rate, in fact for digital sources there's now at least 10 "A+" pieces of gear. Instead of demoting everything in "Class A" to "Class B" and dropping a bunch of gear off the list, they added a whole new class. Pretty soon they'll have to make "Class A+++" to fit in all the crap they want.
It's depressing because the list has lost its meaning. You can't have 15 pieces of gear that are all "the best", it can't be that way by definition. By definition, "the best" means the one component that beats everything elses ass, meaning there can only be one, like the Highlander. But I'm a generous guy so I can live with 3, which happens to be the number of medals they give out in championships. But 15? That's ridiculous.
Anyways, rant over, carry on.
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I'm indifferent towards religion until the believers start shoving it in my face and trying to convert me or "save my soul", then it gets ugly, and I'll cut loose with a string of compound-complex cuss words. Otherwise, do whatever you want in your own home or place of worship, I really couldn't care less.
Politics pisses me off but it is interesting in a perverse way.
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The K701 got bitch-slapped by both pairs of modded K340's. It was more of a beating than putting a pair of Grado SR60's up against the PS-1.
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If the software allows it, a good idea would be to have the editing restrictions in place for the more contentious forums only. Forums such as Off-Topic, Music, or other ones where there isn't much potential for editing to cause shitfests can have unrestricted editing. Others where people throw hissy fits and try to delete evidence can have editing disabled or heavily restricted.
MPX3 Tubes? (for metal)
in Headphone Amplification
Posted
I don't know, mine don't look anything like that. Mine have black T-shaped plates and the getter is on the bottom, taller bottle too. Reports from Audio Asylum say that there's several styles of GE 6SN7GTA's, and that they mostly sound the same, but I wouldn't know. Apparently I have the GE Canada version which is said to be the best one. BTW, my 2 pairs are actually 12SN7GTA's, same as the 6SN7 except the heater voltage & price.