Sherwood

Ah yes, that "tubey" sound

This is what the slow forum looks like behind the great firewall:

Today in HD800 redux: "Get some Stax"

Happy birthday, from your neighbors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI5NJL7hBEg

Since I live in the orient, where real, legal PS3 games are a thing of the past, I have to order physical games online. I ordered "Last of Us" on father's day (or to be precise, I ordered it and told my wife that the dog ordered it as a father's day present) and finally got it in. Open it up, dust off the never-used PS3, and it can't read the disc. Can't read any other game disc, either. It just makes the "eject" sound, and fails to initialize. FFuuuuuuu... So I order another drive after wading through a goddamn WaReZ nightmare of finding part numbers and sifting through descriptions of long-since unused parts. That will be here in another 3 weeks or so. So hey, if anyone has anything awesome to say about the game, please feel free to post it here and console me. First world problems are never more keen than when you live in the capital of the 2nd world...

DoP is just how you get the bits to the DAC, though, right? It's not an actual PCM conversion, just a DSD wolf in PCM clothing. I know Mytek was working on a firmware 8 channel DSD solution for their 8x192 Pro AD/DA box, but they never got more than 2 channels of DSD conversion working at once. Perhaps that could be revisited with the new Audirvana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4St1fiq2F8I

Excellent thoughts, Jacob -- thanks for letting us know. Awesome to see two amps whose "features" sheets (for lack of a better term) seem so different be so alike in dignity. Congratulations on two great products, Doug.

I feel exactly the same way. For the moment, Audirvana is the one to beat. I was dubious when I heard all the praise, and happy with Pure Music, but I really prefer Audirvana now. I went ahead and bought it. Currently, the only Multichannel DSD method I'm aware of is three Mytek 192s stacked on top of each other, and using a hacked copy of JRiver Media Center for Windows. You could convert the DSD info on an SACD to PCM and play it back, I imagine, but where's the fun in that?

I picked up a Mytek 192 DAC a while back, and I've really been enjoying it with DSD files (.iso or .dsf). I've got it set up on firewire AND usb, out of the same computer. It's fun to switch inputs when using different programs. System output is via firewire, and ASIO output is via USB. For whatever reason (likely drivers), the USB sounds better via ASIO than the Firewire. I truly expected the opposite. I have no illusion that data cables make any difference if they're up to spec, but for those that do both the USB and the firewire cables are Audioquest Forest (because they look nice.)

Ooh, so where does this leave you? Everything short of the 3D "thereness" with the HD800?

Hey Doug, I came late to this show and now have to drum up some quick cash to grab one of these off you. I won't ask you how long the sale extends, I'll just ask you if I'm still eligible.

100% this. Everything in my house runs off SSDs now, and has for a while. The last machine I built, the one I'm typing this post on, has 20+ TBs of spinning storage and runs on a 120GB Samsung SSD. I've got an SSD in an old mac mini hooked up to a TV, and it's lightning fast for what it's used for. Same story with the laptops. Spinning drives have the market cornered on $/GB and GB/3.5" slot, but past that it's sand all the way.

Great guy, I'm sure, but I could not stand him as a quarterback. i was thrilled when he left Denver, and I was utterly unbothered by his personal evangelism. Seriously, though, having him run your team is hell. It was like having your car running on 4 spare little donut tires, and every time you arrive safely at a destination people around you look stunned and say "Wow, how about that, it worked out again." There's a reason sports movies usually confine themselves to one miracle -- if you rely on a miracle week after week, it starts to feel like you're just not preparing well.

If I were Justin, I would bring one.

I'm frankly more incensed by the HE500.

I get the impression that you guys are in mild support of something Steve Guttenberg likes. Understandably, that makes me uncomfortable.

That stone would lay low even the Tice.

Thanks, gents, that's all excellent news. I'm glad you're pleased with yours, Jacob. Birgir, I appreciate your thoughts. Your thoughts on build quality especially, as I know you've been inside every amp under the sun. The pictures I've seen of the amp all look stunning, and Doug's a great dude. As to the top end, that's a complaint I've heard levelled by a few folks I trust. Tyll is adamant that a little bit of acoustic damping helps out, and I know you have had luck with an impedance adapter (albeit on the low setting.) In any case, super cool amp. I think I'ma get one.

I've long since disabused myself of the notion that audio is subjective, and that I need to hear things to know whether they are good. You guys know what's good, and you share that info. People do not seem to listen, which is stupid, but you share it nonetheless. One of my first posts here I asked which Stax amp to buy, and you all said "Blue Hawaii". You were right, of course, and history has clearly demonstrated that. The only better amp is a better Blue Hawaii. So is this L2 the HD800 amp to buy? Shipping things is a fucking hassle out here, and I don't intend to barter around. I don't want to plug them in and love what I hear, but always know that I should be enjoying it less than I do because I obviously have the wrong gear. That's what I do now. You all know what I'm talking about. Here are my requirements for an as yet unpurchased amp: 1) It needs to have some provenance. I won't buy an amp from someone more than two degrees of separation from me (i.e. either I personally know he's awesome because I met him, or one of you knows he's awesome and I know you.) 2) It needs to happily drive my HD800s. Single Ended is fine, but in a perfect world it would be balanced. 3) It needs to be sturdy enough to get boxed up carefully every year or two and moved across an ocean. 4) It needs to be unique in a way that transcends fungibility. This probably means handmade. A few things fit that bill more or less -- the aforementioned Balancing Act, a good GSX, something Naaman built, etc. This L2 has me super intrigued, though, as some of you guys really seem to like it. I know you all don't waste time with budgets, preferences, flavors of months, or practical concerns of any sort. So what say you, collective -- is the L2 the amp?

... or rather, hope that doesn't go through you.

That is surprising. All the better, then, as I don't need anything else in my home based on the golden ratio.

A great quote: "Designed from the ground up, every aspect of the Cardas EM5813 Ear Speakers is built to mirror the human hearing system. Cardas Ear Speakers are efficient, natural, musical, and are the result of years of meticulous design by George Cardas." I wish they would have just been honest and talk about who OEM'ed these. I don't want George Cardas learning IEM design for these things -- what would lead me believe he would get it right the first time?

ufffffff yuck. What a blow, Knucks. So sorry to hear about Heidi. 19 years is not enough.