darkless

I usually resolve any noise disputes with this baby: Nothing that a little brute force can't fix.

I know it's OT, but since APL does this... Why is using multiple DAC chips such a big thing? I always thought that the only effect of having more chips in parallel would be increasing the output voltage thereby reducing distortion by square root of two (~40%), possibly saving an amplification stage due to the increased voltage output. However, according to this thread it seems there's more to it than that: Balanced or parallel DAC chips With DAC chips having SNR specs all the way down to -132 dB I never thought you'd really need any further noise reduction, but I guess it's useful if an amp with a lot of gain pushes the noise floor up in the audible range. What am I missing?

I'm also jealous of you Can Jammers. Wasn't the International Head-Fi Meet 2009 going to be held in Europe? Germany would be perfect, since it's relatively cheap to travel there given its central location. Oh yeah, I wouldn't mind anyone sending me a STAX Lambda Pro for auditioning purposes with my future Singlepower amp. I think they would mate pretty well.

Considering that the DA220 MkII model is around

When I compared the Earmax AE to a Rudistor RPX100, the Rudistor beat it consistently.

Sweet-looking amp, Justin! I can't wait to read impressions from the Can Jam meeting. I hope my amp will finally be around then. That way it'll almost feel like being there.

Longest I tried was 57 hours. I woke up Friday morning at 8:00 am, went to uni, then I attended a linux party from Friday night to Sunday morning, and finally I attended a family birthday until around 4:00 pm. At that time I decided I needed sleep and I finally hit the sheets around 5:00 pm. I slept until the next morning which is also the longest I've ever slept (14 hours).

Wrong tonality was one of the main reasons I sold my Qualia.

Since noone else said it, welcome to Head-Case. I'm sure you've already familiarized yourself with our motto: "Sorry about your thin skin". It's true that your first post which is essentially a HOWTO to a previously not discussed product here seems a bit fishy to a lot of members here. It's not something I'd recommend other newcomers to do. That being said, however, I encourage you to participate in the daily posts and carve your own identity here. You'll find that people here are as quick to forget early mistakes as long as you're humble about it as they are eager to throw you to the sharks if you aren't. I for one hope that you'll stick around and participate in the fun here. Since you happen to like Ultrasone, I'm afraid you'll be the end of quite a few jokes from time to time, though. Just hang in there. We're quite a bunch.

I heard an RS-1 next to an RS-2 out of the same amp at the Danish head-fi meet in February. I actually preferred the RS-2 because it didn't feel like someone taking a sharpie to my ears but still preserved what I like about the grados. Almost all the other grados I've heard (RS-1, SR325, SR80, SR60, GS1000) have caused pain and triggered low-level tinnitus in my ears after short listening periods, except for the GS1000. My ears are pretty sensitive to sharp/pronounced treble. Listening to the old 80s track "Ryan Paris - Dolce Vita" with my ESW9 yesterday brought pain to my ears until I switched on the EQ and rolled off the highs to make the track listenable.

Lucky you. My balance would be more like negative 3000 Euro.

The better signal path separation is also the main reason my amp has separate volume dials. However, since my amp will also function as an integrated speaker amp, the idea of having control over the balance lends itself well to less than ideal speaker placements.

I think the website is a scam, since neither "about" or "contact" pages return any information at all.

I don't think that would be wise of me. First of all I shouldn't need another amp pretty soon and second I can't afford to part with any of my headphone gear. I still have a pair of very nice Triangle Stratos Luna speakers that just won't seem to sell. I can't afford to drop the price either. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I guess.

x2. Mikhail has been taking ages with my amp. Every time he leads me into thinking that it's almost complete, he finds something to fix or improve on it, pushing the shipping date into the unknown once more. Regarding the Q/A issues, one of the main reasons my amp has been sitting so long on his testbench is the fact that he won't ship it unless it's been running and measuring perfectly for a prolonged period. At least in my case he seems to be very focused on not skimping on the Q/A. My amp has now been running 24/7 for the last week on his bench and Mikhail finally seems to be satisfied that all components can handle the abuse. He told me that he will shoot some quality pictures of it during the weekend and ship it on Monday. My experience tells me that I can probably add a few days to that estimate, but we'll see...

I don't think the Pico performs particularly well with the L3000 or the HD650. It drives the ESW9 very well, however, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything there. The Pico and the ESW9 are the perfect couple for my small work rig.

[me=darkless]tries to figure out a way to make "darkless" into "darthnut" [/me]

Me --> <-- seller

Well, the ESW9 has now been playing non-stop for several days connected to my Pico on my desk at work. I no longer hear excessive bass. Rather I feel like I'm listening to bass as it was meant to be heard. I also don't employ the EQ in Winamp to lower the 12 KHz region, unless I'm listening to particularly bright or harsh recordings. Acoustic music sounds gorgeous out of this combo. Finally I also managed today to bend the headband enough so that it doesn't grip my head too tight anymore. My earlier attempts at bending had not been successful because I'd been too afraid to break it. Not today. Now I just need to figure out how to make it less painful to wear the ESW9 over my glasses for extended periods of time. The frame of the glasses hurt my head due to the clamping pressure on the ears (although it hurts less now than previously).

For me the ESW9 took some time getting used to. I still haven't adapted completely to the rather tight clamping. It also took some burn-in (physical or mental) to adjust to its heavy thumping bass. It has more bass than both my HD650 and L3000. I'm sure it's because of the lacking headphone amp in my RME soundcard, but until Singlepower delivers my tube amp that's all I have. For the record I didn't feel that my Pico really made a noteworthy improvement on either full-size phone, but I didn't really expect it to. It was purchased for use with small headphones at work, and that's where it lives now along with the ESW9. At work I use Winamp as player with ASIO out to my Pico. Using Winamp's EQ to take down 12 KHz a single small notch worked very well for me in taming the tendency towards headache-inducing brightness that I felt the ESW9 suffered from.

I just got home from work. Guess what, a letter from the Danish customs informing me that the package has arrived. Stupid slow customs... <--- me wacking dead slow customs

I wish I could join in on the Pico fun with you guys, but it seems like my Pico has been lost/stolen in transit. According to Justin it was shipped December 27, but the tracking info was never updated beyond the initial "Electronic Shipping Info Received", basically saying that USPS is getting ready to receive the package from the shipper. I have sent Justin an email and hope that he'll be able to help me out. This is a real bummer since it was my Christmas present to myself, the only one I really looked forward to receive. :'(

For the bedroom, I guess you could use a pair of unobtrusive IEMs (like the q-JAYS) directly out of the headphone jack on the remote. That way the IEMs could also function as a snore blocker when the sawmill next to you starts grinding.

I guess I could also post some Pico + L3000 impressions once I receive mine. I expect it to arrive next week, since at least one other EU customer further back in the preorder queue than me has received his yesterday.

x2.