Icarium

Nah PMD200 is a piece of code they stuck on 1 of 4 pieces of hardware the best of which and most common being a black fin. Thus it may not be the PMD200 code on it even if it does HDCD. Would have to see inside shots to see if it has PMD200 stamped on it.. I doubt they could straight up "recreate" it without some sort of licensing... which they may have done. Dunno.

How is it better than a Squeezebox? And what is good about those other things you listed? None of these things will basically make it like your non async usb dac will have async usb (In fact to those pricey things even claim async?). foo_me has an Empirical Audio Offramp whatever and I think he'd be the first to say it is NOT worth 700 dollars. It just reclocks and then sends the reclocked signal to your dac.... frankly the squeezebox is essentially doing the same thing. This wavelength thing probably greatly alleviates the jitter from usb, but is it its even better than say a card that outputs spdif I think it's tough to say... That 70 dollar Chinese thing that also claims to be async usb might be just as good heh. The only reason I'd be interested in an async usb -> spdif converter is 1. For my work rig 2. For some sort of retardedly good meet/transportable rig.... and neither of those justifies a 900 dollar converter, but a 70 dollar thing... sure why not

Hrm interesting I'll check out there findings and then try and see if I can duplicate your efforts... thoughts on if your mods will be applicable to the LCD-2s?

I think that might not entirely be the case.. also there's some weird shit about where they are manufactured and stuff too. Well with the new pics I need to look at the chips I have and see how real they look ;p

http://www.head-case.org/forums/product-annoucements/6871-symphones-magnum-pre-order-discount.html this might be more his speed.

I'm not sure what you are expecting they both have 70-80 hr a week day jobs so it's pretty tough for them to go large scale without even knowing what the market is for modern orthos is...

We'll have to see.. I mean pretty much the only two things that really bothered me were the lack of high extension and how at times it seemed to fall apart with complex/distortion heavy music (Fast paced indie rock with a lot of things going on at once)... and the latter issue may have been related to high extension. If that's all fixed then it may eclipse the AD2k for me in that price bracket and then its well worth anything up to 1k ;p As it stands the LCD-1 already does pretty good, but the AD2K is just better for me though about ~100 bucks more new.

Well given that its still cheaper than the headdirect one.. it just has to sound about that good and it's a pretty good deal ;p The headdirect one did sound quite good at canjam, but I vastly prefer how this one looks/is constructed as far as durability looks.

They said the LCD-2 will be $650. The trade in program is if you turn in your originally LCD-1s then it'll be 50 percent off and if you don't then its 15 percent off.

Definitely.

Well in reminding them to send me out the foam so I can get the loaner program finally off the ground they mentioned the LCD-2s are two weeks out... so maybe I'll have both to send out ;p

Interesting I wonder why foo_me and I have silver sharpie numbers on the power supply/amp (Both the same #). I'll ask craig next time I chat with him laf I take it you are happy with the item eh ?

It's kind of complicated... I mean he was the third to get his for sure ohwait no nestacio probably got his earlier since he's local. There's like the serial # written with silver sharpie or whatever on the power supply/amp.. and then the one on the little plate like 3/10 or whatever. I'm not sure which is technically the right serial #

Craig decided that the 6F8Gs crushed the 7n7s 5692 (I think? Some RCA military red base 6sn7 which he thought sucked and 6SN7s... Yeah I dunno I think I personally prefer the Tungsol Round Plate but I haven't gone back to the 6F8Gs version yet. But my findings mirror foo_me I just like an open sound rather than an intimate sound so it's all down to preferences. Haha no worries from me with regards to moving on more tubes I'm stuck to my (Done for this year thing). Dynafet expenses already gots me on lockdown.

I'd bulldoze your rig and your short-list and restart from scratch. Wait no, nuke that shit from orbit just to be sure, then restart from scratch.

Mmmm:

What is the second piece of info! I must know!

Huh interesting.. I wonder how it differs from the discrete dacs used in his top end products.. perhaps they are an earlier design and he's made refinements. Either way.. solid ass chip I wish I had dick powers. Yeah I'm a terrible human being, but I had to.

Don't think it's even on the same continent as him right now :/

Ah.. playing some Warren Zevon and am now used to the bass. I'm a fan.

Really? I think I prefer it with my balanced gilmore reference over the BA, though... it kinda depends on driver tube.

Nod It's okay I think I will live without one.

Just got my active 11Ls from falkon.. definitely more bass light than I had anticipated coming off of the M-Audio LX4 2.1 set up. Like I had anticipated there being a loss coming down from a sub but this will take a little getting used to, but I'm not a basshead so I will live The resolution and speed is very much amazing. Listening to some allegro Glenn Gould piano right now and its just... Having gone through a bunch of tracks I'm pretty happy overall though I have to get a handle on the presentation over all still.. The only really worrying thing is I'm hearing some distortion on track 1 of New Order's Lowlife album that I'm not familiar with... no other track is distorting that I can hear... I'll have to listen to it again on headphones and get some second opinions.

Done! Got you too j4cbo!

Shrug its similar to marketing a high end IcePower module power amp and the marketing literature is centered on the feature set of the modules. What's there to differentiate your implementation of the ess32 chip versus other dacs/cdps? What justifies the high price? Doesn't mean the thing sucks, but it's not particularly informative and when a company does do a badass implementation its comforting when they talk that up rather than just count on the brand name.