Dusty Chalk

Yeah, there's a whole "team" of us who don't believe in application-specific headphones at all. Now, matching headphones to amps and cables and sources and so on, that's something else entirely, but yeah, I believe that all music should sound good on my headphones, and they usually do.

It's stevieo, and he's here, he just doesn't post much, just shows up in pics at meets in the "Where's Waldo?" style.

Buffy comic Omnibus Vol. the fourth.

You know, sometimes we have to try headphones for ourselves to hear what's wrong with them. I disagree with pretty much everyone about the sound of the GS1000's I've heard, even people who agree with me about disliking them.

You're not alone. Is the Denon true DSD? I heard the Pioneer wasn't, but I know I prefer my early Sony to practically anything else I've ever heard, except for the Denon.

Uh...no it's not, there's this thing they have, called Boot Camp. Linux has something similar, I forget what it's called, though.

Justin, you're showing your age. Your young age. Now these are old toy commercials:

Well, it may have had a lot to do with the level you listen to. When amps max out, they start to compress before they start to distort (it's actually the same thing at different levels). When they compress, it'll still sound okay, except things will start to blur together. People like you definitely need multiple drivers, because most single-driver systems (headphones, single-driver speakers like Lowther-based speakers, Quad ESL's) don't go loud well. IIRC, you don't like Quads either, so...QED. At the levels I listen to, I have no problem hearing things I've never heard before. (Wait, that didn't sound right...)

Okay, how about Team Relatively Minimal. Team Truly Minimal is absolute -- pretty much no-one on this board qualifies. So what's the point of discussing Team Truly Minimal? There is none. So, let's put a term to what boomana is trying to put her thoughts to, basically, someone with only one high-end rig, and maybe one portable one. Thoughts? People in Team Truly Minimal would describe us as "Team Insane" and "Team Went Broke First". (That'd be me -- I'd have every rig under the sun if I could afford it, I think that's pretty much the only thing that differentiates me from someone who has [or has had] one of everything [i'm looking at you spritzer, Fitz, elephas, Tom, Earl, tyrion, et al].)

Thank you for saying what I wish I had said. Yeah, was in the midst of rethinking that part, and I have to agree. Home rig only. Nice! Once people realized they could get them in black, they stopped caring about other colours.

You know, there's something to be said for beautiful gear. And that is: are you sure you weren't just mesmerized into thinking it sounded better?

Yes, absolutely. Try binaural music. Then speakers are the ones getting the spatial info and cues incorrect. 'Detail' and 'Soundstage' are two quite different things. At the same volume level? You must either have had a really crappy headphone rig (which I doubt), or...I don't know. That's the only explanation I can think of. I have had the exact opposite occur -- I hear the new things on headphones, not speaker systems. And I've heard some pretty nice speaker systems (probably the high-point of my speaker listening was having the Dynaudio Special 25's driven by Musical Fidelity A300^CR, MF A308 CD player, and I forget what pre I was using. It did sound sweet, and I did hear things to a great level of detail, but I don't remember hearing anything new. Equivalent at best. And I think I tended to listen louder on speakers (which should overcome my "background noise" argument). Just because they sounded so good loud.

Yes. MHO -- why does one need both dynamic and electrostatic? Team minimal would mean, to me, having one rig, more or less. Maybe one rig (one work rig and one home rig for those of us who don't do transportable) and one portable rig. I don't know about the type of gear criteria -- when canman sold everything for his K1000 and Pass Labs F3 was it? -- I think he qualified. If all I had was my Kenwood Micro-System and a pair of Audio-Technica A100Ti's when I had those, I think that would have qualified.

Have there ever been any ribbon or planar headphones/earspeakers? What kind of driver is in the K1000?

I don't disagree that speakers are superior on spatial information, but it's not less important to me. When I was talking about detail, I was talking about raw information. I still think headphones reveal more detail than speakers will at the same listening level.

I don't know -- I get much more detail out of my headphone rig than I do out of most speaker rigs I listen to at the same volume, due mostly to lack of background noise. I think the headphone rig merits the better source.

When the fuck did that happen? Was I asleep? They've been worthless for years, how long have they been not worthless...worthful...worthy of consideration...Did they change management or something?

No, after some more careful reading, it appears I was thinking of Linn's "Silver Disk Engine" technology, but that's not the transport, but rather the chip software that controls the transport and other digital aspects of the player. This page seems to imply that they at least used to:

It is? What changed?

Wait a minute, were you being...? Damnit!

Our == "Head-Case", not "you and I". I'm not the only one with a sarcastic bent around here.

I don't remember if it was Linn or Ayre, but one of them make their own transport that is supposed to be really good. It's ironic that of all transports, Sony is the one having problems, considering they are the ones that championed the SACD format.

I'm a huge fan of the Planet. Not the last word in detail, but it's got everything else in spades (prat, impact, bass, euphony, analog-y-ness...and most important, listenability -- I actually had a pre-2K Planet for the longest time as my primary player).

Stereophile has a 5% discount + free shipping code for the AudioEngines.

Well, it's a good thing they have bacon dispensing machines now: