mjb

my favorite headphone is the hd650, properly amped. i've not extensively heard the hd595 before today, but i just grabbed a pair from a local shop and have been listening to them straight out of my macbook headphone out, and i gotta say, these are a fantastic hd650 low power compliment! they have a very similar flavor... i think they actually sound better than the 650's straight from the hp out. i think i've finally found my ksc75 replacement. anyway, that's all i wanted to say.... mjb

ah yes...hiding the option as a select box all the way over on the right, after two checkbox options... i knew i was dumb thanks, mjb

is there a preference for turning off email notification of new pm's? if so, i guess i'm dumb and i can't find it. if not, can y'all add it? mjb

i've not used dbpoweramp myself, but there seem to be a lot of folks over at hydrogen audio who have switched from eac to dbpa now that it has accuraterip... i think you'll find info on all the best options for doing what you're trying to do over at ha. mjb

another lossless and lossy collection all within itunes is to add the "kind" and "bit rate" columns and keep a copy of both all within the same itunes library. if you change the preference for the import type, you can then highlight all your tracks and right click and select "convert", it will convert to whatever format/quality you've set in the preferences, and keep both. so once you've reripped lossless, you can highlight all your alac and transcode to whatever lossy you want. of course, the downside is that you've got 2 (or more if you keep more than 1 lossy copy) entries for all those tracks/albums. mjb

a lot of people like the glass ones...there are a couple on ebay, but require the mini adapter (from radio shack or whatever) and there's another glass one you can get that is made with a mini on one end (can't remember the site off hand and can't search hf for it at the moment ) i used the monster one that came with the airport express stereo connection kit, since i figured that if the stereophile jitter measurements of the airport express were done using that cable and the measurements were good, then the cable must be ok. some have been concerned with the fragility of the glass cables...not sure how founded that concern is, since i haven't heard of anyone damaging it... mjb

necrophurries, you've created a whole new fetish sensation! mjb

i'm assuming "home source components" qualify as anything that needs to be plugged in or is too heavy to transport...so i'll post here ) i used to own a lavry da10, feeding an hd650 balanced through a moon audio blue dragon. sold it off a while ago. it has always been my favorite headphone rig, partially for the transportability of it. i think i'm going to pick one up again... i fed the da10 with either a cheap dvd player via coax or an airport express via optical, depending on the situation. now that i have a macbook, i plan on using optical out of the laptop directly. just wondering if anyone has any experience using the macbook's optical out and how it compares as a transport with other stuff (namely squeezebox, airport express, cheap optical transports, etc). anyone ever have any problems with their mac optical out? any anecdotal feeling on its reliability? thanks, mjb

yeah...i'll backpedal a bit more and say that the bose statement was a bit harsh, because b&w's do have some fine sounding speakers (after all, i have spent many thousands on their gear)...i probably should have said something like, they would consistently earn a 4.0 on the headroom scale for great sound but a bit lopsided price/performance ratio. mjb

the 803D's are 8k (probably can find them a little cheaper though)... mjb

clarifying, backpedaling...whatever you want to call it. just because i share an opinion with a majority of a few of the snootier audio sites, doesn't make it less true for me....btw, i still think b&w's speakers are overpriced for the relative sound they produce, coming from having owned and heard them. maybe my impressions are tainted by the mob, but when it comes down to it, i like other stuff much better and have a hard time understanding what makes their speakers so great. mjb

happy thanksgiving! mjb

what i meant was that bose is the popular overhyped brand of mid-fi, b&w of hi-fi...again, whatever that means, just trying to be "clever"...anyway i've owned 3 different pairs of b&w's over the years and have heard their entire high-end line for many hours at a time (both the old nautilus "non-d" stuff and the newer "d" stuff).... so i guess you idiots needs me to append "this is what i think and is my opinion" to everything i post? clearly you assume i was trying to argue some sort of fact about their speakers...actually i was talking about my impressions of their place in hi-fi gear and their relative sound quality as i see/hear it. mjb

hrm... b&w is the bose of hi-fi. their speakers are overpriced and overhyped. that's not to say they don't sound good, just that there are much much better performers at any of their price points. they cater to the upper middle class guys building a home theater in their mcmansion. that said, there is one exception, which are their reference loudspeaker, the nautilus 800's...those are absolutely fantastic speakers and compete well at the +15k level...methinks i have not heard this football though, so maybe it's a winner! mjb

i have bad luck and i seek out info that will make me feel better about myself mjb

i've had problems with netflix dvd's on my macbook (a hardware issue)...if it recognized them, vlc would play them just fine. i've read somewhere that netflix get's purposely high-error pressings of dvd's...which is supposedly a way to prevent many computer dvd drives from handling them. because of the way computer dvd rom drives need to be able to read all the data error free to work at all, whereas standalone dvd players will happily skip over errors and continue reading... i think this behavior is not so much a pure hardware thing (as many dvd players use the same dvd rom drives as computers) but rather a consequence of either the drive's firmware and/or OS drivers. either way, those slot-loading drives on all the macs (except the full pro desktops) suck balls...they're designed to be low power and i've had nothing but problems with them, going back through many years of macbooks, powerbooks and ibooks... go get a cheap "lite-on" external usb dvd rom drive (google for the highly rated model numbers) for all your optical needs. mjb

if you're talking sound quality and believe the hype on hf, then it is generally not considered better sound quality over the 1g nano i have no first-hand experience, just thought i'd take advantage of some of the time i've wasted reading about the relative sound quality of the various ipod gens/units (probably arrived at using marshmallows) mjb

the javascript script files are being imported slightly differently on each page. this shouldn't make a difference, since both ways should work, but they are different nonetheless. i didn't go through the javascript code, just looked it over, but needless to say, it isn't encapsulated very well, so there may be a namespace/variable clash somewhere with the new site... i.e. some functionality on your page(s) outside of the menu is using the same variable/function name that the menu is using and/or is it refering to DOM elements whose names have changed in the new section. but, it works for me in ff 2.0.0.9 and i do not get any errors in my javascript console... mjb

senn hd650 grado rs1 senn hd600 shure se530 grado sr80 beyer dt770/80 jvc ref 220 koss ksc75 shure e4c ue sf5pro sony mdr-v6