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It could be the source, of course. But I've owned a fair number of Stax amps (313, 007t, 717, McAlister heap, SRD-7 Pro with various speaker amps tube and SS) and used a fair number of sources with them (Rega, 840c, Opus 21, various DACs) as well as a fair number of phones (007, 007mk2, 303, 404, 003, Gamma Pro modded), so I'm not pulling this out of my ass. I did direct comparisons though of course they weren't true ABX tests and memory is faulty. The 717's basic sound signature remains as a coloration on top of whatever source you're listening to and whatever phones you're listening with. It is a subtle coloration and the amp is more neutral than not but it's not perfect. I do like its sort of sound though.

The 717 does sound like it has some slight "tubey" colorations to me - slightly warmed-up tone color, somewhat laid-back presentation, slightly diffuse and overly airy soundstage, and is a bit rolled-off on both ends. Very slight colorations in all cases though and it is close to neutral, but not quite neutral. Mostly straight wire with gain but with a little bit of tube color thrown in. I do like the warm tone color, but it needs to be less laid-back and polite for the 007. But for $900 or whatever it's an amazing bargain; it would still be a good buy for twice the price new. I would love to have an amp that's voiced in a similar way but with more power and a slightly more forward presentation.

Gas - Gas 0095 Legendary ambient masterpiece still sounds amazing 14 years later.

E05 was really good. More of a throwback to season 5/6 with the cheap car challenge but it was funny as hell and not too over the top. Solid classic TG.

Just back from Orbfest, a 3-day psytrance/electronic music festival in upstate NY. Lots of good artists there - Hallucinogen played live as well as a Shpongle DJ set, Total Eclipse, Logic Bomb, basically an all-star psytrance lineup. Simon Posford (Hallucinogen) played a great set though I wish he wouldn't crank up the bass and treble so high and then play at 110dB; my ears were splitting and it was hurting the music enjoyment a lot. Of course psytrance systems are generally not known for their quality but this one was very good as far as club-style systems go and it could have sounded a lot better. Still, the live set was great, awesome energy and drive and some superb new tracks, though the mixing was at times slightly sloppy. However, Simon's set was not the biggest surprise or the best set of the festival. Not by a long mile. That honor belonged to an act named "Liquid Soul" (a.k.a. Nicola Capobianco) which I only heard of in passing since I have an awesome chillout track by him in a mix. But I saw him labeled as "progress trance" and not really having much interest in that sub-genre I let it be. But let's just say that I know what music I'm getting as soon as I possibly can. The set was melodic proggy Goa with fantastic complex classically-influenced melody, flawless mixing, great drive, awesome flow, basically you name it, it was there. It was the best set I've heard in years, bar none, and there wasn't a single weak moment in it. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more. Also note that there is a different hip-hop/electronic jazz act named "Liquid Soul" and that's not who I'm talking about. Nice festival overall. I haven't slept in a few nights and just drove for damn near 6 hours so I'm a little loopy, but I'm glad I went. Even if we did get rained on and my tent proved to not quite be as water-proof as I hoped.

E03 was OK. Forgettable. The SIARPC interview was really funny though, and the Ken Block segment was nice, but come on, it's Ken Block. Just stand back and let the man do his stuff and you have some amazing footage ready to go.

Oh, it's worse than that. These phones sound as good as they look. Seriously great bass out of these things, very good mids with natural tonality, and lots of punch. They're fantastic cans for rock and the like. Also very good detail but they're 'stats so that's a given.

After you spend some time chasing a 9 inch tarantula around your house (I was on a research base in Indonesia) other bugs sort of lose their intimidation factor. I wish I remembered to get my camera... The worst bug we have around in NJ is not one of the biggest, but certainly one of the most unpleasant - the brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa). I would take a bite from any tarantula species, even the ones in the Poecilotheria genus which pack the most painful bite out of all tarantulas, over a brown recluse bite. The problem with the brown recluse is that it packs a necrotic venom (as opposed to a neurotoxic venom in most spiders) which locally but indiscriminantly attacks all tissues sometimes resulting in 2-3 inch wide necrotic lesions which cause permanent tissues damage, require skin grafts and can lead to major gangrene (though only a few bites turn out this way, most bites result in nothing but moderate pain). We also have wolf spiders which can get big but they're mostly harmless and are actually quite beneficial if you have them in your gardens. There are also black widows and ticks carrying Lyme disease but they're extremely rare. For the most part though this area is very safe as far as bugs go... look up human botflies sometime (Dermatobia hominis), and then be thankful that they aren't around. I am thinking of getting a few tarantulas though, they make pretty cool pets and aren't hard to keep though they don't have much in the way of personality. They're mostly harmless to humans and are often docile enough to be handled though of course it's up to the individual animal's temperament. Some are also absolutely gorgeous and are basically living jewelry.

Buddy Guy - Stone Crazy Buddy Guy really cuts loose on what was probably a drug-fuelled rampage in the studio. Pretty amazing stuff really, the only studio album of his that manages to capture the atmosphere of his live shows.

Damn edit timer. Meant to read "Look at the Ultima GTR, it posted an unofficial 1:12.8 a good while back..." but youtube autolink messed things up... This wasn't the Stig driving either mind you, it could easily have been closer to 1:10 with him at the wheel.

I don't think so. Cars age too fast. I have no doubt that soon enough something will come along and knock it off the top. Look at the Ultima GTR, it a good while back with a 720hp engine and that's basically an overgrown kit car, and it accepts engines up to 1100bhp anyway. The Caparo T1 was around 1:10.6 (vs FXX at 1:10.7) and its aim is to be road legal even if it has issues in its present iteration. Still I'm surprised they put up the FXX time in the first place since last I heard it wasn't road legal. That's a great show, very spontaneous and genuinely funny at times.

Thanks for the impressions! I guess you could say that my sonic preferences lean towards the fluid/organic side of neutral, but neutral means a lot of different things to different people. Still I really like the O2 Mk1, HD600, and K340, don't much care for the SR-404, and generally can't listen to Ultrasones, A250, or ER-4S at all from the piercing treble, so maybe that will give some idea. I can't stand any kind of treble harshness, cold/nasal midrange colorations, loose/bloated bass, and grain. I also don't like a U-shaped FR since while I listen quietly most of the time I do like to crank it while listening critically and boosted bass/highs will cause fatigue. I'm guessing that I'm agonizing over two presentations that are essentially slightly different takes on neutral and there's nothing to worry about from going in either direction. In any case I'm really looking forward to impressions from the next few weeks. The custom IEM market is really interesting, with a lot of competition and pretty stiff consumer standards seeing how most of them are aimed at music professionals, so it's not surprising that there's so much development and improvement going on. I would really like to see an FR for the JH13 if that's even possible and see if it can provide any meaningful output at 20khz like JH claims. That would really help it when it comes to rendering overtones/harmonics and will give it a textural edge over other IEMs.

I really like Top Gear but I hate their attitude. The whole chauvinist Britain > * attitude and the idea that everyone else can settle for second-grade content. They can go fuck themselves. If you don't want everyone else to watch your show don't show it to them, but don't give people scraps like they were dogs while you sit and eat your five-course meal. Also youtube is what gave them their popularity in the first place and their constant crusade against youtube'd content is ridiculous. I always pay for shows and music that I like but they're not getting a cent from me as long as they keep treating me like a second-rate viewer. I thought the whole Schumaker thing was pretty lame too. They've been milking the whole Stig identity thing on the web site for years and now that the show is running out of ideas they're probably going to start doing it every episode on the show too. But the rest of the episode was pretty good IMO.

Thanks, I really do look forward to your impressions of the full version. AFAIK you, Justin, and Larry all have the ES3x and will be getting the JH13, and I hope digihead won't be able to resist either since I have found his impressions to be pretty spot-on thus far.

I'm still waiting for more feedback on these. I was dead set on getting the ES3x but now I'm going to wait for impressions from people that have both the ES3x and JH13. In the meanwhile I'm just sitting back and staring incredulously at the 30+ page appreciation thread for a product that isn't even out yet. Anyone else find the very idea of appreciation threads within the context of the current state of HF destructive? It's all very fine to have an appreciation thread when you have a solid poster base of rational people, but when you have a forum full of consumerist trolls who somehow identify themselves based on what gear they have and now many posts are under their belts, it starts to breed even more rampant fanboyism. Yeah, I own lots of Westones. I guess by HF protocol I should then think along the lines of this: Down with Shures! Down with Ultimate Ears! Quick, run to the trenches of Westone appreciation threads and let's all start lobbing trolling grenades at the trench of Phonak owners, after all their IEMs are less expensive than ours and they're easy pickings! But watch out for the JH mechanized divisions, their $1100 IEMs are even more expensive, and we have to make even more noise or everyone else will think we're second rate! I mean, they have twice the drivers and are even more expensive, and that makes them better people! Or maybe I should jump over to the JH side - this could really increase my sense of self-worth!

Well if you didn't like Pattern Recognition then Gibson probably isn't for you. Neuromancer is his most popular book but it's a very adolescent book really and he's done better since then. Pattern Recognition is probably the most polished example of his style. I also like (some of) his short stories. I do like Gene Wolfe. "Fifth Head of Cerebrus" and the "Book of the New Sun" series were great, and "The Wizard Knight" series and "Pirate Freedom" were quite decent. As far as surrealist SF goes I would recommend Michael Swanwick's "Stations of the Tide." This is the only Swanwick book I really liked so far, though I'm a huge fan of his short stories (esp. "The Dog Said Bow-wow"). He's a much better short story writer than a novelist IMO, but Stations of the Tide is an exception.

Those nerdy paragraphs as you call them aren't the reason why Stephenson needs an editor. All that stuff is great, and is what makes him so enjoyable. But he does need work on some characters as well as pacing/storytelling and maintaining tension throughout. Snow Crash is a perfect example - very good tense buildup but tension evaporates in the end and the resolution is a major letdown. Gibson has his problems too but his main strength is his multi-layered surrealistic and almost psychedelic narrative. He has a tone quite unlike just about anyone. And yes, Pattern Recognition was the last Gibson book I read and I liked it quite a bit too.

All I can say is - it's about bloody time you joined. Welcome to the madness, straightjackets optional.

Wow, lots of Stephenson action going on. And speaking of Stephenson... just finished Cryptonomicon. Pretty typical work for him really - 1100 pages of entertaining and occasionally insightful rambling. Some weak plotting, some good and believable characters together with some not so good ones. The book is definitely more consistent than Snow Crash and more entertaining than The Diamond Age, worth reading but he still has a long way to go to catch up to Gibson and other people at the top of the game.

Better than ES3x? What's the sound signature like? One of the reasons why I put off getting the ES3x is the JH13 coming out, so very much looking forward to a comparison when you get your #1.

Yeah, I've never done that so I don't know if what I heard was real or placebo. I'm open to either possibility.

Yes, I meant A/B testing, I didn't have an ABX box. It would be very interesting to get my hands on one though. I'm not one for endlessly debating the differences between cables either since to me that's always the very last component of the system, and so far I'm still swapping sources around trying to get the rig just right. But with the 007, and so far only with the 007 (both the Mk1 and Mk2), the difference was more noticeable right away rather than being more along the lines of "well I think I hear something but I'm not sure." There was more treble volume with the silver and a bit less midbass/lower midrange, and it was definitely more suited to the 007's FR. The 007's resolution is really startling and a whole host of considerations that just don't apply with most headphones suddenly start cropping up. Definitely looking forward to your impressions with the KGSS.

Understandable, but try some simple ABX testing with the O2 and silver vs copper cable. I was certainly very surprised at the results.

Woob - 1194 Legendary, and for a good reason.

Jude is laying it on pretty thick lately. Still, this is interesting. I do like balanced armatures when they're implemented well, and if this turns out to be a good IEM it will be a very good option. UE is probably going after Westone and trying to reverse their trend of undercutting UE prices. The near future for IEMs is looking very interesting.