Eric5676

Most of the consensus agrees with you from what I've seen. This is the one standalone player at apparently any price point that finally has comparable speed to the PS3. All the features you need audio and video wise are of course going to be there. All told, the final product should be very compelling especially if they keep it at $499 MSRP. For those of you feeling adventurous, there's always something like this to consider as well: http://www.custom-ht.com/oppo.html

Thanks for the information. Sorry! I was typing too fast there.

Couldn't agree with you more. That's not where my problem is in that thread at all. My problem is when you start having people whine and bicker for pages on end because of stupid things that THEY did like using Pay Pal and having their money taken and blaming Sennhesier for that and accusing Sennheiser of false advertising and such. Who wants to swim through pages of that kind of rubbish? That thread is monstorously huge and a good chunk of that is from bloat like what I'm complaining about here. I certainly would like to see and hope Mr. Willet is able to tell us all very soon a firm release date that we can count on and just be done with it. Sennheiser really could stand to be more on the ball with this. I preordered several weeks ago as well. Yes, I should know better than that by now. I ordered through Todd several weeks ago but I honestly have no idea where I'm at in the pile.

BOOOOOO! Yes. It's nice to actually see factual, on topic, friendly conversation without seeing industry folks being cheapshotted by some having some bizarre vendetta or having a bunch of banal, circular whining for pages on end about things that either the complainer was responsbile for but wants to blame other people or entities for or things that are simply beyond people's control to begin with.

Wow. What a refreshing contrast this thread is to its counterpart at head-fi.

This kind of goes along with something that was being discussed a few pages back but I've seen some signs that the Sennheiser 800s are turning some heads in some clearly NON Head Fi-ish circles. Just the other day I was having a chat with a friend of mine who is clearly a speakers only person but for some reason he decided he just was in the mood to try out a good pair of headphones so bought some B stock AKG701s. He saw a thread that I'd made about the Sennheiser 800s and my usual buyer's guilt/fence sitting that I always go through with anything and he wrote me this completely unsolicited: Me: Friend: This is a home theater guy on a home theater forum. You'd be hard pressed to show me a much better "pro hardcore" head fi line of talking points than this. My point is: I have no idea how much impact the Senns 800s are going to have but I do think there is some sort of interest and buzz outside of just the usual headphone enthusiast circles. That post was one of several posts I fielded on HT forum from people that not into headphones. I was stunned.

More or less, that's the word. I still can't believe I pulled the trigger on $1400 headphones. I must be insane or something...

If you have to shop online, Amazon is doing a really good job these days on price and overall service.

I love this game to death. It's really ridiculous how much I love this game. Thanks to a ton of mods and stuff, even Deux Ex:Invisible War is worth something now on the PC if you need a fix of sorts. I really hope the third game is something special. We've all waited more than long enough.

I'll be very surprised if these 702s sound any different from the 701s.

Some intital impressions from people in their rigs had me bracing myself for maybe a brief period of "dryness" or "too bright" but I didn't even have that out of the box. There is something to be said about burn-in with this player as well and I'm typically a skeptic or at least neutral when it comes to that concept. I can honestly say that I know that I'd have to spend WAY more than the $1395 I did on this thing to get APPRECIABLY better audio quality and even by then we start getting into some serious law of diminishing returns. I couldn't be more thrilled. For me, the gap seperating my CD collection vs. the relative handful of SACDs I also owned has just been narrowed considerably.

Yes, except the 840c has even more detail, imaging and stage prescence and that's saying something since the Mini DAC is excellent on all of those things.

I like mine, too and if it doesn't sell I won't be upset about it but it's just kind of the odd man out for at this point since the 840c functions as a great DAC as well. I really don't need the portability. It's no knock against the Mini-DAC whatsoever.

This should give you a clue of how I feel about the 840c after a good week's use and burn-in: Apogee Mini DAC For Sale

Who am I kidding? I went ahead and placed an order for the 840c today and I should have it by the end of the week hopefully. Looking forward to it!

Super overpriced definitely seems to be the common theme. Back in the day, my dad owned one of their amp/receivers...I couldn't tell you what it was since I was a young kid, but I still think about that piece of gear to this day. It was something.

How many vertebrae in my lower back would I kill as well? I've seen sentiments like what I'm seeing in this thread for a while. McIntosh isn't quite what it used to be? I remember way back in the 70's and early 80's my father had owned some McIntosh gear and it was truly something else.

Bitstream: CEDIA: McIntosh's SACD/CD Player Not cheap, obviously, but considering all that it does and such, this might fill a void for some folks around here, especially if you kill a bunch of birds with one stone like what this thing does.

That's cool. I haven't been clear on this but is it true that the Duet is a little bit better than the Mini-DAC? In other words, it's a successor of sorts? I'll look forward to Salt Peanuts' impressions when he has the time.

Holy thread necromancy, Batman! I see that tkam has moved on from this player but I found this thread to be VERY informative. Has anyone had a chance to compare an Apogee MiniDac against the Cambridge 840c? I've seen several other comparable Dacs mentioned and I figured I'd fire this off and see if anything turned up.

That's it. See the attached picture in previous post. I'm not going to waste anyone's time trying to get that fixed since it doesn't affect the unit's functioning at all. I'm probably making a move for the 840c, incidentally.

I'm embarassed to say this but I think I can see what happened. The little piece of plastic that is usually on/over every optical opening on most electronics fell off or out somehow. I found it on the ground behind the stand where the Apogee has been residing. I never really noticed this until the other day when I started to casually explore all of this. My fingers are a little large to try this but it looks like I could get that back on there. It really doesn't affect how the DAC works though. You can plug the optical cable in there correctly but it just requires a little extra awareness than normal. That attached picture should show you what I'm talking about. That could be my fault for all I know or it was always loose and it fell off easily and I never took notice of it. It doesn't seem to affect function at all for that little piece of plastic to not be on there. Not bad.

I bought it last year May 27 from Sweetwater. Obviously it's well over a year old now so that means its past manufacterer's warranty. It's the model that has neither USB nor firewire on it but the slot is there for a person to add the USB slot if they want it. The unit has always been perfect for me. I would call it mint condition outright were it not for slightly crude looking little hole in the back with the tape over it where the USB should go. Another quibble of mine: The optical audio input is very loose and finicky. You have to fiddle with the optical cable to get it to situate just right. The cable will properly secure but you need to be a little extra mindful with the optical audio input on this device. I'm not sure if this is a defect or not but I lived with it because the cable always ends up situating properly. I do not have the original box the Dac came in but this would come packaged like Fort Knox in a good box. It will come with everything that came with it: Instruction, AES breakout cable, and power supply. My best guess is $400-$500 at best. What do you all think?

We shall see what happens.

I'm in a situation where someone could buy my Apogee MiniDAC off of me because they need some of the features a lot more than I do (portability mostly) and I could turn around and maybe buy something like the Cambridge 840c. Good move or bad move?