skullguise

The line/pre outs are opamp based, and the headphone is class A. I read this review where he said he used the S/E headphone out with a Y-adapter to drive an amp, preferring that to the line/pre outs in back.

Glad you're feeling better - finally! - Dusty. Echo the Belew enthusiasm..... Me: wife and son joined me for dinner at this new-ish restaurant in the next town. Small stage there, and this pretty young lady comes and sets up with a wooden-body electric guitar. Thinking another folkie, going to sing about relationships or her dog or something. She belts out an awesome blues song as her first, and goes to 60's rock/soul after that. Some good classic rock sound. We could only stay for ~5 songs, but I am now a fan of MB Padfield

Well put Gene....love seeing good news and pics...... And Jeff, what a great story about Chad! Inspiring indeed!

What a beauty!

Just back from very northern NJ for my wife's reunion. She was very nervous about going, none of her closest friends from HS were attending; so I was dragged along despite prior agreements about not taking spouses. In any case, very happy to report I was left alone most of the night. Had a nice chat with the also-nearly-abandoned husband of her classmate, and also got to see a come-back spanking by the Giants in the bar. She was still glowing about it this morning....very happy for her!

RIP to yet another great one lost this year!

Actually he's a bright kid; I had him try out Beats and other phones at Best Buy, and he walked out with a Skullcandy Aviator set. He's also working weekends now, so that limits me too. My wife and I have this thing going where we make a ton of plans together, but when we make individual plans it's a race to "claim" time first EDIT: Tom, I hope to continue to make the Babylon Spring meets, always a good time.

I won't be making it either, wife is away and I am taking care of the boy.....

Happy Birthday Marc!

^^^ Yup, indeed, know several songs. Quite prolific for someone I hadn't heard of. RIP.....

Dang, hope you feel better soon, and celebrate real proper-like

Good luck, Shelly, hope nothing bad comes home with you.....

I have some old Mission speakers with tweeter on the bottom. Only thing I'd consider is to pull them out to the edge, see how they sound there. Thinking/wondering there may be some reflections off the top of the LP rack with the tweeter so close.

^^^ Need to check that out! Me: Lamb - Backspace Unwind (Special Edition from Pre-Order). Came yesterday. Liking......

Yes, thoughts and prayers indeed. Heard that, due to elevation, winds even worse. My brother-in-law got out, he was there on business and wasn't scheduled originally to leave until this coming Thursday. All flights booked, but after many trials/calls, he got on a cancellation for a Boston flight, then home to NY.

Dang....Happy Birthday Iain!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Ditto!

Didn't see the game, watched the Bruins lose to the Habs and the Patriots ALMOST fuck up another Jets game.... Congrats SF!

I remember the email list Thunderstone Audiophile, led by Thorsten Loesch, now of AMR. He offered a lot of high quality sounding but cheap cable designs on that list. One of them was an active shield cable. Tom Kenny of Aural Thrills Audio created several cables off that design, I got a couple pairs as cheap demos. As JP# mentioned above regarding his thoughts, there may have been some expectation bias, but I definitely heard less noise with the batteries in (or in the case of one cable, the DC power wall-wart plugged in). What I wasn't sure of but thought I experienced was better image focus, IE placement of instruments and voice in space. BTW, this was with analog IC's, not digital cable. Call it hi-fi review BS, but that was my experience. I never followed up on these designs, because the price for the brand names was always pretty high for the value IMO. Even the cheaper Audioquest DBS stuff was more than I wanted to pay.

I like the HAP-Z1-ES a lot, a nice all-in-one unit. The Auralic Vega still gets more out of the music IMO, but the Sony is a definite winner. Do wonder what mods will do to the output stage, supposedly its weakest link. The cheaper Sony, with the built in amp, may also be quite nice, even if used as source-only. I can't remember for sure, but I think it lacks the ability to re-sample all input to DSD. But for straight DSD playback, may be about as good as the HAP-Z1-ES. Question, one I haven't really researched: what is the availability of DSD/DSF files as compared to SACD discs? Not that discs are readily available so much either, but not sure on files....

Hope you have a fantastic day!

Exciting game, even for this non-baseball-fan. Go Giants!