postjack

have you looked into the primaluna stuff? Might be outside your price range but they have an integrated folks seem to like. I've never heard one.

X2

i have the book, its great.

happy birthday!

quicksilver - stephenson reaper's gale - erikson

I owned a Platinum briefly. Good cartridge. The bass can be a bit woolly but I still thought it was lovely. If you like the Platinum's midrange you'll LOVE the Sonata's midrange.

Well my Bugle just returned from a vacation in Texas. It had some surgery done on it, some new opamps rolled in and the loading switched down to 100ohms, per the desire expressed in my OP. Basically my suspicions were correct: 100ohms is the perfect loading for this cartridge, at least for me, in my setup. Here is a paste of the PM I just sent Marc: Anyone curious about revisiting the DL-103 who felt it was too bright, I encourage you to try the loading at 100ohms and see how you like it. I'm tried lots of tweaks in my system to tame the brightness of the DL-103, but never have I been able to nail it so that every recording sounds correct in the treble. Finally, with the proper loading, I've found the magick tweack. Zero brightness, all fantastic old school broadcast standard goodness. If you're into that kind of thing.

I've yet to buy a southern lord vinyl that doesn't sound marvelous. And I've bought quite a few!

so what's the word on this MacBook refresh?

Phish tickets. March 6, 7 & 8, Hampton, VA.

Looking forward to your comparisons. Professional reviews seem good, while the overwhelming opinion at sh is they suck. Since my last post in this thread I've picked up an original Elektra vinyl of AJFA, but I'm still missing MoP, RTL, and Black Album (which is essential to me, anyway). The midrange guitar tone on the megaforce Kill 'Em All is so righteous. to hungry: this is a wild guess, but I'd say not much of a difference. Sounds like a 45 is king when one has a revealing system and wants to scrounge that last bit of audiophile oomph from the sound. The argument is that with a 45 there is less chance for distortion all around, but the argument seems about as strong as the whole 180g vs standard weight thing, which is to say not strong at all. it may FEEL nicer to have a 180g vinyl, but we all know we've heard normal weight vinyls that rock house and 180g that fall short (and vice versa!)

svs pci 20-39 cylinder sub.

Just placed my order, $609.34 shipped. Glad I had to wait a couple days (moving money), since SVS just dropped prices $50 to clear inventory to make room for new products. I'll gladly take the old one for less.

buying it asap, thanks.

Cylinder it is. Thanks gentlemen.

i ain't donatin' shit to yall

So finally accepting the fact that I'm a bass head, I've decided to pair a sub with my 22Ls. While it'd be cool to get the Quad L-sub and have a matching set, reviews of the L-sub say it lacks the lowest bass frequencies. I would be devastated if I paid $1000 for a heavy ass sub and it didn't reproduce low bass effectively, so I've decided to go with SVS and save some money at the same time. Room size is 13 x 10, ceiling height just under 8'. As you can imagine, floor space is at a minimum. My 22Ls are 18" from the side wall and 24" from the back wall. So, while I could possibly squeeze the PB12-NSD in the corner behind the speakers, it would be a tight squeeze, coming right up on the speaker and possibly messing with the sound a bit. The PB12-NSD measures 18" wide x 21" high x 25" deep. Alternatively, I could go with a cylinder sub. The PB12-NSD's cylinder equivalent is the 20-39 PCi. According to SVS, the two subs are sonic equivalents. The biggest difference and the best benefit to me would be the cylinder goes up instead of out. The 16" diameter would be much more desirable to the PB12's massive footprint. Both subs have continuously variable phase control and variable low pass crossover frequency control. The one control feature the PB12 has on the 20-39 is something called variable tuning. I don't really know what this is, is it something I want? Both subs cost $599, but I'm leaning towards the cylinder because its smaller and lighter. Is there any reason I shouldn't go with the cylinder, sound wise? Just purely based on your experience or opinions on box vs. cylinder subwoofers designs? Thanks.

yeah yeah we don't give a fuck bout no contribution, you cheese faced bitch.

Or $300 for an HP2. In the words of Senator Clay Davis, "sheeeeeeiiiiitttt..."

Alright, finally took the plunge and moved the 840C and Squeezebox into the speaker room. I thought this meant I had dismantled my headphone rig, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed laying flat on my back all sprawled out listening to headphones with my eyes closed. Speakers rawk, but I haven't kicked this headphone itch yet. Again the HD650, this time the test tracks were the first three songs on Genesis' A Trick of the Tail (Diament master). Also tonight the Wheatie was fully warmed up, a good half hour minimum I left it on before listening. The Wheatie has much better control of the bass then the HD650. I didn't notice this last night, probably because A) my source material wasn't bass heavy (jazz) and I hadn't warmed up the Wheatie. Its neat how proper amplification does the bass right on the HD650. With the Wheatie, its in its right place, perfect, bam, everytime. With the 840A, sometimes the bass is to slow, or it comes on to fast! I would expect one or the other, but listening to it do both is funny. I also heard an exacerbation of the midrange issues I was having. The midrange is indeed more aggressive with the 840A, and yes, the soundstage as a whole is an eence more closed in. Perhaps though what affects the soundstage more is the lack of richness in the individual notes. The word that kept coming to my head all tonight and last night while I was doing my comparison was subtle. The Wheatie's handling of individual musical notes is so much more subtle then the 840A's, and as such the sound is much richer and (of course) warmer. I'm being highly critical of the 840A's headphone out here. It does fair pretty well, but the Wheatie obviously gives a more pleasant and enriching listening experience. I think the best way to inject some truth back into audio reviewing is to start giving products a 50/50 shot, instead of rating them out of 5 or 10 or 100 or whatever. So despite it being pretty good, the 840A simply does not meet Head-Case's standards for a quality headphone amp.

Ah, what headphones I used would be helpful wouldn't it. HD650 with super elite nato cabo. I would say the soundstage on the Wheatie was better, but I'd rather go back and do some more listening with your question in mind before saying anything firm. About to crash now but tomorrow evening I'll try to do another comparison, maybe finally drag the 840C in there to make it a little easier.

After seeing this post, I decided to bring the Wheatfield into the speaker room and hook it up to the 840A's tape out to do a quick comparison. I used portions of a track from the Hoffman Bluesnik. All in all, the 840A's headphone out faired pretty well in comparison. The sound on the whole was a bit more aggressive then the Wheatie, which was much more subtle with the gentle horn sounds and piano notes. And maybe the 840A was a little honkey on the midrange sometimes, but I couldn't quite be sure if this was all in my head. This was all quick minute or so long back and forth comparisons, no long term listening involved. Haj is right, prices on these things are ridiculous right now. They're going on agon for $750 easy, making them an absurd steal. I paid $1175 for mine a year ago, even at that its a great price. Still, I might eventually sell mine to upgrade to Quad separates.

randerson sold his MK1 last week I think for $1450. decent price for a pair, I paid $1350 for mine, sold it for the same.