mulveling

Zana Deux It's still a tough choice of the 3 amps, but based on the raw numbers I've been liking the Zana Deux more often, on most of my recordings. The Supra SE sounds super-clean and does a bit better than the Zana on the best-mastered new records. The Supra SE has a very clean, tight sound that's very exciting at first, but with time I noticed it's perhaps a bit over-"hard" in some cases. I have the hunch the Supra SE would be superbly voiced for SACD, and I need to confirm this suspicion soon. However, the bulk of my records are from the 70s and they mesh better with the warmer, inviting tone of the Zana. The Zana is just more musical and unrestrained on these albums, and certainly does excellent as well on the new stuff - that's the great thing about it, you can just sit down with ANY album and be confident it's in good hands. The SDS prototype is even warmer but clearly lacks some power and low-end control (especially on low impedance cans) compared to the other two. Certainly good for a change-up on things every now and again. The SDS and Supra SE sound quite different, so I'm not sure about a SP house sound. Purk's SDS SE does sound like the best attributes of the two combined together (tone & soundstage of SDS++, lows of Supra SE), though. Please keep in mind that I DO NOT subscribe to the idea that synergy involves balancing attributes off against each other, hence why I like to pair things up that have similar attributes - obviously this breaks down when you're paring up things with severe colorations, but none of the above gear has that problem The Zana Deux, HD650, and now HP2 all sound somewhat like "vinyl" to me, hence why they all go great together

Two new arrivals from USPS today - nice headphones and tubes (batch of TungSol 6DT4) The "Into the Wild" LP also arrived this week:

My arm does have a detachable headshell, though original FR64fx headshells are rare. Ugh, I remember seeing one on agon not long ago for a very reasonable price - should have jumped on it. Are headshells typically standardized/interchangeable? I would still feel nervous swapping out expensive carts every time I wanted to switch modes - no matter how careful you are, an accident is bound to happen. I'm lucky enough just to not have screwed up my stereo cart yet - the arm lift/lower lever (which I use habitually) has saved my ass more times than I care to remember.

OK, I just realized the multiple arm thing on the Clearaudio probably means it has two arms mounted at the same time, not interchangeable arms. Indeed, that is pretty damn cool! However, I'm still set on sticking with my stereo TT.

I'd like to avoid much expense - certainly nowhere near what my SOTA setup cost Luckily I've had an old VPI hw19 and a new rb300 arm collecting dust - the intended first vinyl rig that never materialized. The table needs some work, but the motor and major stuff seems fine. I recently heard a new Ortofon stereo cart in the $250 range (IIRC) on an vintage Oracle table that sounded super - I'd be aiming for that level of performance and price in a cart, but mono. Perhaps a Denon DL-102: http://www.needledoctor.com/Denon-DL-102-High-Output-Moving-Coil-Mono-Cartridge?sc=2&category=269 Just realized I might have to do something different for phono stage though Overall it shouldn't be too painful price-wise, but I'm going to wait until after I'm all settled into the new place in a month I've heard of the interchangeable arms somewhere, but I don't think that's something I'd enjoy doing. Plus, the SOTA w/ its present vintage arm is IT for me w/ stereo. Barring illness or injury, I'm never changing that combo

I have the occasional mono vinyl, and they invariably sound like crap on stereo headphones or speakers. You get a wonderful stereo image of all the noise crud on the record's surface, while the music is a lifeless dead-center image. There also may be some sort of smearing from two speakers (that can never be exactly the same) trying to reproduce the same signal. Not long ago I heard a local fellow's pure mono setup, the speaker was a gigantic 50's or 60's Bozak cabinet with multiple drivers. The sound was very surprising, and extremely enjoyable. I'm not sure if you need the same kind of speakers to capture most of the magic, but since then I've been looking at my unused Tannoy TDC center channel ( http://www.tannoy-speakers.com/s.php?product=117&title=Dimension+TDC&s=24 ) in a different light. It's a behemoth monster as far as center channels go. Fairly full range too, spec'd down to 42Hz. It's been sitting in its box for the last several months since I got it as a package deal with the TD10s. I still don't care enough about HT to make a go it and sacrifice 2ch quality in the process. I've been thinking, when I move into the new place - rather than try to combine a 2ch/HT setup, wouldn't it be cool to combine a 2ch/mono setup with the center channel dedicated for mono only? The setup would look like the front 3 for a surround rig, but it wouldn't be I'd need to setup a 2nd turntable with a mono cart - that should be the only expense. I've plenty of amp options - both the McIntosh and Eico can bridge to mono, or I could just use one of the Heathkit monos. I can use just 1 ch of a stereo headamp/preamp (plenty of those around here too). If this worked out well, it would certainly drive me to buy more older recordings (which admittedly are hard to swallow on stereo gear). Any thoughts on this? Any of you guys/gals put together a pure mono setup before?

When you team the hd650 up with vinyl and the right amp you get pure magic Congrats on the cooool new amp!

Definitely when I move into my new digs, if that ever happens this year :'( The Tannoys have been rockin' on the Eico HF-87 with Teslovak el34's. That and I moved the speakers a bit wider apart for a nice improvement in stereo imaging. Those are the 2 changes I've made since last batch of pics. Yes sir! Third, actually. Between Ryan and myself we've probably touched half the active hp1000 population This time I have way cooler stuff to plug them into though, so that changes everything. That and I'm basically done hearing all the big ones, so I finally know what does it for me (that doesn't excuse my stupidity of the first 2 sales).

Joe Grado HP-2!! Will soon get to hear what these babies can do on vinyl. No electrostat fever here

I've used The Smiths in the past. Great band Some Morrissey can be good too, but doesn't have the lasting power of The Smiths albums for me. xand1x should get The Queen is Dead stat!

Yep, know kinda how ya feel. It's probably going to hurt like hell for a while BUT you can take steps to gain valuable experience, self growth, and even confidence from this. Time always heals these kinds of wounds, so know that it will get better not matter how dark it seems now. Use this time to start re-discovering yourself as an individual, and potentially exploring what you would like to be. I turned to booze the first few times too, and that can be ok, but last couple years the method I've used has been vigorous self improvement - diet, exercise, actively working on my appearance, etc. I sometimes get out of shape in relationships tho (typically the ones I know aren't going to work out in the end - ugh) so by the end I'm pretty hungry to take care of myself again. It works GREAT! You're young and should have a long, great life in front of you! Best wishes!!!

Mac OS X here, and I love Firefox too. Aside from the odd rare bug, it's a relatively solid web-application platform - things tend to work as they should, look good, etc. Now what I absolutely loathe is IE 5.5/6.0. As a dev, I hate having to support those browsers, and I hate how much of my time is wasted implementing bizarre workarounds for the plethora of quirks (you've got to be kidding me - select boxes still bleed through higher z-index elements, png still doesn't render alpha channel correctly without a non-standard hack, many many more examples to cite). The performance of Firefox has been adequate; it's the lack of quirky behavior I value most.

Have to back up Dusty here. Top notch speakers can be something special, but coming from the headphone world it's been hard to adjust to just how much the room messes with the speakers' sound...extremely difficult to approach accurate 20-20K in-room. The spatial effects of great speakers on a great stereo recording in a great configuration in a good room are awesome, but it's not usually at the top of my sonic priorities - hence I'll always want an excellent headphone system to supplement my listening diet, even though I already know what my "ultimate" speakers of the future will be (Tannoy Kensington).

Even after all the superb gear I've experienced - my Koss PortaPros unamped from my iMac can be hellaciously enjoyable. It's been my office work rig for quite some time now and I've not been tempted to upgrade due to the logistics of keeping expensive gear away from home. I've enjoyed music on some other pretty cheap gear but the PortaPro really nails it for me and way transcends its price tag. Of course, when working from home I just situate the iMac near my turntable so I can indulge in the hifi rig when necessary

Happy birthday, yall!

No, just disorganized & selectively lazy Maybe I should also use greasemonkey to purge such reminders of my laziness...

Yeah, or you could use greasemonkey and not only remove ads but make head-fi like wai better too!!!

Happy b-day guys! Ryan, 26 is a good year Enjoy your hp1000 & 508.24 awesomeness!

I just downloaded greasemonkey a few mins ago. Try the below script I just vomited out, with scope: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/* Works for me. Gets rid of a couple of those top-horizontal banners too. It's an awful hack but head-fi doesn't id/name many elements for latching on to. They do like to to lots of <font> tags, though. - nice. I did notice the TTVJ sub-forum gives a JS error w/ this script because one of head-fi's startup scripts depends on one of those removed elements...let it choke...not a big deal to me. // ==UserScript== // @name Kill Head-fi // @namespace mdu // @description remove annoying sidebar // @include http://www.head-fi.org/forums/ // ==/UserScript== // get rid of annoying top ad banners: var pagenavMenuId = "pagenav_menu"; try { var pageNavMenu = document.getElementById(pagenavMenuId); var pageNavMenuParent = pageNavMenu.parentNode; var foundPageNavMenu = false; var numTargetElements = 2; // get rid of the first 2 tables after the pageNavMenu element var targetElements = []; for (var i=0; i < pageNavMenuParent.childNodes.length; i++) { var thisElement = pageNavMenuParent.childNodes[ i ]; if (!foundPageNavMenu && thisElement.id == pagenavMenuId) { foundPageNavMenu = true; } else if (foundPageNavMenu && thisElement.tagName && thisElement.tagName.toLowerCase() == "table") { targetElements.push(thisElement); if (targetElements.length == numTargetElements) { break; } } } for (var i=0; i < targetElements.length; i++) { pageNavMenuParent.removeChild(targetElements[ i ]); } } catch (ignore) {;} // get rid of annoying sidebar: var tds = document.getElementsByTagName('td'); for (var i in tds) { var td = tds[ i ]; if (td && td.width == "1%" && td.style.paddingLeft == "10px") { td.parentNode.removeChild(td); } }

Think I've found our 170 IQ genius: http://www.aetv.com/minisite/epiajx.jsp?type=episode&episode=261495 From Season 4 Intervention: http://www.aetv.com/intervention/int_episode_guide.jsp An IQ that high is soooooo rare, it couldn't be coincidence, right?

Awesome contributions in the head-fi thread by Steve, Voltron, boom, and others... I...I love you guys!

I know better than to listen the morning after; expectations are way too high. I got some work done instead Overall things have been sounding excellent for quite a while! Loving all of my various gear. I'm becoming more steadfast in my Tannoy & vintage amp fanaticism. Heard some Tannoy Kensingtons at the local hifi last week - wow, wow, WOW! Now I know exactly what to do if $14K ever falls in my lap The L3000, Qualia, and HD650 are all getting their share of deserved love - the L3000 is still the one I'd choose to live with if I could only have 1 headphone (that includes R10, Orpheus, etc). Enjoying some Loggins & Messina vinyl on L3000 as I type...life is great!

Let's see, the "reputation" they have to protect is that of a peddler selling ass-ugly stranded copper cryo wire for up to several thousands of dollars markup... Until more info is made available I feel fairly safe assuming the R10 owner is in the right, by a long shot. I can't wait for JenaLabs' reply - I'm rather expecting something along the lines of the Virtual Dynamics/Acoustic Chef hilarity

Wow - hasn't that been out for a few years...and they still haven't sold out the 100 units worldwide! I guess Nik's stint of calling it the "world's best" system with whatever headphones he was using at the time, wasn't long enough to sell 100

Don't ever send any money - or anything of value - to JenaLabs