Knuckledragger

Tonight I took the Fugs out of their box for the first time after two weeks with the 880s, and a few days with the 650s. Man do my dynamics sound sleepy compared to the H2s. These cans are so in your face. I don't do much A/B comparison with equipment, preferring to spend a long period of time getting to know the character of a piece of kit. That said, the H2s are completely unlike any other headphone I have ever heard. It's like looking at my music through a Canon EF 100mm F/28 macro lens. I'm listening to Ashtar Command's cover of Mazzy Star's "Into Dust" and at the end of the song, when the female singer repeats the "into dust" line I can tell which bars she's breathing in on. This approaching the musical equivalent of TMI. The TakeTs are sensitive to everything upstream and report on it in [excruciating/euphoric] detail. Apple's AAC codec sounds okay to me at high bitrate out of my iPod/Kosses, but is downright unlistenable with the H2s. The midrange, which can already be problematic, becomes an absolute quagmire. I spent several hours today ripping CDs to flac because the lossy versions on my HDD are unacceptable. I'd be curious to hear the previous rev of the H2s, that have a more recessed high end. Cymbals have so much energy with my version. I'm itching to hear the H2/TR2 driven by a nice tube amp. Something that will smooth off the edges a bit on the upper frequencies.

I own two 1/4" reel to reel decks one is a relatively small Tascam, and the other is a massive Otari that sits in its own 3' rack case. If I sold both, I might be able to afford one of their tapes. 0_o The Tape Project's page has one of those menu boxes that follows as you scroll. Those thing always creep me out.

I can't say, as I have never purchased music from the iTunes store. I wouldn't want to make a bad situation worse, however. I did buy a few FLACs from Music Is Here, a digital download company based out of Latvia. $1 per file, no DRM. Sounded pretty good to me.

0_o Unless the source file was lossless, that procedure is going to result in an awful transcode that will be full of artifacts.

Database error The Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio database has encountered a problem. Please try the following: * Load the page again by clicking the Refresh button in your web browser. * Open the www.head-fi.org home page, then try to open another page. * Click the Back button to try another link. The www.head-fi.org forum technical staff have been notified of the error, though you may contact them if the problem persists. We apologise for any incompetence.

Head-Fi appears to be down for me. Can anyone else reach it?

So did I. It actually makes more sense that way.

A huge bag of packing peanuts.

Nice. Do you know when this particular pair was made? I'm curious by what people mean when they say "vintage" RS-1s. The wackypedia entry for Grado Labs lists most of their models, but has no manufacturing dates. I started a thread on That Other Place about dates of manufacture and number produced of Senn and Stax stats (mostly courtesy of one obsessive Icelandic fellow.) I'd love similar info on Grado's dynamics.

Interesting. /me downloads. Personally, I think the whole mashup idea is about five years past its expiration date, but I do hear occasional rework that transcends what is otherwise (IMVJO) a novelty genre.

GG fans if you have not seen 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, I highly recommend it. I saw it back in the 90s on laserdisc. I wish I still had that copy. My LD player is very underused these days.

(Disclaimer: not a real quote.)

Wow. Just wow. That is possibly the best post I've read on h-c.

This joker sells Quail power cords for $30 ea. (his "regular price" is a joke.) They are $4-7 (with a few $15 exceptions) straight from the company. Minimum purchase is $50. They seem to prefer to sell to companies, and not individuals, but that wasn't an issue in my case.

This sounds like it was written by Sony's marketing department. It didn't "catch on" because it was an easy expense to cut. It's pretty clear that major electronics manufacturers, operating under pressure from the MAFIAA, view consumers with condescension and scorn. This is why players can't ouput DVD-A and SACD content digitally, and why the HDMI spec is such a complete abortion. Speaking of, how hard would it have been to add word clock to HDMI? Yes. Very. The upper end of professional audio recording (Neve, etc) makes home audio look like a relative bargain. I have occasionally encountered high end home audio equipment with word clock (the first I ever saw was that flagship transport/DAC Sony made in '91 or so) but it is very much the exception and not the rule.

This problem was solved in the world of pro audio more than 20 years ago. It's called "word clock." Why consumer gear lacks it, I'll never know. Probably so high end audio shops can sell $3000 digital interconnects. 0_o

Others may have already explained this, but "Sorry about your thin skin" is the head-case version head-fi's "Sorry about your walllet" greeting. In short, head-fi.org is a cult of people who encourage each other to spend ludicrous sums of money on headphone gear. Head-case.org is a cult of people who sometimes engage in merciless flaming and encouraging you to spend your money wisely. In spite of the occasional outbreak of cretinous behavior, the lack of censorship around here leads to a more free flow of ideas and much less bullshit. In my relatively short time on head-case, I have observed a lot of smart people with wealth of experience on which to draw. There are a few idiots and asshats, but they make themselves known pretty quickly. Based on what you said in your first post, it sounds like euphonics are very important to you, especially vs. detail. This is a recipe for tubes if I ever heard it. First suggestion: the Headroom Millett Hybrid. It has the advantage of being a HeadRoom product (meaning it is well designed, constructed, and supported) and a pleasingly warm sound. While you're contacting HeadRoom, ask them about a pair of Sennheiser HD-650s. You won't be sorry you did.

Wow. Just wow.

Toslink is indeed rubbish, but digital audio over USB is often superior to coaxial. USB and FireWire eliminate most of the jitter issues that Toslink, SP/DIF, and AES/EBU have (without a additional wordclock connection, that is.)

Somebody save this guy. Anyone who flies an airplane should be concerned about fires.

For years, my sig on That Other Place was a list of my gear, with links to pictures. A month ago, I changed it to "Team fuglyphones. Team boat anchor." in honor of the TakeT's arrival. With the recent resurrection of the 'Fi, it's gone back to my old one. My sig here does not mention gear.