Dusty Chalk

Okay, just disregard everything I wrote you, then, we obviously completely differ on this. I just assume anyone who loves Stephenson loves that novel. My mistake. I agree about the Baroque Cycle, though: crowning achievement, indeed. Have you seen the paperbacks? They rearranged the chapters so that the interweaving storylines are in separate books. I'm tempted to try and read it that way (I just found my copy of Quicksilver, which I had been missing -- it is now with the other two), but that won't be any time soon.

(sharp intake of breath) Oh!

Diamond Age.

What I usually do is look up a book on Amazon, and see what they have listed for "customers also bought". Stephenson...Stephenson...Stephenson...moar Stephenson...Gibson -- meh, nowhere near as much fun to read, Pattern Recognition is his best, though (although I'm sure you're already familiar with)...Gaiman -- now Gaiman is as much fun to read, but he's much more fantasy than sci-fi, much less hard sci-fi. Check out Neverwhere if you've never read anything by him....yeah, good old stand-by's like Ender saga by Orson Scott Card, Dune by Frank Herbert...but again, the classic Stephenson sense of humor is missing. (Do you mind silly? Discworld is fun.) But they definitely satisfy the "good" and "hefty" criteria. Christopher Moore is fun, but again -- more fantasy than sci-fi complete fantasy, no science fiction. And definitely errs on the side of sillier than Stephenson. You know what I enjoyed? Slant, by Greg Bear. I'm sure there are other books by Greg Bear that are better, but Slant was my first. ...bunch of names I'm not recognizing...my friend is trying to get me into Richard K. Morgan, but he caught me at a bad time (I don't do a lot of reading these days)...my friend is into hard sci-fi...

Alright, now you're just fucking with me. Fucker.

Just in case it wasn't clear, I was trying to say that you were obviously trying to pick two of the very nice category. I was also trying to say that most peoples' experiences are not usually with such two closely matched pieces of gear.

Agreed. As has been stated elsewhere -- engineering/design/implementation has more to do with it than whether or not one is using tubes or SS. Although you were trying to compare apples to apples in your above comparison, I think when most people relate their experiences, they're comparing a nice system of one sort to a very nice system of another, so it's rarely a fair comparison. Was he talking about for monitoring? Or for the A-to-D conversion? Because I was talking about monitoring.

Incorrect. Most mastering engineers want as accurate a monitoring system as possible. Steve Hoffman, in particular. And by accurate, I don't mean "least distortion", I mean, "gives the greatest insight into the music being worked on and the ability to hear as much as possible what is going on in the mix". They don't care about numbers, they care about what they can hear.

Free is good. I'll see if I can talk my buddy into it. He says he's "over" experimental type musics, but he might be into the poppier stuff like Violet and Lampshades.

No, I find it about as funny as Guro.

Also, the distortion affects the sound differently. Tube distortion doesn't sound as distorted as solid state distortion. And as close as those two examples are, I bet the VTL sounds less distorted. Yes, I know, we agreed to disagree with that, but unless you've actually heard those two preamps side by side, you really are just "quoting measurements" -- a bane to most of the rest of us.

Alright, change my post from "Your mind..." to "My mind..."

Yeah, anything truly death metal (Cannibal Corpse, etc.), is usually revolting beyond shock. Your mind just kind of doesn't read it/look at the cover/listen to the lyrics.

SRM-313/SRM-310 really aren't that bad.

Grand, Java Language Reference

So you got the "with commitment" deal. Any idea what the "replacement" costs? Oh, and me: Wegman's Dragonwell & Kukicha, several bags of those olive chips, some Bavarian Pretzels from Newman's Own, and two packs of cream cheese.

WANT.

LOL @ "Buffalo chip". And: yay for zap filters!

Did you get the same phone number? I.E. was the phone you lost an AT&T phone, so $150 was the replacement price?

Needs bacon.

Yeah, but your footprint is bigger than 4x1mm^2. The spike protection thingies (aka "quarters", "nickels" or "pennies") will solve that problem, though.

Uh, no. That's just marketing propaganda -- the output of any but incorrectly designed CD players should filter that signal, and it should never look like juxtapozed square waves. If one were to compare the filtered signals of each, they'd be much closer.

Actually, you can do that. It's called "there's only so many molecules of air".

When I listen to their stuff on random, it really doesn't matter. I like it all. Although I have to admit that when I get to a favourite track (Falling/Falling Again/Senzafine/&c.), I do get particularly excited.