dreamwhisper

Just talking from experience. Plenty of high end studios have built-in wall systems with front ports, but only when the walls aren't parallel. My studio has non-parrallel walls and a floating floor, and I still wouldn't touch that on any nearfields. I clarify later in the post I'm talking about nearfields, not wall-mounted ones in custom-renovated studios. But yeah I've had the most problems with bass in terms of distrupting details in a mix. And yes any non-parallel walls are an issue. Bass is just the nastiest. The back ports aren't literally in your face, where you can't have a bass trap, and it's bouncing around the room. I guess since bass is felt almost as much as heard, that's why it's the most important to control.

In regards to something like the Adam A5x, stay away from front bass ports if you're in a small room with parallel walls, that will just muddy your sound considerably. Even if you sound treat the wall and ceiling with carpet it just won't do enough. We had a mini-station with a system like this at my college. For recreation listening, the BlueSky MediaDesk isn't terrible. But it sounds best in a small room and at lower listening leves. I made a review for it on head-fi. Anyway we made the mistake of using it in our then fledgling studio for a project and it is just terrible for that haha. Since then, and other experiences with cheaper set-ups, 8' midrange woofer and 10" subwoofer are my lower limit for serious mixing. When it comes to recreational listening I'm a little bias though. I like clarity in the highs, because that's where I get my cues for the creation of soundstaging and space, basically within the reverb of the higher frequencies. To me, that combined with a somewhat euphonic subwoofer is my recreational favorite. It's why, aside from Stax, I'm also an Audio-Technica fanboy. Sorry haha. Anyway, one thing to consider: the beauty of a 2.1 powered system is the ability to add a DAC of your choice without worrying about an amp changing the signal. I really liked how the Sonic Frontiers Mfd-2 could completely change the style of the neutral Mackie HR-824, and make it tube-euphonic and really sing rather well. It had shortcomings, you could hear some slight muddiness to the tubes in the low end, but you really just have to forgive small things like that when it comes to making your music sound alive, holographic. One of the most exciting discoveries I've come across in audio so far other than stax. I have yet to hear this local guy's 60k setup with Magneplanar speakers, so I will no doubt eat my words. But those according to him those are really directional as well and only 2 people can really listen at the optimal point at once. Anyways, a tube DAC seems to cheat the directionality of powered monitors, and I'm not sure why that is. You can forget about it and dance around, then come back to the speaker if you want to hear like a super clear passage of euphonic saxophone or whatever you're listening to. Inevitably you have to try turn off the euphony tho when you're watching action movies, because there's only so much you can revel in midrange prescence at the expense of bass clarity, even if that is what carries non-electronic music 90% of the time. TL;DR: Try get monitors with variable crossover, in case you add a subwoofer later. If you can audition both Mackie's and Genelec's together you could see if the Genelec is worth the price to you. Try not go bankrupt like my magneplanar friend :S Avoid front bass ports on monitors if you have any parallel walls or a small room. It's just bad. Any of the Genelec 8' woofer nearfields will work ime. I haven't seen anything less than an 8" midrange woofer reproduce the lower midrange properly. Oh and most mid-range (1k) studio DAC's should sound decent with monitors, unlike the Stax 02, which quite frankly shits on most DAC's.

Ok sorry. I live in a small town with a music college and the only way we can really attract customers is advertising for mastering. We've recorded like 3 bands ever using all 24 channels, and other than that a handful of solo guitarists. Most people in our area being electronic musicians doesn't really help the production side of things. It's probably a lot better in a bigger city hah.

They only really need to be used for mastering in this day and age. Most people have 1 mic, a guitar and a laptop. They do all their work on headphones. I'm talking young musicians on a budget. The only time you need to see a studio is to do the final mix. Even then it pays to know how the speakers relate to your real world test market, like how will this sound on radios, where there isn't base reproduction, or laptops, same consideration. etc.. So even then studio monitors aren't even 100% useful for everyone. Just giving some perspective on the type of people these lower range monitors (6' midrange drivers) are being marketed to. There are diy musicians that cut out the middle man and his studio. And make their own name for themselves. The lower range stuff isn't gonna sound as good but will look flashy is my point.

Yeah you need 8 inch drivers to get the lower mids in my experience. Good monitors and sound treated room are used for the mastering process, but most people just get by with budget monitors or headphones for production and the typical all-in-one musicianship you see nowadays. As far as I can tell the design philosophy leans towards MDF and away from real wood to avoid unwanted resonance. What you want to hear is directly from the speakers, often without the subwoofer in the signal chain, hence the need for a treated room. Basically though, high detail retrieval, and variable crossover between the Satelites and the Subwoofer are what set it apart from Bookshelf speakers or your everyday consumer speaker. These aren't mutualy exclusive ideas. I've never understood consumer speakers. There's some really nice 2.1 systems for around the 10k price point used at music festivals etc. I mean if your goal is to resonate the living room/listening room, why not get like a 15" subwoofer or whatever. haha Most people just don't want it to be loud enough to play music for their neighbours though.

So I don't need to understand every post in this thread? Awesome...

I'm in for a board set and kit set. lookin good Kevin!

Hammond Mfg. - Rack Mount / Table Top Enclosures (RMCS & RMCV Series) nice ventilated chassis You can not install the rackmount brackets if you want, and also can buy replacement ends in case you mess up OR, better yet, one person with a drill press could buy a whole bunch of replacement ends and get them sent directly to them, then re-distribute to others.

Yeah I didn't know that you moved Don, hope you're enjoying the new digs.

NoNoNoNoNoNo and dB could compare NoNoNoNoNoNo's other 2.7 to the suspiciously modded one to see how messed up it is. Who knows, maybe it sounds better than stock or even a properly modded one? A pity to see this modded DAC have an ambiguous value... especially if the new owner doesn't have pride of ownership/ doesn't fully appreciate it for how awesomez it is. Since these DACs require special DIY skills to solder on their tricky boards and Filburt is familiar with these boards and has the skills required, he might be able to do a lot of good with it.

atothex listens to a lot of metal BTW, which IME is the one genre these cans really excel with. Tool - Jambi was the best I've ever heard it. I was disappointed to find that I didn't like them with the electronica I listen to... psytrance/breaks, psydub/downtempo But maybe switching to an RME card would help (I had a Juli@ at the time) It tired them with a G-Lite and a SOHA II andmy impression was that they only worked really well when paired with tubes and couldn't afford a Zana (SOHA II had hum and also a peaky treble - maybe because it's a hybrid) In the end I also preferred the W5000, W11JPN over them. The 900ti I really liked a lot too because it has more bass quantity than the other ones, but is technically far behind. (so I'm prbly in the minority there) The ES7 is an AD2000 without the air, without the convex fish eye lense over the midrange, and a less extended frequency response to boot. Also a closed can. Similar to the Sennheiser HD25-1 and HD650 that way, although with the 650 the midrange lense is much less fish-eyed and they're also generally not as airy. (they're more veiled instead)

A link to a seller in China selling pmd200's: PMD200 $42.50 USD each + shipping. You have to be able to speak Chinese though to navigate that site though. (Google Translator can only take you so far) Also, "Note : PMD200 need to register the software write operation can work correctly. Legend PMD200 have a hardware approach, but not tested , please carefully . A0 version information available , non- online version 0.6 error" It looks like the PMD200 might need to be configured before being mounted onto a board. I was in touch with a board builder on diyaudio.org and he was interested in ordering a few, but I would have to take the risk. (since I have the connection to the person in China) ...And I'm not sure I want to take the risk. A pity that he didn't even comment on my entirely un-researched idea of throwing one in a Buffalo32

To replace the headband do you have to go buy one directly from Stax Japan? And is the headband part of the arc assembly or is it sold on it's own?

What is the general consensus on running the Headamp Pico as a preamp in a system?

it's a pain in the ass to drop that much cash on them, but really not everyone gets to hear sound this good. Yes we're destined to be slaves to audio enjoyment. ... But no worries, in the long run there is little suffering

Yeah that hype on HF is different than the dynamic headphone hype in the language used, and the lack of forced suggestions, so it is in my eyes less malicious. Less noobs or something. Although I agree there is still an excessive signal:noise ratio.

don't worry there's still a chance that it will suck

there's no wordclock in/out

crap, I see a pair of Shure's in my future. The only full-sized closed can other than K271's that have a replaceable cable... ...the one thing that always breaks...

This amp is one of two I'm aware of that have sub output. The other being the Decware Zen CSP-2.

Yeah most rocks I throw seem to have missed the 'good sounding' dac's. I think this is mostly because the whole mid-fi DAC market (say ~$500-1500) is either too similar, or just simply different flavors on the same theme. Is the sound much improved moving from an EMU 0404 to a Bel Canto DAC3? With dynamics it really depends on the equipment you're using. I wish I could provide more perspective now that I've gone 'stat. That being said, I doubt you could go wrong with the Buffalo II.

Very much looking forward to comparisons to Cayin HA-1A sound signtature. Also how much did it cost Superpredator? Are the line-outs passive or active?

8 channels from here: & 8 channels from here: The first one only has 4 channels with pre-amps so for the channels without pre-amps I route signal first into one of 3 stereo pre-amps. The first one also doesn't have compression/limiters like the second so signal is routed first through one of the 4 channels of hardware compression (2 single channel compressors and one stereo compressor) All the gear is tube compression or tube pre-amplification except for one Millenia pre-amp (the Digi 003 and Digimax is SS too of course) I don't use the Digimax for DAC duty, so I don't know what it's like but I'm not too impressed with the Digi 003.. I think it's mostly because choices are limited at that price point. The Digidesign ProTools HD systems like it offers more channels (and more processing power) but not much more of an advancement in fidelity/sound quality. I guess I'm thinking about something like a ULN-8. But I haven't done much research yet, so I'm mostly thinking about thinking about the ULN-8.

Yeah he told me he liked his O2/modded 717's better than his Grand Utopia's as well. Also said that the 717 amp/O2 combo scaled with power chord upgrades etc, but I can imagine that is quite possible judging from my own experiences with how revealing the O2's are. I'm seriously considering upgrading the AD/DA in my studio after listening to it with O2's.

how do you pronouce this ayre anyways? like a pirate?! arrr, ehh arrrr, or I arrrr