HeadphoneAddict

Yeah, someone posted the photos of it not too long ago. On another note - Blutarsky informs me that the O2 Mk1 pretty much suck when driven by the Koss E/90 amp.

The question still remains - what will they do if you send an APS modded ESP950 with the Stax PC-OCC cable and the stax-koss pigtail adapter, along with the amps and stuff? Can you request they return the Stax cable and pigtail, in the event that they have to replace the headphone? Then one could just send it back to Alex to be un-dampened and re-cabled but save on the materials costs.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Now that I have the D10 for portable and iRiver I believe I'll stick with the upcoming Pico DAC-only for my laptops and iMac. I also have the Headroom Micro Stack (portable separate amp/dac) for my bedside rig, and was told it is slightly better than the newer 2 in 1 microportable version.

I had seriously considered making an offer to Beefy for his Gamma 1 Dac but it was for sale in Australia only and he probably doesn't like me enough to have sold it to me. Now I'm on the list for the Pico DAC-only.

Justin, I brought the D10 with me on spring break, so I will see if using the analog input from Macbook Pro line output causes any ground loop while doing USB charging. I'll report back later. Once I get the Pico DAC-only I may be using that with my P-51 even more than the D10. Then the D10 will get paired up with my iRiver H140 optical DAP. We'll see.

I really really like the D10 connected to my Macbook Pro optical out and driving a wide variety of headphones. I did a review of it recently on head-fi and picked it as my top choice for DAC/amp for computer transport listeners. The sound via optical DAC is as detailed as the Pico and the USB DAC is very close. The sound is sligthly warmer overall than the Pico - kinda falling in between an RSA amp and Pico amp, but with the larger spacious soundstage of the Pico. It is very transparent sounding and I find little fault with it except the RFI from iPhone is a PITA. You can roll opamps to make it sound closer to the Pico as well, and HiFlight found an opamp combo that he feels beats the iQube (AD8599 LR/AD8656 buffers). The "iQube" clone setup sounds very good with the Sennheiser HD600 and IE8, but sounds too cold with my other phones. A good in-the-middle compromise is to replace the stock ADA4841-2 opamp with an LTC6241HV instead. It also sounds good with the AD8656 in LR and buffers bypassed. With that opamp combo mine ran for 28 hours on battery while using the optical DAC to drive headphones. I especially like the USB charging feature.

JonL also highly recommends that same amp for driving a Stax Transformer with O2. I haven't heard anything bad about it yet, and it is on my short list someday. EDIT - I should read all the posts before I post anything, sorry.

I suspect a bit of that could be rectified by a change in tubes as well.

I got an email reply from Jack Woo earlier today, stating the same thing he discussed with you. I really appreciate how responsive he and Woo Audio are to suggestions from email and people at the meet. I also mentioned adding the option of one SE output next to the 4-pin XLR. I look forward to hearing more feedback from head-case peeps about how it sounded to them at the meet.

Can I get any documentation of that happening, so I could use it to help me contest the denied warrantee on the Touch?

Looks interesting. I sent Jack an email about putting the jacks on the left and volume on the right, and offering a 4-pin XLR as an option, as well as a SE jack to go next to the 4-pin. I love my maxed WA6 and GES, and would likely buy something like the Woo 22 to replace my Square Wave XL Balanced amp, after the impending fire that I am waiting for any day now...

See, back in the old days when I wanted thumpy "hard" bass I was listening to ZZTop instead of MJ...

FIFY

IF we could reach the goal of an HD800 I would chip in another $40 via paypal. Anyone else think that is a worthy goal?

I wanted to. I bought a used broken touch for $80 that died and the owner opened it up to see if the battery was disconnected. He got it used and didn't think that it was under warrantee, but I checked and it was, so I bought it and sent it in, and they sent it back saying it was abused and water damaged. I figure they must have a way (red dot) inside to know about water, and how could I fight that. The seller denied getting it wet, and I'm stuck with it. I figured at least I have a spare screen for my 16Gb touch, except my son lost the touch on a ski trip 3 weeks ago, so I'm even more screwed. PS: Does your iPod play both channels through the line out dock? You get get a cheap amp to velcro to the iPod and still use it.

I used the Micro$oft Live 25% off deal that was so hot at the time these came out, and got a $128 refund on my ESW10JPN, so in the end it was like $384. One of my few safe investments... To the cable question - I don't know enough about the new APS portable cable, but I'm waiting to see how portable the cable will really be before I make the jump. I think Lil'night or someone like that did an APS cable of some sort to their ESW10 and he loves the sound but doesn't like the bulk and weight of the cable. I wont like that either.

Wierd, I edited a typo and the save button said "vote now" instead of save.

I borrowed a Duet for two weeks after the Feb CO head-fi meet, and the Duet is a good match for the ESW10, better than with HD600.

So, they lied in "Meet the Parents" - can't believe everything we hear it seems.

Does it use a dual opamp or two single soic? I have two OPA627 soic I could donate.

Cats can't flush the toilet - they don't have opposable thumbs. Here's hoping you do!

Yes - that is them. I had the W11R for about a week, and traded them back to Blutarsky for an iBasso D1 with about $100 worth of opamps and $150 cash to me. Then traded the D1 and opamps for an SRD-7 Pro and kept the cash, so I think I did well on the deal. The upper mids had an echoey nasal quality that made them picky about the particular amp being used to drive them, and the bass was a little less than I preferred. I still liked them better than the W5000 Naaman brought over to play with last year (around the same time). I was planning to have APureSound re-cable the W11R but decided NOT to ruin their collector value. I also liked the W11R better than my old bloodwood Darth Beyer or Bultarsky's Rosewood Darths, which I had for a week before I traded them back to him for the W11R. That was all around the time I got my HE60 and I couldn't listen to other phones easily, as the HE60 made the others sound too colored. I do think the ESW10 have a more natural tone to them as well as good transparency for a closed can, and in some cases it makes them better than my woodied re-cabled partially markl modded D2000 or APS V3 Edition 9. The main fault is the smaller more intimate soundstage, which is more like that of a Grado. Once the new APS V3 portable cable is ready for sale, I may end up seeing how much better the ESW10 could be with a re-cable. Or, I could just keep enjoying them the way they are... (edit - the W11R were probably around March 2008, since that is when I bought my APS V3 RS-1, and put APS V3 cable on my Edition 9. I still have the RS-1 and Ed 9, but I now don't listen to them as much as my electrostatics or ATH-ESW10, or Westone ES3X.

Yes, it is a good book - and Judas Unchained is the conclusion of the first book - you can't read only Pandora's Star, you need both. I was sad when I was finished.

Yes, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained - just finished the series last week. I have used eReader for years, and it is better on iPhone than Kindle app so far. Kindle App needs to allow inverting the text and background, for black with white letters; and should allow for other background and text colors. I read a bit in bed late at night, and will usually do black background with yellow or white letters so the backlighting doesn't bother my wife or hurt my visual acclimation to the dark. Also, if I have one device and open a book to read, it will still try to connect online and sync my page-mark with other kindle devices on my account - so when I was in an area of poor cell service the "checking for last page read screen" blocked parts of the top and bottom of the screen so I can't start reading right away but must wait until it gives up or succeeds.

Yes, I would prefer the Beta 22 for them over the Square Wave XL - I might have to get one myself to drive my K1000 and my SRD-7 Pro with Stax. The other good news is that I tried the K1000 off a Qinpu A-3 8-watt/ch tube amp from head-direct today and it sounds a little better than a Square Wave with the K1000 with some nice GE and Sylvania tubes that Skylab recommended.