aerius

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yup, isn't it wonderful?

"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.

I wonder if he's able to have kids...

Boobies! I demand a booby forum!

See the Sovkiller crybaby thread...

At this rate, probably never. I should have new transformers coming in tomorrow. Toroidal output transformers, that should be interesting.

And a 100-pack too. Damn that guy must be busy, how does he have the time to post?

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.

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.

Oops...

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.

I'm sleeping with a Princeton swimmer chick, and I don't even live in the US. How hard could it be?

Yes I'm a virgin, an ass virgin that is, and I hope to remain an ass-virgin for the rest of my life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More impressions...The Senn 650 was also kind of odd, this pair had way more bass than the other 2 pairs I've heard in the past. I can now see why people are making those comments on the 650's having boomy bloated bass. Problem is that unlike the PS-1, the bass is slow, and low notes blend into each other in both pitch & time. Fast individual low notes played on piano like the left hand part of "In the Springtime of His Voodoo" by Tori Amos end up sounding more like chords than individual notes, and the electric bass blended into the piano. Which is really odd since the other 2 sets I've heard didn't do this, well, they did but not nearly this bad. Then there's the 3-blob soundstage & fuzzy imaging. So far I've only heard one good pair, and that one has extensive modifications, balanced cables, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Biggie's setup. I wanted to check out the amp to see how my own DIY amp is progressing in terms of sound. Well, it needs more work. They have similar characteristics but Biggie's setup has more speed & refinement, better imaging & soundstaging, and more blackness between notes. I'd hit a point recently where further improvements in my amp were pretty much indiscernable with my K340, so it was nice to use the PS-1 to find out where I'd come up short. I'll have to go hunt for more tubes and possibly do a complete redesign at some stage. The PS-1. More bassy than last time, but damn is it ever fun & groovy. Fucking hell, I need to win the lottery so I can buy one, I think the Super 7 jackpot's at $15 mil this week...I need to get some tickets. The HF-1, better than last time, not as warm & slow as before, not sure if it's break-in or amps, probably both. At the Hamilton meet it had nice tone, but it was just sluggish and didn't get up & boogie like a Grado. I liked jazz, and refused to rock. Fortunately, that was cured, and it didn't die when I made it play Gn'R and Metallica. Speaking of which the PS-1 has dethroned the 225 as the best rock & metal 'phone, I made it play Slayer, and it was fucking fierce. Back to the HF-1, before I thought it was pretty much a side-step from the 225, now I feel it's an upgrade. On a side note, I think my word of the day at the meet was "dickwad".

Soylent Green anyone? Besides, everything supposedly tastes like chicken, though I've heard human flesh tastes more like pork...

I thought it was the psychoactive drugs in the cables... >:Dg

Enough bass for me is defined as "similar in quantity to the PS-1", which means most headphones don't have enough bass. There is no way the K701 comes anywhere close to that. With either one of Dido's albums there's a fair bit of deep filling bass that's missing with the 701, the bass should rumble & fill the entire soundstage but it barely fills the front-centre area unless I wing the volume control wide open. Then there's the opening to "The Waitress" by Tori Amos, where once again, I get some impact but no filling rumble, and same thing on "Space Dog". Other problem is the dynamics are kinda lacking except from the midrange on down unless the volume's cranked to levels which'll make my ears ring, and then there's the 3-blob effect with the soundstage, it's not seamless like with the K340's and Grados. The mids, while better than my Senn 580, aren't K340 or PS-1 nice. Too airy & spacey, there's not enough density & solidity to the mids, kinda like see-through ghosts instead of live solid people. I really wanted to like it, but given my preferences it's just not going to work for me.