Icarium

I am kind of curious what Hoffman's chain looks like. Info is probably available somewhere.

This seems in contrast with your take on the two versions of Pet Sounds where you did not prefer the DCC version with its added distortion/less nice percussion which was probably from the original master tapes.

Yup and the EMU 0404 usb uses the AKM4396 as well.

How it does I/V, analog output stage and to some extent digital filter and how it handles input/jitter. Then the usual stuff like parts/grounding. The NWO 3.0 GO is in the end not the best thing I've ever heard and the AKM chip isn't really all that great. If I wanted to check out something with 32 bits the ESS Sabre 32 chip has much better specs, but either way as has been noted in most other threads 32 bits is next to pointless.

Sure after I clean my room and set up more stuff on it. Just talked to Billy Bags we are estimating that its about 200 pounds and the spiked feet apparently are carpet friendly. She recommended talking with a powder coat place to get it refinished if I want to and sold me some spike protection things for 30 bucks for a set. A set of carpet glidey feet would be ~190 bucks so I think I'll wait on that for now.

Yeah it's always been my first choice after encountering Sleestack's but he paid like 10k for his or something ridiculous, but it has a nice anodized or some other glossy type of finish. The finish on mine is ... ghetto powder coat maybe? And it's hellza scratched up but it was also ~160 after tax. Slashing 100 off my roomate's rent as he drove to Berkeley and helped me haul it over.

http://www.billybags.com/images/Blowout%20Photos/DSC_0523.JPG <- Rack moved to my room... looks like this but scratched up and different top and more shelves. I worry about my floor integrity thing is fuck off heavy.

Some sort of custom 6.5 foot tall scratched up custom Billy Baggs rack for 145 from a salvage yard.. paying another 200 or so to have it hauled out to my place sight unseen There is no way this can end poorly!

Very Zen

Plus headphone jacks on the back is immediate fail but... yeah I'm curious to hear what it sounds like but given that it seems to be a one off and in another countries pretty means anything even close to objective impressions seems to be impossible... but perhaps someone has experience with the company? Long shot I know.

silvercore - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio Looks pretty beastly but it's probably too expensive to really be interesting for me.

I could use some 6sn7s as well For my balancing act driver tube needs.. ugh nate I forgot to mail out your check. I'll get on that tomorrow... unless I fucking forget.

Hrm.. is a switching power supply like with the rest of his stuff or something nicer?

Eh? High end pre-amp?

Either 4k or 4.5k... I forget.

Hrmm I've lived in place for a 1.5 years now or so and haven't noticed any of the symptoms hopefully I'm safe.. was built in 07

Damn... "The headphone driver portion of the Topaz is quite special, utilizing two of the high performance TI/Burr Brown OPA2134 OPAMP's, allowing the Topaz to comfortably drive any headphone from 32ohm to 300ohm. The line ouput section gets the same attention to detail as the rest of the unit and employs two of the Analog Device AD817 OPAMP's, allowing the Topaz to be at home in a high end two channel audio system. Impressively, the Topaz also use four of the TI NE5534 OPAMP's for the I/V section, a testament to their dedication to quality and good sound." So dedicated. So testamented.

Damn Rudistor making the flight over? Hardcore. Wonder if Ultrasone will attend.

Yup all his amps sound very similar.. thin sounding without being particularly detailed.

I haven't ordered anything yet I was going to wait til when we ordered the prototype boards. Jacob's laptop blew up and he only recovered it I think Thursday with everything on it gone. I imagine barring anything random happening we'll order things next week and I'm sure his BOM will available as well.

yeah it's pretty sad times.. I remember when that came up in The West Wing. It's pretty stupid.. just like pennies.

Nah I've talked extensively with Craig about it.. the ZDT is definitely basically the Nautilus with a few tweaks and drastically different appearance. They are both transformer coupled and not OTL like the Zana Deux. The HD2 is also a similar amp aka transformer coupled 6c33b amps and he said that the ZDT with partial silver electraprint transformers (An upgrade, not standard) will give the HD2 and the Balancing Act a run for their money though the BA with 307A/AD1s should sound better as they are both more linear tubes... more clarity/better staging he said, but it'd be a close thing.

Speaker outputs. His K1000s are hardwired with SAA Equinox I believe.

Foo_me had the prototype for the ZDT, the Nautilus, for an extended demo. He tried the K1000 with it and it was a pretty underwhelming performance he said. Of course he has a very good 300B amp he normally uses and the ZDT is supposed to sound better so shrug.

Shugo Tokumaru's latest, Rum Hee. The best apparently having gone through his back catalog at work.