postjack

True. I've never heard an sacdmods modded player, but the 3910 has always struck me as one hell of a deal.

hungrych, I really appreciate the write up, that was an excellent read! I will also add some later, but I admit your question has thrown me for a whirl. My musical interests have changed so drastically over just the past two years that I'm hesitant to call any album an absolute favorite. Some of my favorite albums of all time I may not even own anymore due to the great CD dirge of my "college" years.

Like, where do I live? Mobile, AL, on the coast.

Yeah, I've definitely been through my fair share of gear. My first headphone rig in September 2006 was an Echo Indigo DJ -> Headfive -> K701. I've gotten a lot of good advice though. Specifically I was directed here via a phone call from sacd lover/5687, after I expressed mild interest in possibly purchasing a raptor over on HF . Everybody here was really mean and angry about something but they seemed to know what they were talking about. I've sold a bunch of pens and sale is pending on my Melos, so after I sell the W11JPN I should have enough cash in the paypal account for an L3000. We'll see...

Damn you people, I thought I had firmly removed the L3000 from my wishlist. Looks like the possibility of potentially pondering a purchase continues. Thank you for your responses. This is great news! No, I definitely don't think the W11JPN has any graininess at all. Perhaps "haze" is too strong a word. What I'm trying to say is that even on well recorded/mastered music, all of the instruments don't seem to have their own space. They all sort of spill over into each other's areas a bit around the edges, which, while not untogether unpleasant, does take away from the great joy of transients, attack/decay, etc. I think I'm just picking at the can's resolution again using different words. I'm still a newb in this hobby, but I am fast approaching the one year anniversary of my first headphone amp purchase.

i've got the audioscrobbler.dll plugin in my components folder, but I have to have the little "last.fm" program started if I want my tracks scrobbled.

Okay, some more L3000 questions. Sometimes with the W11JPN, the upper midrange/highs can be downright shrill. The best example would be Geddy Lee's vocals. This isn't hot or weird like the W5000, but straight up shrill and a little headache inducing. Does the L3000 do this? Also, the W11JPN seems to have a great deal of what I've read is called the AT "haze". The W5000 has zero haze. Is there any haze present in the L3000? Thanks again for all of your time.

to the top ^^^

nevermind, it works fine so long as I start foobar FIRST. the last.fm autostart must be squeezing into kmixer before foobar gets a chance to do whatever asio does.

I've never been able to get last.fm to work with foobar when using ASIO4All. Basically last.fm starts up when foobar does, but I get an an error message similar to when another program has been opened before foobar. I'm sure the answer is simple, but google provides no solution. Computer as source folks, help me out?

[me=postjack]looks for where he described the W5000 as "transparent"[/me] nope, can't find where I ever said that.

Welcome to head-case!

illegal copier priate!!!!

thats cause they can't be lettin you independents learn about their magical mystery rituals. also you can't go in the basement, cause thats where their hazin them goddamn pledges.

Something about the W5000 sound is just so damn exciting. No shit, I keep forgetting to breathe when I listen to them. They sound so unheadphone-like, but by that I don't mean speaker-like. Acoustic guitar plucks in particular sound marvelous. Bass actually has a nice heft and flow to it, I'm thinking this is because the cups sit flush against my large square head (one of the big complaints I read about the W5000 is that the top of the cups don't sit flush, thereby leaving a nice open area for all that bass to escape). The soundstage is remarkably large for a closed can. I attribute the can's "excitement" to a combination of the hot/wonky midrange and overall PRaT excellence. It was when I bought the Aqvox that I really started to enjoy this can. All of the above impressions are based on a Aqvox > Dynahi > W5000 setup. The Melos was also very nice with the W5000, but the Dynahi just eeks out that extra detail and space. However, I've recently been browsing the internet for additonal amplification options, which the sale of a W11JPN could help procure.

I haven't officially put them up for sale yet, since I'm in the middle of finishing a deal for my Melos SHA-Gold. I try not to sell more then one thing at a time, because I'm confused enough as it is. I'll be asking exactly what I paid for them.

I've been reluctant to say, but it looks like the W5000 stays, the W11JPN goes, and the L3000 dream is dead.

i'm gunna see it.

I got a great deal on some GS1Ks on audiogon, and owned them for a few weeks. My impressions thread is around here somewhere. Its not an absolutely horrible headphone, but it ain't worth no $1000. If they ran for around $400 I might have held onto them to play around with some. The bass and soundstage is very nice, but the vacant midrange and sometimes piercing highs hurt them overall.

Then I guess the next question is how much more expensive is a 6-channel then a 4-channel?

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=Oppo_Units&Category_Code=MODS&Product_Count=37 Anyone heard one of these? Any thoughts? The price of the mods is crazy high for such an inexpensive player. I own a stock Oppo 970HD which I use as an upsampling DVD player. I am very pleased with it. Deadwood looks fantastic! I've used it to play music, but only through my HT setup, which isn't as resolving as my headphone rig, so I can't really judge its sound quality. Anywho, I've been considering hooking up my Oppo to my headphone rig just to do a shootout between it, the Modwright, and the Aqvox. Maybe I'll do it this weekend.

ah, okay, active ground. Isn't this the way the Corda Opera runs?

So let me get a little clarification. Lets say I wanted a balanced beta22. Lets say I have some balanced headphones, but I still want to be able to listen to headphones with regular 1/4in jacks. All I really need is a 4 channel, right? The only point of a 6 channel is so that two people can listen at the same time with unbalanced phones?

And not really practical for the average non-DIY enthusiast headphone audiophile like me. On any given evening I start with the HP2, move to the HD650, and end with the W5000.

Every time I get curious about the sound I run into a post where sovkiller is pimping them, then I am no longer curious.