Beefy

A gain of 8 is FAR too high for low impedance phones. With my 32ohm AD900 at a gain of 2, I get less than 1/6 of a turn on the volume knob before it is too loud. For everything else, stick with AMB's values. He is all knowing.

I'm a doctor (well, PhD ) and lean beef is perfectly fine even if the cholesterol is high. It also helps to offset it with an oily fish high in omega 3 the following night.

Since when was beef bad for your heart? Anything in moderation is perfectly fine - particularly if you stick to the leaner cuts.

Love it

I saw two episodes of the second season before I left Australia, and it was a LOT better than the first season - though still inferior to the original obviously. The problem with the first season was that they said to the new hosts, you can play Clarkson, you can play Hammond, and you can play May. In the second season, James Morrison is a BIG improvement, and the other two are allowed to be themselves a bit more.

I've got two words for you...... Billy Bathgate (*POTENTIALLY NSFW* depending on your Google search settings)

Not to mention that entirely removing the possibility to earth your equipment is pretty stupid.

With the Pico DAC + Amp, everything goes through the amp stage. With the Pico DAC, it does not. That is probably enough to generate subtle differences.

Your wife can't be older than... what... about 30, then? Wouldn't have picked it

Hey mate, thanks for asking! Well the move itself was bloody awful. My flights were originally Perth-Tokyo-Detroit-Halifax...... carefully planned for good flight lengths, good transits, good opportunities to sleep. But Perth to Tokyo was cancelled, apparently because the pilot was sick, so we were bumped to Perth-Melbourne-LA-NY-Halifax. Bad flight lengths, short transits, poor sleep opportunities. Melbourne-LA was delayed by two hours because a passenger was sick, and they couldn't find their luggage to remove from the plane. The LA-NY flight waited for us, because half the flight was switching over, but we missed NY-Halifax. We ended up spending the night in the dodgiest Holiday Inn I have ever seen, and got on another flight the next day. Total time from arriving at Perth airport until getting to our apartment in Halifax? 52 horrible hours. Once all that unpleasantness was out of the way though..... Canada/Halifax is fantastic, with very little culture shock at all. Really friendly people, charming streetscapes, great food, awesome beer. The only complaints are the bipolar weather and the fact that I started work inside 6 days of arriving. I think I'm going to like it here

If your woman is hand-made, you're probably doing it wrong.

I can completely relate. I go through phases where I spend unhealthy amounts of time on forums - usually when stuff is going poorly at work and I need to distract myself by buying new shiny trinkets. If I had more money, I would probably 'do' a lot more, and read/discuss a lot less...... My recent move to Canada is both a blessing and a curse. I have a lot more to occupy my time, and a lot of new things to do and see, but no IRL friends over here yet to share it with. So I seem to be trying to connect with familiar things, thus am online much more than I should be.

Not as bad a Mike Patton defecating in a hairdryer in a hotel room......

No. Run the MUX to the Buffalo with I2S and you should be good to go.

That is the awesome thing about competition. Everyone loves it when it is happening, but the ultimate outcome of most competitions is that somebody wins. And when that happens, everybody gets mad and props up the loser. Yay competition!

Interesting. Without giving too many details away...... is the variable gain in addition to a voltage divider on the input, or volume control solely from variable gain?

Six cases of beer for my farewell party

That really is spectacular...... a portable amp that is genuinely small enough to carry around with you.

Please, for the love of god, do NOT give us minute by minute burn in impressions......

...... interesting......

Where did I go just now?!?

Correct. Just trying to give it the same functionality as other DACs, to give a better price comparison.

Those HD800 are dirty stinking whores with all the people who will be listening to them. I hope you have all booked some time with them, if such a thing is possible......

Eleventyfive. Considering how few Buff32S are in existence, your chances of getting one built are diddly squat right now. But lets do some sums for parts cost...... Buffalo + PSUs $529 USB receiver $75 Transformers $40 Total $644 Now to make it really special and comparable to the other DACs being talked about here, you would want to go for the dual mono (+$60), a SPDIF MUX (+$129) and an optical input (+$18 ). Total $851 Plus case, IEC input, jacks, wiring...... conservatively $1000 total. Plus whatever anybody charges you to build it.

Familiar only from what I have read, but the Essence STX seems to be just about as good as you will get in a PC soundcard for music listening. all the critical stuff is controlled by relays, well shielded, headphone amp based around TPA6120A2, switchable OPAMPs...... Sure, it might not beat a proper audiophile desktop, but for the money it is pretty compelling. If I used a desktop PC, I would sure as hell buy one.