Edwood

It's because Cincinnati is Delta Hub.

Not enough fat chicks in it.

LOL, I just noticed your custom title.

You guys aren't doing enough to intimidate and scare off the noobs. -Ed

Yeah, get your ass over to LA. I did shlep my R10's and gear over to Cincy before for you guys. -Ed

LOL, I should dust off my box o parts and put together my Balanced Gilmore Dynalo (Dynamid). PSU is the real wild card, as I'm using a modified Dynahi PSU for it. -Ed

The BHSE is not even finished yet. I'm helping Justin to make it sexier... -Ed

I have a pretty huge noggin, but they were entirely too heavy to be comfortable for me, especially since I wear glasses. -Ed

Need more bathtub pics. :prettyprincess:

Get's kind of difficult to fit 3.5mm jacks properly. Or you can just take the Apple approach and make 99% of headphones not be able to plug into it without an adapter. I think the overall small brick form factor can change. Most portable amps are just miniature desktop amps, styling and form factor wise. I have some ideas, but someone needs to commission me to do the design work. -Ed

Yeah, Sony's use of insulation sucks balls. Very clean job, Alex. Did you use Multifilament Nylon techflex? I hate the scratchy stiff stuff. Pretty pointless to rewire headphones with cables that weigh almost as much as the headphones themselves. -Ed

Get a Pocket PC instead. Move to a warmer climate. Use your nose. I used the first two options. -Ed

iPhone may be a fun little phone, but it's service plan sucks Beeley's hot tub pruney balls.

no iphone.

Yes, more or less the Tomahawk was an un-amplifier for my purposes. Mostly filtering the nasty hissy analog output of my iRiver iHP-120. -Ed

Holy stereo crosstalk! So this test was with both their USB DAC's only as the inputs? How about running the analog input stage only test as well? When I heard the Predator, I heard significantly more noise with the USB input than with the analog input. -Ed

If low gain is all you want and amplifier only, get a RSA Tomahawk. The low gain setting is a gain of Zero. Can't get much lower than that. I had plenty of volume range with the Tomahawk with IEM's. -Ed

How many that have the Predator tried it on several different computers to check for hiss noise? Jude and I compared Predator vs. Pico at CES. The Predator was getting a lot of hissing noise from the USB DAC on my Fujitsu P1610, while the Pico was dead silent. (the analog input on the Predator was fine.) -Ed

Yeah, that's the downside of a switched pot. I'm not a big fan of them. While it does make it impossible for you to accidentally turn it on at max volume, it comes at a cost of volume control range. That said, the gain levels are higher than the Predator. I got a chance to compare head to head. The Predator has three levels of gain, with the lowest allowing a pretty large range of volume control. But the Predator does not amplify as much as the Pico does, so those with HD650's and K701's are going to be pretty disappointed with the Predator compared to the Pico when it comes to straight volume levels. Oh that and the USB DAC section in the Predator seems to be more prone to noise. With my Fujitsu P1610, the Predator was quite loud hissing noise at all gain levels. Pretty much made IEM use un-listenable. The Pico on the otherhand was dead quiet. I tried a few USB cables and different USB ports, but the result was the same. Using the Predator's analog input only, it was quiet. So the noise is coming from it's USB DAC. The Pico was dead quiet no matter what I plugged into it. Of course, this seems to vary depending on the computer. Talking with Jude, he had issues with the Corda Move hissing like crazy with his Dell laptop, while the Headroom Total Bithead did not. So it can be somewhat of a crapshoot there. Just out of curiosity, I think I'll be plugging my Pico into various laptops and computers I can find everywhere, seems like Bestbuy and Fry's would be a great place to start. Although I will bet that I'll be wasting my time, as the end result will be the same. -Ed

AH, that's right, I forgot about the larger diameter for the countersunk hex heads. It's because they need more reinforcement because a hex hole can strip more easily otherwise. -Ed

Love the Pico. First time you pic it up, it's surprisingly heavy for it's tiny size. As your fingers touch it's shiny smooth surface you get feeling for the quality inside. Not much can be said about the headphone amp part, it works great. My philosophy and experience is that if you hear a major difference between amps either something is wrong with one of them, or you are listening to one at a louder volume level (e.g. at a Meet). The real magic begins when you plug the USB cable in. Aside from the extremely low noise floor, the Pico is simply refined. This ain't no cheap sound card wannabe, this is the real deal. Simply put, ounce for ounce (or gram for gram for you non-USA folks), the Pico is THE best sound source you can carry in the palm of your hand. Headphones I've tried with the Pico extensively: Sony MDR-R10 Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10 Pro Pretty much up to par with my home desktop setup (Grace m902 + Stello DA220). Now of course I always have to try my K1000's, even if the amp was never meant to drive them. Sorry to say folks, the Pico doesn't quite have the power to drive the K1000's. Not that they were meant to. But I will say, the Pico comes close. It drives them loud enough, and without clipping terribly, but the sound is rather thin and quite compressed soundstage. You can use the Pico with the K1000's in a pinch. It won't sound bad, it might even sound good, but it won't sound great. My Grace m902 is not up for the chopping block quite yet. A few nitpicks. The volume control is my main nitpick. (Except for the sweet volume knob design. ) Low Gain is too high for sensitive IEM's. My volume is maxed out at 9 to 10 o'clock position with my Triple.Fi's. Not much adjustment room there. I'd hate to hear how little volume adjustment is with more sensitive IEM's like the Shure E500/SE530 and the UE11 Pro. Also the gain switch sticks out a little too much for my comfort level. It's pretty easy to accidentally hit that little switch, so I try to be careful when listening with IEM's, it can make for a very painful experience if you hit that switch by accident while listening to music. Also, just to be a Pain In The Ass for Justin, was it not possible to have recessed screws in the rear? So much attention to detail in the front, but not so much in the rear? And you chickened out on engraving the serial numbers. I guess you'll have to buy your own laser etching machine, because serial numbers written with a sharpie looks so amateur. All in all, I have a lot more listening to do. Congratulations, Justin on the release of a fantastic new product. Of course you're still busy shipping them out. -Ed

LOL. :prettyprincess: :prettyprincess: :prettyprincess:

Great. Now both formats WILL die. Way to go, Sony. Warner is laughing all the way to the bank. Sony is so far in the hole because of the PS3, now when BetaRay goes down the hole along with HD-DVD, Sony will lose even more. Perhaps they might now be able to recover for a long time. Oh, well.

I won't buy into a product where the manufacturer actively tries to screw it's customers. e.g. Custom Ringtones, if I want to make my own, I shouldn't have to hack my phone to use it. Oh, yeah that's right, Apple wants you to buy them from them. And Apple keeps releasing firmware updates that do little more than to lock the phone down from people trying to make their product more useful. Microsoft often makes bone headed decisions, but they have consistently been on the side of consumers when it comes to features. And yeah. EVDO > EDGE. In the Apples stores they have their iPhones set up with Wifi. Go into the iPhones menu and set it for an EDGE connection only, and you'll really see how slow EDGE is. -Ed

You got your Pico? Use your fancy new D200 and take some pics!