mirumu

That's probably because the Sennheiser 'stats are genuinely good. There will always be preference involved but as Spritzer says, it seems impossible to hate the HE90 or HE60. Certainly in my experience with the HE60 they're very pleasant and fun to listen to and are currently one of the two headphones I'd most like to own. I haven't yet liked any Sennheiser dynamics I've heard, those I have truly sound bad to me so I guess I can understand some of the issue there. I haven't heard the HD600 or HD650 though and I have an open mind to their charms. After all, I know Sennheiser can make great headphones given their 'stats.

Yes, something doesn't seem right there. Hard to believe Stax would have made them less efficient than the Mk1s either. It's not like amps to drive those well are common let alone something with more demanding requirements. Edit: Although maybe Stax have a T2 Mk2 up their sleves that drive the new model to perfection?

The black of the new model doesn't especially appeal to me although I suspect I may be in the minority there. I like the Champaign color of the mk1s. That color doesn't look so nice in pictures but in the flesh I like it a lot. Looking forward to the sonic impressions of the mk2 once people get a feel for their characteristics. Not sure what to make of what's been said so far.

VLC tends to play most discs but I have seen a few where the menus don't work properly. The main reason I use it is to play discs from other regions. Probably not a big deal for those of you in Region 1 but the Region 4 selection really sucks at times.

I'd been running the Leopard betas for a while on an external drive and never ran into many problems but I wasn't using it full time with my normal usage patterns. Since the release I've upgraded the two Macs I use most, a G5 tower (Archive and Install) and a Macbook Pro (Format with fresh install) both with 2GB of RAM. Now I'm using it full time I've run into the odd issue here or there. The worst is the odd kernel panic when the network is under heavy load with lots of connections. From the logs it looks like in some conditions the BSD kernel layer is trying to free memory that had already been freed. The telltale sign of this imminent panic is the network layer stopping dead, usually about 20 seconds before the panic message displays. When I've seen this now I quickly save all the unsaved work before the crash. I've been submitting the logs to Apple about this so hopefully it'll be fixed soon in 10.5.1. For now I'm treading lightly with my network usage where feasible. Some of the other issues are more flaws in design rather than real bugs. The new application-centric firewall is completely useless. Even when you check "block all incoming connections" it doesn't. Wouldn't be so bad if there weren't services running as root exposed by default but there are. I have two hardware firewalls between me and the internet so I'm personally not that concerned but I feel sorry for anyone directly connected to the internet as this is a massive security hole waiting to be exploited by hackers. The BSD ipfw firewall Tiger used is still there under the hood but is set to allow all connections by default. I expect soon there's going to be some good nice to use third party firewall tools to help people configure this given the flaws in Leopard's one. I sort of agree with Salt Peanuts on stacks. I do like them for some purposes (like the download folder) but they should not have replaced the Tiger folder behaviour. I'd have been very happy if they had just been added as additional options. I've never really liked virtual desktops on unix-like OSes and Spaces seems much the same thing. Doubt I'll be using it much. The transparent menu bar is kind of odd with some desktop pics, but I find I customize most pictures I use as desktops anyway so adding a 22 pixel black bar at the top to make the menu bar look normal isn't a big deal. It would be nice to have an option to turn this feature on or off. Time machine seems kind of redundant to me since you need at least twice as much disc space in total as what you want to back up. I originally assumed it would do something smarter. Gave it a 250GB drive kicked it off only to be told I needed another 1.3TB of disc space. After I'd excluded most of my data from the backup it worked fine but I don't see much advantage over using a more normal backup system or a mirrored RAID 1 array. The coverflow view, quick look and mail improvements are great. I don't know how I lived without smart mailboxes. Love the speed of the whole system too. On the G5 it's less noticeable but on the Macbook Pro applications start much faster. I can only assume they've done a lot of tuning for the Intel architecture. Seems like they're doing some smart caching and it works really well.

That's largely what I got from it too. He was definitely suggesting they might need repairs to fix the noise although any thoughts of the drivers being bad put me right off bidding. That fit's with my experience of the 4070 too. I always found I wanted that little bit extra from them that they couldn't deliver. If the SC1 shares that trait they may not be to my tastes, but I'll leave that up to some decent listening sessions to decide.

I only recall seeing one of those cables for sale on the auction sites in the last year or so. I saw there was also a pair of original Omegas on Y!JP which went for 312,000 yen. From memory though the description suggested there were some problems with the drivers and the Japanese bidders were asking questions about them. Fixable perhaps but if they weren't sold to a local I hope whoever bought those didn't just bid without doing a translation.

Well so do I but I won't let that get in my way.

All this talk of the SR-SC1 has me intrigued. I think I need to borrow a listen on Carl's pair sometime. I like the 404s reasonably but they certainly have their share of faults.

I run Firefox on Windows here at work. Default theme.

From interviews I've seen developers who worked on the PS2 think it's fine. Personally I don't trust Valve's opinion on the matter as the comments from their people always seem to be pushing an agenda of some sort. From a computer architecture point of view the PS3 is less radical than the PS2 was; it's only really the Cell chip that adds a degree of complexity. I'd take Valve's comments more seriously if id's John Carmack or Epic's Clifford Bleszinski put the boot in. Technically John Carmack has already said the PS3 is a pain to develop for but felt it did have some advantages when it came to performance.

Mmmmmmmm, cake!

I like Seinfeld quite a bit although I still have to see the last 2-3 seasons. Some of the episodes are hit or miss but the standout ones make up for it. I only ever saw most of the episodes once when they were originally shown on TV and I've been re-watching in order on DVD so it's harder to get sick of it that way.

I've been listening to this album tonight myself and my thoughts largely mirror jpak's. I like the album overall and a number of tracks, especially the first five or so are standout to me. I think "All I Need" is my favorite track at this point. The mp3s are a bit lacking so I'm looking forward to hearing it in better formats when the discbox arrives.

I used to run some forum software which I had written about 80% of. When it started I was only going to be doing a small part of the development and maintenance but once the site went live nobody else did anything (other than complain). It just ended up being too much work to maintain. And when I lost access to hosting with PostgreSQL database support I just called it a day. These days I think the freely available forum software is good enough and developer time is better spent writing plugins for these where needed rather than re-inventing the wheel. It's also essential to listen to user feedback otherwise you end up with things that don't make sense to anything but the developer like that search functionality you described. I do read Headwize on occasions but it's always for the DIY stuff. I don't think I've ever been in any of their other forums.

Ugh. Why is that not surprising? I still willing to provide a home for some HE60s but yeah, I doubt I'll be parting with any of my Stax gear. I don't think I should say any more as Carl knows where I live and would not take kindly to such things. He may revoke my borrowing rights.

Carl isn't so taken by the Omegas actually. He borrowed my O2s for a while to listen with his own system and while he respected their abilities they were not for him. He prefers the HE60s I believe. I know he's had a new arrival recently but that's for him to talk about. Yes, that's why I said I wasn't "saying anything new". If you find the O2s dark and restrained from amps like that then I'm sure if you heard them on a weaker amp they'd seem darker again and very insipid. Oh wow. Their skin must have been so thin that your comments really hit a nerve. That's some serious insecurity.

Make that two. I will be the first to admit though that I have not heard the RS-1 or HP-2. I know I'm not saying anything new here but the O2s really need power behind them to rock. When underpowered they sound dark and dainty but with more juice behind them they sound more balanced. My main problem with the 4070 is that even with power they always seem to have a degree of restraint and ultimately don't rock as well as the O2s. But yes, while the O2s can produce a lot of bass under the right conditions they will not match the slam of air on your ears that dynamics are capable of.

Spritzer, that's a very nice way of putting it. I've waffled on about the 4070s a few times and while your impressions seem to be much the same as mine I've never managed to state it as succinctly. I think I'd seriously look at the 4070 if I needed a degree of noise isolation (as Carl does), but this isn't a problem I have. I do think I need some HE60s though faults and all; they're fun just as you say.

Welcome to my world. I couldn't boycott moon currencies since virtually nowhere online deals in NZ$. I have URLs for at least three different currency conversion sites memorized and can generally do a semi-accurate conversions in my head involving US dollars, the Japanese Yen, the pound and the euro. I don't really know why more sites don't just auto adjust based on your locale. Damn parochialism.

The mail man must have got to know the way to your place well lately. That dac sounds crazy heavy. I think I should finish off my own custom transformer box before picking up the ESC-1001. All I need to do is build a bias supply. It would make for a good shoot-off with the Illusion once complete. Hey, if everyone says it then it can't be wrong. Yes, I actually have spend some time with the HD555 and couldn't stand them. I'd have to be paid to own a pair.

Yeah, I think you can do a 0 pound donation and they'll still give you access. It's a concept album about Nigerian spam.

There's certainly been a few up for sale lately. If this supply keeps up I might even end up buying one. You should stretch your budget a little more. Nothing sounds better than some HD555s and a RSA Hornet. ...what? No, it doesn't matter that I haven't heard them.

I'm going for the Discbox too. I like the idea of what they're doing. Hopefully whatever they lose in sales price they'll more than make back in ditching the record company.

Hey, welcome. Good to see you here.