Hopstretch

A couple of recent tidbits on the QB-9 upgrade path from Charles Hansen. Just on the off-chance anyone else is interested.

Not to mention fucking bears.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds -- No More Shall We Part

If I could take a hint, they would have run me off after about three posts around here! I do like the 800s very much, though, and am genuinely interested in better understanding their fundamental characteristics.

Maybe this should be in the "I swore I'd never..." thread, but yeah I never thought I'd be that annoying guy who has the awesome headphones he loves better than cake (or coke, depending on your predilection) -- except for that one teeny little sonic nit that he feels obliged to pick over and over again on the boards until everyone just wishes he would SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds -- The Boatman's Call Mixes very, very well with whisky.

Those are bowls.

I have one too (Digital Reference) and agree it is way too inflexible. I used to use it on my PS3, but it didn't make me any faster in GT5 Prologue.

Possibly because theirs is a diffuse field measurement? I don't know. Maybe Dreadhead would help us out if we sent him some rum. It certainly suggests that Stereophile did screw up their impedance measurement of the HD800, which showed a peak of only about 310 Ohms, since this latest curve agrees pretty much exactly with Headroom's one.

I think that around that region the effect is going to be pretty much the same. Combined with the big frequency spike at 5K... The Qualias are even worse in that range. (Nice suckout, too.)

Another good review.

Mine are out on loan, so ban me not.

Yeah, he just off-handedly recommended 50 Ohms as a suitable divider. Whether that's arbitrary or not, I don't know. There are some pretty interesting measurements comparing the 800s to the 650s over here -- though I have no idea what the accompanying commentary says. Look at these: Those waterfalls are a bit of an eye-opener to me. Is it foolish to conjecture that that pronounced ringing at 6kHz is probably what is pissing people (like, say, me) off with plosives and sibilance on the 800s?

The big knob part?

Back to the 800s. I am really digging them off the HP4 right now. There's a certain coloration that isn't there with the dead neutral GS-1 and it has a slightly smoothing effect, which I like. This is with the stock tubes. I have some 6SU7GTY coming in that, by repute, will take things even further in that direction. I find I also like them more driven off the amp's Lo-Z taps, which seems to plump up the bass. Could be complete bollocks and sonic self-delusion, of course.* (* I did email Tim de Paravicini to ask what the respective output impedances were and he rather ducked the question, but did say the amp has a damping factor of around 12, for what that's worth.)

Ta Monkey man. I did look at their Nano, but didn't want to have to fart around with TRS outputs.

Toto -- Toto IV MFSL CD

No one is insulting your baby elephant ears, so no need to flap them. It's demonstrably true that some of Mikhail's stuff sounds good despite his, ah, eccentric design choices. Voltron's SDS-XLR, for example, was absolutely kicking ass at CanJam with the HD800s. And now, of course, it's gone boom bye-bye. And then, oddly, Andy's SDS-XLR didn't do much with the Senns at the same event. Tube variation? Design variation? Different vodka consumed during build process? Who knows. Point is, Singlepower stuff is a crapshoot to both operate and evaluate.

Due to a change in the configuration of my system, I'm looking at getting a passive volume control/preamp for the odd occasions when I want to listen to my monitors rather than my headphones. Does anyone have any experience with the NHT ones? Or any thoughts on whether it's worth the extra tenner (and cable costs) to go balanced all the way through my system? (They go for far less than MSRP online. The Goldpoints look nice but are way too spendy.) The HP4 converts balanced input to SE, but the Quads have XLR ins and -- given it's a desktop system -- there's a lot of RF interference about. All cable lengths will be pretty short once it's properly set up.

One man's meet is another man's pissup.

Aimee Mann -- Magnolia

Seconded by the anarcho-syndicalist faction. Not that we observe bourgeois rules of order, other than for linguistic convenience.

The Flaming Lips -- The Soft Bulletin

Because I don't own these and, frankly, can't afford them, I'm taking the position that they must be overrated. Oh, and you're all shills obviously.