Tony

Hahahah! Rochefort 10 is pretty good indeed, but it's better with strong cheese and such. I prefer lower alchool versions (8%, I think) since they have a more balanced flavour. My usual beer "pusher/teacher" says the Rochefort 6% is the most pleasant for normal drinking, and it's the only one I have left to try among them. Not an expert of St Bernardous but I am going to fill the gap (stomach?) soon. The Tripel Karmeliet was really awesome: it manages to put together the typical flavour of weisse and double malt beer, along with a sweet/acid presentation, and very fizzy (which I usually don't like much but fits well in this recipe). I'll have an aperitif with friends at 5 pm, better not drink much more before that time. Achel Tripel will wait for the night. Thank you all for the wishes.

Thanks for the wishes, guys! I have just had lunch, and there are a couple of Belgian beers waiting for me in the kitchen: Tripel Karmeliet and Achel. Antonio, holiday was very long (about 5 weeks). In the week of mid August I have been to Budapest and spent some time with our fellow PAdam. Great city, by the way.

Yes, in general, the lower in the 6-9 kHz range the peak is, the worse (and grating) the sibilance. Btw, I used to own the A250 and it was a sibilant mess, but I thought that it was mostly poor handling from my amp. Another can which changed completely its character with different amps was the Sony CD3000. I tried it with a Mini3, iBasso T4, CKKIII and even unamped iAudio 7. The highs were the most pleasent when using the Mini3 or the dap, the CKKIII used to make them a bit sharper. The T4, surprisingly (since it's usually opaque), turned the CD3k into a hell of sibilance.

Ott - Blumenkraft

Happy "birg-day", mate!

Thank you Faust! The list is very useful and there are many bands I didn't know. I'll dig those as soon as possible.

I suggest Clip-on's. They isolate more than normal earbuds, but obviously less than iem's. The ksc75 are just decent, ksc35 are a bit better. If he can spend, the Yuin G1A are not too bad provided his DAP can power their impedance. My 18mW/channel iRiver E10 could without an amp. Sennheiser PXC300 active noise canceling headphones are said to be pretty good by non-idiotic people as well. Very small, portable, foldable. The head direct RE1 are decent sounding but have basically no treble, plus the cable is unpleasant and I wouldn't bike with them. Stax SR-001 Mk2 sound good, but I wouldn't suggest to use them when biking. The least thing your friend would want in that situation is that they start making their horrible suckout noise, as well as other microphonic f the bike has a bump. I had them: good for sitting down, impossible to walk with without becoming nervous at any kind of noise they can produce.

I would expect the dac section to be superior than Pico, at least if the chip used is decently implemented. I am more concerned about build quality, since I have heard of many Minibox E+ needing for warranty (mine too after some weeks of owning it), and shipping back and forth a 700$ "portable dac" is not the healthiest thing to do.

Spritzer-404 ... Apuresound ER4P ER4S

Please do.

HA: A matter of points of view. That I know, anyway, it's possible to know beforehand from John what Revision of his upgrades can be performed.

Vampire Rodents - Premonition

Other than Tago Mago, I quite like Future Days, but it stands out less as a masterpiece. The other albums are less and less magnificent. I probably like Faust over any other kraut band, mostly thanks to their first album (Faust), incredibly visionary and experimental, although less "sonically pleasing" than stuff like Tago Mago. Have you heard Kraftwerk? Some very old stuff is worth digging into, like two visionary songs called Hall of Mirrors and Radioactivity (original version). The former is especially a trip.

An upgraded Melior Bitstream runs 1000$ from Museatex, when available. My own unit sounds great but there is much availability both in sound and layout among the different units (spritzer, for example, had one looking different inside, which he found harsh). There is variability not only in the revision of John Wright's upgrades, but also in how the units come back to him. They were made when Wright used to work with Meitner, none are being made anymore, so each existing unit may have undergone unpreditcable changes through the year, with owners trying to make them sound better. This also happened to Bidats.

I especially agree with the beautiful Tago mago, Faust I, Yeti. I wanted to ask to the list an album called Magma - Mekanik Destructiw Kommandoh, which apparently Faust didn't know. I find it very good, somewhat epic. Of the three albums I mentioned above, it's closest to Amon Duul II's Yeti.

Well, on a point we can agree: Denons aren't certainly "fun" headphones.

Apuresound ER4P Ety ER4S The new amp for the "Spritzer-404" should get here soon (thanks Jeev).

Adam, does the Pico provide cleaner bass, or just more impact?

Hi, I am considering abandoning my computer as main transport, and would like to find a hd based one. I saw a few for sale around here, but I am wondering which of those would do bitperfect digital out, as well as have decent jitter rejection performances. My source is a non-upsampling Melior Bitstream, and I would use coaxial wire. Thanks for any inputs you can provide.

Lil' Knight, You can stretch sony-like IEM silicon tips and biflanges to fit the sr001, as well as UE foam tips, but to me the stock silicon tips bear better sonic results.

I concentrated mostly on IEMs due to being a Portable Freak, but have also enjoyed some Stax and other cans. For me, here it goes (in bold, what I currently own):: Tier 1: Stax SR-X MkIII Pro Tier 2: Sony CD3000 (Apuresound V2 and Headphile deep cups) = Apuresound Etymotic ER4P Tier 3: Stax SR-003/SR-001 MkII > Yamaha HP-3 (ludoo's damping scheme) > NAD RP18 Tier 4: Westone 3 > Head-Direct RE0 = Klipsch Image X10 > Triple.fi 10 Pro > Yuin PK1 > Yuin OK1 > Audio Technica ATH-ESW9 Tier 5: Apuresound recabled ER4S > Etymotic ER-4P > Etymotic ER4S > Yuin G1 Tier 6: "Westone ES-recabled" Super.fi 5 Pro > Shure SE530 > Head-Direct RE1 > Altec Lansing iM716 (depodded to 41 Ohm) ---Noise level--- Tier 7: Yuin OK2 > Kenwood HD20GA7 OEM earbuds > Grado SR-60 Tier 8: Futuresonics Atrio M5 > Koss KSC75 (stock > kramer mod) > Yuin OK3 = Yuin PK2 > Sennheiser CX300 Trash: JAYS d-JAYS, OVC T25 Not rated: Sennheiser HD650 (insufficient amplification when I had them: I shouldn't have listened to who says a Minibox E+ is enough to make them sound decent), Koss A250 (would need an extremely warm tube amp to make the highs listenable), AKG K340 (needed more power than I could provide, resulting in similar sound to Altec Lansing iM716), Denon D5000 (impossible to rate: nice potential, treble too flawed and hard to fix)

What tips are you using, Boris?

Yes, it was definitely better when I heard both out of a SRM-1 MkII Pro last June/July.

Hahaha, still better than SR-003, which is decent for a portable headphone listener.

OK. Good clarification. I didn't think the Omega 2 had bigger soundstage than SR-X Pro. The latter to me seemed very decent compared to SR-003, for example... but I am too used to IEMs to assess about full size headphones soundstage. Maybe one day I'll be ready for an O2 rig.