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Currawong

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Everything posted by Currawong

  1. Whatever you get, max the RAM from the start. No regrets down the track then. I know a few people now using a 13" Air as a main computer. If I wasn't going to use my main machine for craploads of media (pics and movies of the kids, all in high res) then I would as well.
  2. I had a brief listen in Tokyo. They are probably more like mini-009s than the mini-007s that the 001s were. Very detailed, but rather congested. Worthy of a good portable source though. The problem was I had just heard the new JVC IEMs, which, despite having a FR like mini DX1000s, were far more competent. I haven't ever owned a pair of custom IEMs though.
  3. Thanks everyone. Surprised a bit you guys actually thought of me, since I haven't been around. I didn't announce it much, but we had a new edition to the family on 8/8 (there's a date that works wherever you are from) whom I've been busy with, whom we've named Shawn. In Japanese my wife came up with a set of characters that mean "star sound" or "star music" as, since I like listening to music, she wanted to use the character for that in the name. Here he is with his sister a few days ago.
  4. Interesting. Will have to have a play. Audirvana Plus supports DSD if you have a DAC that can accept it. I think Pure Music does as well. Torpedo: All the players I've tried can change the sampling rate to match the track (if they aren't set to up-sample in some way). I found though that if, in Audio Midi Set-up the output was set to 16-bit and not 24-bit, this would fail. It's also worth setting "Play alerts and sound effects" to something other than the output being used for music playback. Audirvana Plus also has found a way in Mountain Lion to directly access some DACs. I still prefer using Amarra for its very subtly different "sound". They had a "tell a friend" special on it for ~$60 recently too. I'm pondering asking them if they are up for that again for here or HF if there is interest.
  5. Amarra works fine. So far I've only encountered two issues with it: The first is switching devices to one with a different sample rate set can result in chipmunks or whales, but it has a window with an option to sync the rates of all devices, which is handy. The second is that it can crap out when switching devices that use custom drivers. I have the ULN-2, Audio-gd NFB-16 with new Tenor chipset and Apogee Duet along with the Audiophilleo and between them and their drivers they can make Amarra cry easily.
  6. I ended up getting an 11" Air 8GB/256GB as it fits in the Gator. Kickass little machine. Annoyingly OWC had their drive cases on back order, so I had to wait for a replacement for my 17" MBP. Now (with Mountain Lion) I'm getting random beachballs locking everything up for 1-2 minutes at a time. Removed everything possible installed and the problem persists and the Console isn't enlightening except with error messages as a result of the freeze. I hope it isn't another dead drive or some other hardware issue. Regrettably I think a completely clean install without migration is in order. Ditto. That was my first thought when I saw the iPhone 4 display for the first time.
  7. Somehow posted this in the wrong thread.
  8. Very likely the lack of upgradability is intended to keep people out of the machine, because they tend to screw it up then screw Apple for the result. No dodgy 3rd-party RAM, dodgy 3rd party batteries any more. Anyhow, my OWC SSD died today. Machine wouldn't boot this morning and threw up a grey circle with a line through it. The drive doesn't show up at all in Disk Utlity. Not 100% sure if it is the drive as the machine wont boot off either internal drive (the original 700GB drive is in the optical drive bay). Huge fucking pain this is. I temporarily booted up my old MBP from 2006 to do some printing and a moderately hard press on the keyboard caused the graphics to crap itself. Looks like that one is due for the un-burnable garbage bag and I have an excuse to blow money on an Air. But which one? 11" or 13"? Hard to decide...
  9. The way I look at it is, I focus on what I shoot most. With the 18-200 on, I have a look through my photos and note what range I'm using a lot. In my case, a lot of indoor shots in a (relative to American sizes) small apartment. That means quite a bit of wide-angle stuff. So I worked out that a 17-55 (DX) for me was what I should aim for next. A thought I've had lately is to worry less about longer zoom since the megapixel count is so high, outdoors having up to 200mm with the poorer 18-200 hasn't been of great benefit, since the quality at 200mm isn't so great. I may as well have better, shorter range glass and just crop the photos, or get something like a proper 70-300 for those situations. This is an example of where this thought came from. It's a picture of one of my students playing after a lesson we had in the park.
  10. Paid. Lots of DIY going to happen in Japan too.
  11. WRT optical out: Since the headphone port supports the iPhone headset with mic etc. it is unlikely it has optical out. I'm not sure if it is related, but I was talking to Fostex while in Tokyo about using a dual-function port in the HP-P1 and they said that those combined ports aren't made any longer. Though such a thing wouldn't necessarily stop Apple, it looks like mini-optical may have been dropped as a standard for audio as Firewire has. Sad that the 17" MBP has gone, but likely sales on it have gone down over time and I imagine that all the ports and expansion on it will be made entirely redundant by USB 3 and Thunderbolt, not to mention the screen.
  12. I'm still up for at least 10 (I said a dozen in my previous post). I know at least one other person here who wants to built a 'stat amp or amps so I'll get some for them.
  13. I should probably take the test first thing in the morning when all the teenagers in the building aren't surfing Youtube, as I might get the full 100 Mb/sec. I'm supposed to.
  14. The high-res DVD version is excellent.
  15. Twitter just announced that they track you if you view a site that loads a twitter sharing icon. If you turn on Do not Track in your browser prefs (In the Develop menu in Safari, which has to be enabled in Advanced in Preferences but usually easy to find in the others) then they wont track you on third party web sites. https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169453 I don't go anywhere on the web I'd be upset about anyone else knowing about to care much about the tracking though.
  16. I'll definitely take a few pro-bias, possibly a dozen, so I never have to worry about running out.
  17. New Stax portable. Uses two AA batteries from what I saw. The only IEMs I've liked so far have been the new Sony XBA series. They have a range of tips including ones with bits of foam in them for better isolation. I tend to dislike IEMs otherwise, mainly because of the recent trend to have a screeching treble. The only thing I don't like about the XBA-3 and 4 is that the weird crossover design gives them up to 90 Ohms impedance in the treble, which doesn't play nicely with some gear. They are fine with my iPhone 4S though.
  18. Some quick thoughts on the MK1 18-200: There's nothing in it between 135 and 200 and at the latter it's a bit blurry. I'd be inclined now to get the 28-300 for outdoors with the kids shooting and something else for indoors, such as just a 24 prime. I turned out to be dead right about 24mm, at least here in Japan. I borrowed a friend's 14-24 yesterday in Tokyo and it is a totally insane lens. At 14mm it does funky things to people up close. Most of the time I used it at 24mm. Standing in front of a table and being able to take in a bunch of people only a few feet in front was completely weird.
  19. I missed them at the show in Tokyo yesterday. There was quite a queue of people waiting to try them. I might have thought to ask Sennheiser for a loaner pair for the show, but we had so much stuff in our shoebox-sized room I doubt we would have had much of a chance to listen to them anyway. Knowing one aspect of the issues they have with the treble, which is annoyingly common nowadays, an engineer from one company joked to me yesterday that as he is getting older and losing his hearing, he appreciates the stronger treble in various headphones. That might explain much.
  20. Firefox + NoScript. If a web page can't run javascript without manually enabling it, then it can't automatically infect your computer or pop up messages trying to trick you into infecting your computer by installing software.
  21. I've been scratching my head lately about getting the new Adam Artist series, but thought I'd drop into Hifido and try out those old Luxman/Luxkit tube amps, since they rebuild them properly and I wanted to know if they were any good. They also happened to have a pair of HL5s in, which I thought might make a good combo. They were certainly quite mellow and tube-sounding, which was ok, but didn't encourage me. However, I made the mistake of allowing the salesman to switch in a Linn Klimax Twin power amp instead and now I want the damn thing. They will sell it to me for $3k flat. If I bought it I'd definitely have to get at least a pair of 3-ESRs. Anyone have any thoughts about buying Linn power amps?
  22. I'm tempted to go for a second run with them. Something about having tubes handy again this time. Seems there was a lot of variation in the FR of pairs going by the graphs people posted on HF. My pair had the nasty peak at 6.3k. They drew the short straw though with Stax, Magnums and LCD-2s present. I should finish building these damn 'stat amps though...
  23. Since I don't want to blow up an amp I don't own trying it: Will 6SN7s work in a T1S or 007t using octal to noval adaptors? I realise that I'd have to keep the top case off doing such a thing, but am curious to experiment with the pile of tubes I have here if they would (PITA that it would be to re-bias every time).
  24. I'd really love to know where all these free headphones are I'm supposed to be getting as I am having trouble finding them. ^ This. His writing is so sensationalist -- I read a comment about his Headphonia article where the poster said it reads like a scientific article. That was rather scary. No self-respecting scientist would write like that. Some in-it-for-the-money scientists have written books like that though. The biggest irony is that the same people who would tell anyone to be sceptical about manufacturer claims aren't the least when it comes to him and his claims, measurements or otherwise. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." --- Richard P. Feynman My father wrote a book explaining how science works (though related, mostly, to biological sciences). I have asked the publisher to re-release it as an eBook. If it can help educate people I think that will good.
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