Icarium

Jesus Christ did they not tell you to look at, think about or most of all discuss those holes yet? They must be slipping. You are supposed to avert your eyes from those holes until 5000 hours of burn in. After 10,000 hrs you are allowed to look at them but not talk about them. After 15,000 hrs you fill them with Patrick82's magic audio fluid. After 20,000 hrs you can think 1 thought a day about them. After 50,000 hrs they will allow you to listen to music in the 4th dimension as music was meant to be enjoyed. You never, ever get to discuss them no matter how much burn in you roll with unless you own a dozen Alo replacement cables that have also been waxed by Patrick82's audiophile fluid (Recoated daily), which given that I am discussing them you can infer I have.

Man 225 AD2ks wish I had picked those up.

My only complaint with the comfort is the weight, but even so it's one of the more comfortable headphones I've worn. I mentioned the weight and they said yeah... eventually they will switch to plastic when they have a market that can bear the units they would need to sell to get molds created, but as is with wood + 18 magnets in it it just isn't possible. I mentioned that when they switched over to plastic the value of the wood units will probably skyrocket and they laughed and said they are aware of that possibility, but that isn't their intention at all. They just want to offer the lowest cost and most comfortable best sounding product they can at the quality standards that they set for themelves, which well is high ;p

Yeah I still have yet to even have a slightest urge to try my other headphones. Every day I do listen with them (Not every day) I am impressed. Watched some TV which had very interesting soundstage with sounds placed much further away than almost any music I've ever heard yet the LCD-2s could still deliver a pinpoint accurate imaging. Pretty nutty. I would strongly question if even K1Ks or qualias could place some of those peripheral sounds further than where the LCD-2s placed them.

Alinea would be cool to check out as well, but I should probably do the French Laundry first since it's closer. The chef owner's story is pretty crazy to losing his sense of taste to tongue cancer and then clawing it back and coming back as strong as ever.

and the coma-chi crush continues: Prefer the original beat though, but youtube is lacking.

<3 for the day: YouTube - Coma-Chi - Michibata Not even into Japanese hip hop.

Yeah they don't really sound like AD2ks except that they do a lot of similar things for me like the AD2ks. The soundstaging/imaging/speed but better. The soundstage is definitely wider though but still similar. The sound signature is more neutral overall and the bass vastly better in quantity/extension and just overall presence. The AD2ks crush on highs though and possibly mids but that might be just because they are mid centric so it seems lusher than it should be. The LCD-2s don't make me want the AD2k mids and are quite beautiful themselves and dare I say more accurate? Was listening to some Mark Knopfler HDCD yesterday and it was just blowing my mind. Not a one music pony headphone by any means. I don't know if these are going to deliver the sort of highs you yearn for but maybe dbel84 can help you out with some mods there.

Mirror - Recollection E.P. Japanese indie rock math rocky instrumental group. If you liked Toe this is similar but less tight and a bit mellower. Kind of like special others meets Toe. http://www.catune.com/sound/mirror_recollection/circuit_digest.mp3

More focused and tighter feeling but that might just be the smaller soundstage. Speed tough to say possibly feels faster. Bass is much more present. Mids toss up. Highs it loses to Qualias. Comfort toss up in two different directions (Qualias are light but dont grip well because I'm using large size and LCD-2s are pretty comfy but are heavy and grip better. Neither is perfect in the way HE-90s were for me... if you throw in fit then clearly the LCD-2s win, but if I switched to a small or medium then its more of a toss up). In the end Qualias are more laid back and Audeze are more punchy and have better bass. Otherwise it all about evens out, but that's without doing any direct comparisons so this probably isn't useful.

I think at the individual consumer level RIM has already blown it and it's only inertia and came firstness that is keeping it tops in market share... come a few quarters and I think that will change. But it doesn't really matter as long as they dominate the corporate market.

Got my pair today as well. I am very impressed. I am probably picking up a second pair. Before The New World Close up.. jealous LCD-1s? Pads Nice and improved detachable cable? check! Nice frequency response graph for my pair of headphones? Check! Care/Warranty/Manual printed on extremely nice paper and well put together? Check! Wth? Some wood care polish stuff and a cloth to apply it? Check as well! And a case that the HE-90 would kill to live in? Check check. Sucks to be you HE-90 living in a sham of a case with its hard carton cut out under a deceptive blue velvet layer Clearly Audeze has come a long, long way from the LCD-1s and they've brought their A game. For a 2-3 man operation they did not fail to deliver on a professionally manufactured and packaged product. No off the shelf chassis the sequel. No sir. But the real question is of course how they sound! Well the answer to that is they sound good. Listen to them from my AD1 Balancing Act sourced by my modded Assemblage DAC3 they sound damned good. I have not shot them out against my Qualias/K1K/AD2k yet, but these certainly sound competitive even factoring in a hit after new toy syndrome fades. My complaints with the LCD-1 were as follows: 1. Highs.. I couldn't hear above 16khz where with some phones I'm able to hit 17/18khz which is sad because just a couple of years before I could hit 20khz 2. Fell apart a bit with distortion heavy, fast, complex raw music with a lot going on. 3. The cable was a bit unwieldy (My bad since I made the recommendation ;p Whoops). With the LCD-2 1. Highs I can maybe hear 17khz though that might be wishful thinking... also I've been to a few live shows since I've last tested my hearing so that may be user disability. I think they do better though. 2. Listening to some distortion heavy, fast, complex raw music and it's manhandling it with 0 issue. 3. The cable is not only vastly improved in build quality and while it's still thick, it isn't nearly as bad and is real durable feeling. Also <3 detachable. <3 it to hell. Every headphone should have detachable cablesif I had my way. Mmm qualias having detachable cables. What it has improved on: 1. Bass. God finally I have a headphone that has top tier bass I feel. The only thing that maybe edges it out is a properly amped O2. Maybe not even then. Would have to shoot it out to really say since it's been awhile since I've heard the O2/BHSE combo or O2/WES or mmm O2/T2 which I have yet to hear! The extension. The tightness. The speed. The impact. So perfect. Maybe a bit more tone and resonance, but I feel like those are tradeoffs against speed and so no thanks. 2. It's simply a more complete and refined and balanced sound. The LCD-1 had its sound signature which had its quirks. I sadly could not say that it was a better headphone even for the money when compared to the AD2k for me :/ These though... well any urge I had to buy T1s is now gone except for the fact that it's closed. 3. Comfort. Wow these are comfortable. Almost HE90 comfortable which is the most comfortable headphone I've worn. You have to remind them that they are on your head and when you do you just bask in their comfort for a moment. Then with their ungrip you worry if a 8-10k headphone is going to slide off your head. I didn't like that much which is why I sold them. LCD-2s, better than broken in hd650s since they grip more even when broke in. On par with comfy beyerdynamics. Comfortable, durable headphones, but not really my sound. 4. Construction/Look/Quality... off the charts here. Really. Almost as glamorous as the nicest AT woodies, but with nicer cable/boxes imo and overall I think a little bit more consistency. There were always little bits of each AT woody I've owned where I'd be like man rest is so nice, but they kinda skimped in this ridiculous nit picky small area. I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I don't get that with these. 5. Imaging/soundstage. The soundstage doesn't sound immediately all that wide, but when you get far away sounds in a song you are like whoa okay I guess they can go that far. And then you note that sound versus a more mid-centric sound and all the distances in between and how they are laid about for your musical palate to enjoy and then you realize that these headphones can image with the best ;p 6. Speed/Effortlessness... up another notch. The power too. The power that some headphones flaunt with their boomy one note bass and their sluggish heavyhandedness... yeah none of that with these headphones. By the time you realize the power and depth that these things can deliver in the note... right when you brace yourself for the impact the thing is already dancing away and moving onto the next note. So effortless. Like when Jet Li punches at a dude's face but then stops right before impact and the force of the punch blows the guy's hair back... yeah it's like that. Okay that's enough for now. Time to enjoy. May or may not post impressions against other headphones and other amps. I can't wait til my Dynafet is complete.. I guess my Balanced Gilmore Reference and Dynahi will have to do for now.

It's not that surprising to me. The game will be changed both when the latest Iphone comes out and yet again when AT&T loses exclusivity. People are probably merely holding out for the next.

Was told that I'm official customer #1 and that mine ship today. Woot et all. Double up or not at the 600 dollar price for both hrmmm? Good question. Will post impressions!

I plan on having parts for 2 ! ;p I bow to you on the single chassis element though

My pop crush of the day. Spangle call lilli line's Eye.

I'm in the same boat depending on cost and what lower cost finishings are like.

Aha so you were the one. I'm glad you finally got it.

I like listening to something with all my preconceptions thrown out and asking myself if I like it or not for a baseline. And yeah then checking in on that after breaks. Take mood and time/place out of the equation.

Good luck naamanf! I hope for your safe return.

Hrm interesting. My thought process is more people are into entitlement and youthful beauty above all other forms of beauty because society has told them they want those things. Have movies and tv shows and all sorts of media in other forms of medium that show people wanting young hot chick and valuing young hot chicks highly. Generally movies will have the female lead/love interest be a young hot chick (There are exceptions, but those are much in the minority. If you want talk about how quality/impact then it becomes slightly more even, but even then ;p A lot of people watch shitty movies and enjoy them) and movies often symbolize on some level the ideal. So you see the main character that you may identify with and then you see his love interest who is into him and she is young hot awesome and interesting. Well looks is something that you notice and recognize first with regards to attraction. Appreciation for talent/smarts/drive/passion/everything else comes later (In most cases). And first impressions and first impact is generally huge on people. It becomes that which lets you remember that person. Maybe you meet a hot chick named Jane. In your mind it's probably something like Jane - Hot Chick. Eventually it might turn into Jane - Cool Hot Chick, but I think on some level hot chick is always gonna be in there and it was there first so it's almost slightly more core to you when you think of her. Time may change this of course so that it's all about how cool she is rather than how hot. But in a movie where you get only a reader's digest of events no matter how cool the main character is you may never get past the Main Character - Hot Chick stage and your brain may not seize so hard on the other desirable characteristics at least not if you aren't actively trying. For me I screen out hotness. (Much like in audio I screen out the parts where sound is similar in two dacs). I know it's a movie I know that the chicks esp the main chicks probably are going to be hot and that really doesn't affect my life much (Am I going to meet one and have a shot at one? Probably not) so I look for other characteristics that define and intrigue me about the character. Maybe she's really nice and understanding. Maybe she is straight forward in a way that I like. Maybe she's brilliant. And it's from this that I figure out what my ideal chick is. Qualities that she possesses besides hotness. And I don't think I'm necessarily special because I do this. I think anyone that is a good enough human to move past the "Har har I want to get with a harem of hot jailbait and that's all I want in women" state does this to some degree if at an unconscious level or at a conscious level. I am a big fan of doing it at the conscious level though because I find that I'm able to do it more effectively and it will get me faster to what I want to figure out. I.e. what my ideal woman should be like. Also you have to figure out what's impossible what's possible and what qualities are mutually exclusive and how rare a quality is as well. These are things you have to do while you are putting together that package of qualities because you have to tier it somewhat. Qualities A/B/C are pretty great and definitely good enough for me to want and women with these qualities are largely available. But Qualities A/B/C/D would be even better. D is pretty goddamn rare and it's very likely I might not find it even if I look my hardest... but is it something I really want? Or is A/B/C + not being lonely and having companionship and sex worth sacrificing D? Anyway tangent aside ;p Entitlement. Well people are told things like all people are equal.. all people have basic rights... all people deserve this or that. Is it that surprising that people have that sense of entitlement? It doesn't surprise me. It's part of the American Dream. All people do have some basic human rights imo, but do people who feel strongly about it even always know what those rights are? Or did they fudge together a list in their head based on what they think should be basic rights and then go from there being entitled bastards? I think many have done this. It's the sense I get out of any overly entitled person I've ever met or encountered. All people deserve the right to dream and want cool shit, but they might have forgotten the other half of the American Dream and what it means to be American i.e. gots to work hard if you want it. That part isn't emphasized enough. Yes everyone has the right to pursue happiness. Pursue! Not just sit there and whine about and expect someone or something to hand it to and then be real sandy when it doesn't happen. That's not American or really even being a good human imo. So the shaman story is definitely interesting though I'm not really getting what you are trying to tell me ;p Maybe think about it a bit and try again I am interested in hearing what you want to tell me First thoughts to that segment: All societies control with fear. It's almost the definition of a society. You deincentivize behaviors/desires and things that you (A society) don't want by making people afraid to want it and afraid to admit they want it for fear of being a weirdo or a freak or unnormal or a bad person. You shouldn't be selfish because that's bad. Guys shouldn't wear dresses because it would be weird (Well what if they want to wear a dress and aren't gay? Why not fucking let them and why make it so hard and make them feel bad while they do it?). This how societies deincentivize you from doing what it doesn't want you to do it. It incentivizes you to do certain things by hooking you up with women, money, a good job or other things when you do what it wants to do. This isn't a bad thing really because society is necessary and a reality, but I think we should be ever examining and always improving on society by taking an honest look at what it does incentivize and deincentivize since I think there are things that are outdated and wrong and all societies can improve and progress and learn from each other. We just have to try and if we don't well I don't see how we will improve as a species. And we do try.. in our own fumbling politically correct way. Progress is made, but I think it can be better and faster Yeah crazy shit can happen on psychotropic drugs.

Yeah I dunno why people think that. I'm pretty rational and I value rational behavior but I'm not even going to pretend that my conscious mind is in control even like 1 percent of the time. When you walk are your legs consciously being told what to do? When you pass people by in the halls and you look away or you recognize someone and say hi were those all completely conscious decisions? I doubt I make any fully conscious decisions. Why did I chose to grab what I grabbed at lunch? My mind can sometimes play catch up after the fact, but if I brought conscious decision making into play then people behind me in lines would be pretty annoyed for good reason. So I don't know why people think that.

I mean there were a ton of sources there that I'm not that familiar with. Other then the Parasound which I had just gotten I doubt I'd spent more then like 10 minutes collectively with the 2-3 sources that I have had some experience with and then there were 3-4 that I had not heard of ever at all. So I guess this is how I go about it. If I listen to 10 sources and they all sound the same I try and figure out what elements sound the same and then stop listening for those areas of sound and then focus more on the stuff that is different. This sounds hard, but I don't do it consciously but instead use intuition. I especially am very sensitive to inconsistency (Whether that is trained or innate I have no idea) so it is not hard for me and frankly I don't think it hard for most people. Most people can intuit what is out of place very, very fast. The critical next step is reflecting on what your intuition is telling you and consciously figuring out the differences. So you can sense that something is different. Think hard.. how are they different? Again use your intuition, follow it and reflect consciously afterwards. Maybe you try to do this already and it hasn't worked out. What helped for me was screening out my feelings of awe and this sounds good. Everything does sound pretty good to me. It really does. So I take a few seconds initially to note that and then I shut it out of my mind. Almost shut down my conscious mind and just intuit difference and then go into conscious mind overdrive and repeat. I may be just faking it and fooling myself though. Oh yeah and another thing is sometimes you gotta do it several times. Do this process and then throw away everything including what you've just figured out and then try and do it again without bias from the previous attempt. Cut yourself 0 slack in trying to cut out bias and constantly doubt that you did cut it out and generally you actually end up pretty close to being unbiased. And then you see if your previous attempt matches with your next attempt. Again this sounds hard, but with practice it's definitely possible. Just ignore all the bias voices that are telling you to think one way or another. And then after trying that a bit maybe throw everything out and then listen to what your intuition tells you. Is this awesome? Is this the best? Do you even like it? Do you think its worth the money? And if the answer to all those is yes. Think about what you like about it. What areas does it seem to do well in blah blah. Usually then I write a review in my head so formalize what I like about it and think about how to express stuff to other people. This really seals the deal for me.

Yeah it's something I've struggled with a lot. Defensiveness. How much it annoys and frustrates me and here's my thoughts with regards to that. Why do people get defensive? It's because they think I am attacking them or think they are stupid or whatever. They are conditioned to think that when they offer up something of themselves that the world is probably going to drop a hammer on them and so they come out fighting and ready to do it. I don't think they really want to, but it's something they feel they need to do to survive. That's why when you try and take away judgment from your feedback but instead offer sincerity and exude a willingness to help with little to no vested interest it just confuses them sometime. That is fucking sad and a huge indictment to me of how human society is right now. Why do I have to qualify everything I say? Why do I have to explain that if I don't like something it's not that I don't like people who don't like something, don't think less of people who do like that something and that what I say is personal opinion and nothing else nothing more. I have to do this way too much and its necessary because otherwise I'm going to get misunderstood. Why do I have to spend so much time thinking about how someone will react to something I say and who I might offend before I say it? After all that is something I say really what I feel or what I believe? And look to the converse of all this behavior. Why do I have to feel so shitty about myself when people make fun of something I say or give me feedback in the cruelest manner possible? If I do feel shitty about that (And I mostly think that some of us do at one point in time) then is it so surprising that I learn to become defensive? Is it so surprising that I find that things I say are super ingrained into me because I've had to defend them so much? This is just so counterproductive. An idea is an idea and an opinion is opinion. There are more valid ideas/opinions then others. Some are definitely more right then others. Just because you have a different idea from someone else doesn't mean you are stupid or even the other party is stupid. Maybe one or both of you just have incomplete information. Do you really think that maybe the other party didn't have a piece of information that you have or vice versa that maybe you guys can't achieve some commonality? Does the best outcome really have to be that you guys walk away agreeing to not disagree and maybe even not thinking less of the other party? Or maybe you win the other party to your side through skill in delivery and maybe yelling him/her down. Yes people do these things. We all do. I do it. Yelling at someone and implying they are stupid and crazy for not agreeing with you. Why? Because it fucking works and will cut through the time/effort to really explain something to someone, because yes for some people you need to do it in terms they can understand and this takes time. But in the long term which is a more valuable route to take? Imo, taking the time and making a serious effort at educating the other party. It may be thankless and it may be pointless, but it is my belief that if the other party has genuine interest an an open mind then no matter how "stupid" they are I have been able to get them to understand. They just have to want to. And even if shouting down some closeminded fool will get them to kowtow... I don't know if that's valuable to me because I doubt they really do understand and if anything it's only going to make them feel bad about themselves on some level and yes fucking defensive going forward. Another route is dumbing things down. My usual example here is stereotyping. Stereotyping gets a bad rap. It really does. And me just expressing that in public will probably get me some vile glares. Why? It's how humans thing. They base their predictions/expectations of their next experience of something on prior experience/data. This is true for groups of people, for concepts, for music for everything. This is simply how humans think and its natural and normal. Maybe you want to call it something different from stereotyping, but that's really all it is. The problem isn't that humans stereotype. In fact trying to get them to not to I think is just counter productive and will never really happen and frankly I'm not sure that it's something I don't want to do. Let's think about what would happen if people didn't stereotype and gave everything a blank state. Well it would take them forever to form an opinion on anything. Humans would get mired into things and probably die off. You can't give everything a blank slate. It's just not scalable and I don't see how it will ever be scalable. So what's up with white supremacists then you say? Or other hate groups? The people that give stereotyping a bad name. Well, this is simple. They are doing it wrong. They are doing it wrong! Stereotyping isn't where you draw core beliefs from. It's only the first stage in your thought pipeline. That's how it should be. Example: If a guy has only had bad experiences with black people and been fucked over by everyone he has met. I think it's perfectly valid for him to expect that next black person he meets very well may fuck him over. This is an acceptable and understandable situation to me. However, if he does meet a great and nice black person then first of all he does not apply his stereotype to that person and he also modifies his stereotype to: "Most black people are probably gonna fuck me over but there are some nice ones" and probably adjust how his expectations accordingly. After he meets enough cool black dudes then maybe that stereotype will turn into "Black people are just people so some are bad some are not bad." You overwrite/modify until you get to this point. Is this so bad? Is he a bad person for once fearing/disliking black people? I don't think so. You are a product of your past experiences and to call that invalid and valueless is selling your own experiences short. Don't do that imo. And let's look at how a white supremacist approaches dealing with black people. It'll be more like "I hate black people" and he meets a cool great black person and does he overwrite? Nope, he doesn't even really believe there are cool black people because that stereotype is an unshakable/unmodifiable core belief and that is stupid. So what do you think? Do you think the route we are going is going to lead to good white/black US race relations? I don't think so. I think telling kids that stereotyping is wrong and all people are equal is only anchoring race relations in shit. It's dumbing things down to a basic and fundamentally flawed level in a shitty attempt at trying to fix something because you think that's all kids/people can handle. Well, frankly it's not working. Studies show that people when in groups of their own kind are still pretty racist. If anything having grown up being fed this garbage I am only extra angry because it's pretty fucking apparent that all people are not all equal. Sure they all have a right not to be stabbed or tortured and are equal in that sense, but people are NOT equal so I don't know why I was told this over and over growing up. Anyway I think society should advocate proper use of stereotyping and I think that would make humans better because frankly if you aren't worry about being political correct and stereotypical thinking in general is very fast. That's the point. You optimize your thought pipeline and you'll be able to simply think faster. Just overwrite/modify and progress and don't worry so much about being wrong. Just worry about if you are getting to the point where you can be right more often.

That is pretty interesting. My experience with single blind dac testing (Close to double blind since there was very little influence/bias from the guy controlling switching in that after he would hook two up he pretty much immediately forgot which was left which was right) and I noticed a lot of differences between dacs. Some were pretty close though, but I am reasonably sure that if we took two that were the furthest sound apart and put them next to each other (In fact we did this at the end) and it was very much illustrative of how different even good decent dacs sound (I think we did this with the Benchmark and Parasound DAC 1600) and as much as I will never buy a benchmark and despite how some feel it sounds like garbage, it really doesn't sound that bad to me. Another factor I take into account is how different Filburt's dac and my Spectral sounds. Both are about the two best dacs I've ever heard but also sound almost completely different to me. Sure they share many similarities, but there are many differences and the overall holistic sound signature of the two is very different. They diverge and don't really converge. This is proof positive to me that we are nowhere near the point where high end, high cost or even high tech equates to complete transparency. If this is a graph of how we progress and refine something: \---------/ \-------/ \-----/ \---/ <- We are maybe here. Supposed to be a big V \-/ V This is where analytical meets music meets high tech measures well but still has soul and the vibrancy of a live performance. Why shouldn't something with absolutely perfect tech be moving and only be analytical? If the artist is great then shouldn't more perfectly rendered information only make the experience closer to real? Imo, clearly yes. We just aren't there yet. But Icarium you nincompoop why do so many expensive things sound the same? Well there are some pretty obvious answers to this. First of all most of us believe in a "high end" sound. I'm sure designers/makers and most of all the marketing people believe this as well and so they create for that. And why not? People will pay big bucks for it. So if that's all they are trying to reach for then is it any surprise that no progress is made towards the pointy end of that V? Also a lot of them do scrimp on design and use the same key parts and use schematically similar circuits. Just how it is because the market will bear products like that. Moreover why not? If all you needed to do to create and sell a high end product was take something that exists already and "improve" some measurements (And then don't list other measurements harmed by that improvement) swap in some fancy sounding parts and change the aesthetic and people will buy it. Why not? I don't blame just the makers I blame the community (Larger community of audio not just headphones) and I blame the consumers as well. And I hate to say it but the caliber of engineer that is going to the audio industry is not generally the best humanity has to offer. This is simply reality and due mostly to progress and the availability of more options and further incentivized by high paying salaries in places that can afford to offer them and value good engineering. Back then Audio and maybe Video and cars and other shit were all engineers had to choose from. Today we see industries like the software industry, the computer hardware industry, cellphone industry and even the financial industry pay a lot for top engineering talent. But you say, but engineering disciplines are different! What about those engineers that are only suited for audio. Well first of all I don't really find engineering to be that discipline unique. Engineering to me is more a methodology then really anything specific. And if you are an engineer that disagrees then maybe you haven't found/met an engineer from another discipline that has a lot in common with you. I have so I believe it, but I could be wrong. Moreover, it's also a big matter of societal programming. Does society tell them that they should be building faster than light engines or super sweet audio components by surrounding them with computers/the internet and ibuds? Not really and this does have an impact. It doesn't kill off all prospective audio engineers (Especially the hobbyists), but I truly believe it's shrinking the pool of talent. And the bright minds that do go into audio.. do they care about tubes? Do they care about utilizing an increasingly vanishing supply of "older" parts or really just what's the latest and greatest on the market? Do they even care about fidelity or just how to get rich quick or DRM making something that plays the radio/mp3s? This just makes people like Kevin Gilmore, Justin, Filburt, amb, Doug (Dvsitskk okay I always forget how to spell this), cetoole (And more) that much more valuable and amazing to me. So to me yes good dacs sound different. I wish they didn't since it would mean V win territory is getting closer to being reality, but I find that they do. It took me a long time and meeting Filburt to really set aside moar money = win or specs = win (Specs are good but they are pretty abusable by selective disclosure and also fine print. Like the THD distortion #s I think for Benchmark being only with a 1 khz test tone rather then averaged out from performance related to multiple tones across the range). When I could find something that was clear, super detailed, imaged well and yet had a musicality and tone and fullness and the ability to do speed with a big soundstage all in one package... but I did! A few things! And I have yet to hear anything that really has made me want to "upgrade" and best of all it was relatively cheap compared to some source components I've owned in the past.