Edwood

Checked out the AK240 twice at Astell and Kern's Booth. The build quality is fantastic. Real Carbon Fiber backplate. Solid metal. It's significantly thicker than the AK120, but not as thick as it looks in pics from the top down view. It's an optical illusion. Kind of like an isometric 3D view. The AK240 is thinner than the HM--901. That said, I don't like the styling of the AK240. It's bold for sure, but it's not comfortable to hold with it's sharp edges, especially that lower right hand corner. The Android based UI is simply awesome. Fast, responsive, and very intuitive, especially for anyone with an Android device. The single micro SDXC card slot has cards seating very flush to the side. Nail-biters will have a tough time ejecting and inserting cards. Initial impressions of the sound quality, is that it's a definite step about the AK120, but still not as good as the HM-901. There seems to be a slight bump up in the mid base region, making bass a bit muddy sounding overall. Low bass extension is not as deep as HM-901, nor as tight. Treble has good extension, and very smooth, even with very sibilant music tracks I use to test for this one. But all of these points are moot if the AK240 is going actually sell for $2400 USD. It's a difficult sell even at the AK120's old price, IMO. But it's simply way too much. So you'll have to ask yourself how much you value a superior UI. Is the Superior Android based UI, smaller form factor, and better battery life really worth over $1000 over it's nearest competitors? Not for me. Also, factor in, that you could buy an entry level HM-901 AND a pair of Custom JH Audio Roxanne's for the SAME PRICE.

Will check out the new AK240 at CES this week. I really hope it's not yet another Wolfson inside. Although I'll be really surprised if it has ESS Sabre chip or better inside.

I lack the Naman Neck required for the LCD-X.

Way too much money for a yet another DAP that uses Wolfson 8740 DAC. The HM-901 is worth it sound quality wise, but the UI sucks bad. If I travelled all the time, I'd probably prefer the AK120, simply for it's smaller size and far superior UI. Also, it works with a PC with asynchronous USB connection without the use of any dongles or dock, unlike the HM-901.

Happy Birthday!

FWIW, the Universal Roxanne will actually look nicer than the Custom version, depending on your ear shape.

Happy Birthday!

It's public knowledge as well, Roxanne universal was unveiled at the Tokyo show.

Yes

Getting sick of the prison set. I liked that they moved on at the end of each season 1 & 2. But Season 3 and 4 have been dragging their feet. If they're still in prison by Season 5, I'm going to lose interest with this show.

Universal version of the Roxanne has been confirmed, will launch in Asia in early December, then in North America and others later.

^This. noticeably less bitter tasting this way. For steaks I prefer the reverse sear method. Takes much longer, but it allows me to prep a steak the night before and then cook it directly from the fridge (since I'm smoking it, the colder the meat is the better). I smoke it at 225F until it reaches about 115-120F in the center, and then remove the steaks. Crank the vents on my grill to get it raging hot, at least 600F, with my lowered cast iron grate near the coals.

5th Time's a Charm. Brisket is the most challenging piece of meat I've ever handled. (not counting Steve) Finally starting to get the hang of it. Started off with USDA Prime Whole Packer Brisket from Costco. I really really hope they keep carrying Prime Brisket like this one. $2.59/lb!!!! Fucking bargain! Was 14.5lb hunk of Brisket. I trimmed and injected it with beef stock. Used Apple wood chunks to start, then used Mesquite pellets in my Smoke Daddy. I think I'm going to stick with Mesquite from now on, was better than Hickory and Apple. Also rested it in a cooler Faux Cambro for a full 3 hours. Oh, and I need to get a different kind of knife or sharpen the shit out of this Shun slicer, this Brisket was so falling apart in the flat area, it was mushing it while I was trying to slice. Picking up a slice, it would break apart if you shook it a little bit. Perfection! Took only 5 tries to get to this level. Heheh.

That thing got blazing hot too.

Haha, yeah I feel the same way. Although mainly because of the previous sleep of death problem.

After living with my Surface Pro 2 for a few days, it's overall a great experience. Battery life is fantastic, especially after the firmware update they pushed, or at least I think it was, all I know one of of the updates took a long time and required a few few reboots. Windows 8.1 still kind of sucks. I boot straight to Desktop mode now. Sick and tired of nanny bullshit of having change settings to run any older programs as administrator even though the primary account is the administrator. My biggest criticism of Surface Pro 2 is that it doesn't have instant on capabilities like my Atom based Lenovo Think pad Tablet 2 does. While the SP2 wakes from sleep and hibernation really fast, it's far from instant on. It's more like a few seconds. So you still have to treat it like a laptop rather than a tablet power management wise.

Looks like Microsoft may have fixed the Wifi low power states which should fix the sleep of death problems, although I haven't had them since switching to Balanced Power mode. I would paste the Anandtech link about the firmware update. But Opera mobile on Android is not letting me on this forum. Sigh.

It looks like they didn't change the Wifi section, as it has the sleep of death problems when in Power Saver mode. But Power saver mode is annoyingly leggy because it keeps powering things on on and off constantly. Oh well, so for trying for 8+ hrs of power. But I bought the SP2 for power use, so Balanced Power is fine, keeping the screen brightness down to 50% puts battery life estimate at least to 5-6hrs, maybe more if I'm just doing light Internet browsing.

My 512GB SP2 arrived. Has about 450GB free in stock from. Man, this thing is beautiful. Quite the thick brick. But it's small when I realize it's a full power computer.

Got shipping notification, should have it tomorrow.

Still waiting on mine to ship, hopefully it at least makes the original Oct 29 estimate.

I'm still waiting on my 512GB SP2, but my Type 2 cover already arrived, so I can stare at it in the meantime. Sigh. . Be fair, shipping estimate is still Oct 29. That they shipped the Type 2 cover early.

Wow, guess they really did sell out of first batch of pre-orders. I had an Oct 29 ship date for my 512GB Surface Pro 2.

Yeah, I pre-ordered Type Cover 2.

Just pre-ordered the Surface Pro 2. Haswell + 8gb of RAM option sealed the deal deal for me. Wacom Cintiq Companion is just stupid. It weighs over 4lbs without the stand, and is way overpriced for how big and fugly it is. If they allow the Android version to be used as a stand alone Cintiq bit not the Windows 8 Version that costs over 2 grand? Fail. Oh and yeah, who wants to spend $1700 on an Android tablet? You're better off getting a Cintiq 13HD tablet for $1000 and buying a Nexus 7 and duct taping it to it.