Dusty Chalk

PNY? Centron? KByte? Some unknown brand? Should I buy two sets of two different ones and try them both out? Background: I already bought some Centron, but can buy 4G of PNY for reasonably cheap. Should I? Or is it a move sideways? What are there often sales of? Kingston? Crucial? Are those the two best at this point? I don't need best (not for this computer), I need "Honda" -- cheap (or rather, reasonably priced considering its quality, not Kia cheap) yet reliable. For the one I build myself, then I'll want "BMW" performance.

Looks good. How's the fit and finish in real life? I'll be needing an audio rack at some point.

I was only telling to increase swap first because then it -- theoretically anyway -- should be on a contiguous piece of the hard drive, not that it in itself is speeding effect. Heck, I've even allocated a separate partition for the swap before. Not having your swap file fragged is the speeding effect. There are lots of little hints like this (it's supposed to be some even multiple of your swap plus 12K? ...or something like that), one should find a list of all of those before one rebuilds one's system. Having all your operating system and non-volatile program files in a separate partition is another one. That kind of thing. But the swap thing first is, to me, crucial, hence why I mentioned it. Oh, and why == lazy. Was still going to work on it, and probably still will, but just a little bit overwhelmed right now. I had got to the point where I needed to download all the source for the kernel because the driver needed to recompile it, and that was at 2 in the morning, so I said, "fuck it...for now". And just never got back around to it.

I got mine from Microcenter, which I believe do mail-order. Let us know when you have a couple hundred, because prices fluctuate wildly. Their regular price for the GX270 is US$299. Let's see if this works (it should be a list of their desktops in price order, starting at their cheapest). You should also check pricewatch, though I think they only do parts. I also like to watch the Dell refurb site, but now you're getting into the US$1K range.

In all likelihood, it won't be compatible. Even so, it's probably not your main problem. The combination of CPU speed, bus speed, and other factors dictate your overall system speed. I just bought a new computer for US$250 (refurbished Dell Optiplex GX260), you sure you can't afford that? In only had 1/2 G of RAM, but it was still noticeably faster. I plan on getting 4G more at a later date (possibly this weekend). If you can't even afford that, I would do this: get a new hard drive (40G is probably enough), and rebuild your OS. It saves you the trouble of defragging your hard drive and fine-tuning all your software. First thing after you do that -- before you even run windows update -- is increase your swap space to as much as you can afford. I couldn't do it -- didn't know where all the software was, so I did both -- I reinstalled my OS (switched to linux) and bought the new computer, and the combination is great. The Windows machine has never been on the internet, I save it for all the Windows exclusive stuff, and the linux machine is for email and browsing and downloading only. The only bad thing was that I couldn't use my new widescreen monitor on the linux machine.

Amen!

'Too', not 'to', and 'should've', not 'should of'. And: Ew!

The second one is HDCD.

Yes, we know, your hatred for those phones are well-documented. Shut up already, it's fucking annoying. Comment was directed at A.T.

Beyer DT880.

You two are a little too easily entertained.

Ah, shit, I forgot to look, it may be a couple days before I get on again. Feel free to remind me again.

Yeah, I'm a big fan -- I own two (sort of -- one was home-modified by its previous owner, and currently is not working). I've only heard their entry level DAC (the Link DAC III), but I'm very fond of it. Combination of the Rega Planet or the X-RAYv3 as a transport was excellent, so it's not as good about jitter rejection as they claim (I.E. it prefers a low-jitter transport as a source). Justin also owns (or owned) an older Platinum. I'll let him give his opinions, though. My opinions of it at a few meets was that it was excellent, but that's all I remember -- I don't remember if it fell in the "smoov" camp or in the accurate camp. IIRC, it had just a nice straightforward no-muss-no-fuss type of delivery.

Why? I mean, the fan boys don't say, "well, I'm in love with XXX gear, so take what I say with a grain of salt"...

Audiokarma.org had some good suggestions, I'll go there later and find the specific thread that I'm thinking of, but if you want to go there and search under DIY, feel free. And they're constantly posting when the good ones go on sale.

And another thing -- excuse me if I take things you say, Tyll, with a certain grain of salt. I understand you have to play the diplomat, as you want to continue playing the game, but I don't. Sorry, that comes across more harshly than is intended, but I don't mince words. I do respect and admire you a great deal. Good luck in your unenviable position, I wish you success.

I disagree. The biggest problem I have with Jude is his complete reluctance to discuss things honestly and openly. He wants to keep the hobby associated with his domain, and he's welcome to keep his domain his domain, but I don't think the whole hobby should belong to him. At least over here, you're welcome to tell us we're tenacious and full of resentment, over there, a post like that would get deleted and possibly get the poster banned. Fuck that. I have no desire to engage the swarm. The biggest problem I have with Ray is that I haven't heard an amp from him that I like. (Yet, anyway.) And that he can't take even the smallest amount of criticism -- I.E. I can't state the fact that I don't like his amps without him taking it like a personal attack.

It's not that simple. IIRC, it takes a proprietary input, so one would also need the dough to modify a transport. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Just so you know, the HP-2 isn't necessarily a better can, it's got a completely different signature. The RS-1's are pretty much the TOTL in the John Grado camp of cans. (Well, maybe the GS-1000...but that's arguable.) The HP-1000 series are the TOTL in the Joe Grado camp of cans. Overgeneralization, but you get the idea. Try before you buy, this post is not to be misconstrued as anything more than free advice which is worth what you paid for it, yoda yoda yoda...

So you're fine with the AudioValve RKV, which utilizes the antiquitous (anti-ubiquitous) PCL805/PCL85/18GV8, which used to usually be used in televisions?

All of them. Especially all of the Heifetz. I'm skipping the operas, but other than that, I'm getting all of them. Was listening to the Bartok just last night, and the tonal colors on that one are right up there with Ravel, as far as I am concerned. This one: I think Heifetz has like 3 or 4 of them at this point: Argh, I don't have this one yet:

Anyone want to help this guy out? I'll send him here as well.

As opposed to what, letting the corpse rot?

It took you two weeks to come up with that quip? Do you know what? Still funny.