aerius

The best, no, for the price, that's a tough call. The Simaudio Supernova would give it a real good run for the money, and if its brightness could be toned down a bit I'd put it ahead of the regular Capitole. Not quite sure where it stands with the SE though, I'll need more listening with both to figure that out. It does. To me the Andromeda is perfect, it's got a fair sized margin on either Capitole and it takes a damn good vinyl setup to beat it. The Andromeda, I think, is limited more by the CD format than anything else.

Continuing... The main difference I noted between the two is the treble, the SE is definitely better here, and this is where most of the gap is. The resolution up top is better, as is its ability to avoid sibilance even with shitty CDs. Sibilance and hash on the non SE tends to resolve into coherant musical information on the SE, for instance the cymbals on "The Bazaar" by The Tea Party are a bit sharp & edgy on the regular, but not so much on the SE, but it's not getting rounded over nor rolled off in any way. There's more information & detail, and less annoying hash, which makes it less fatiguing and more real. It was much the same idea on "What's Going On?" by Blue Rodeo, the regular leaves a bit of random hash in the cymbals while the SE gets rid of it and turns that noise into music. To use an analogy, it's kinda like what happens when an FM radio tuner isn't quite dead on with the station, parts of the music fuzzes out into static, but when dialed in the static is gone and you get more musical information coming in. The SE is basically the fine-tuning of the radio dial. With the rest of the frequency range there's not really much of an improvement, the SE is a little ahead in all areas but it's not as dramatic as it is in the treble. So I won't talk about it much, lest I start sounding like a magazine reviewer. Just for Reks, I played some Feist on the system, and this is where I realize how artificial and processed "The Reminder" is in comparison to "Let it Die". Which brings me to the next part, how do they deal with non-audiophile approved recordings? Well, the SE is better here, it sounds fuller & more vivid without sounding like it's playing things through rose-tinted lenses. Yes I can easily hear all the flaws, even more so than the regular Capitole, but they don't bug me as much. It's sweeter & better, but in a good way, not in the way of crappily done tube gear. Going back to "The Reminder", the songs are great but the recording & mastering sucks. On "1 2 3 4" they either used a cheap-ass recorder for her vocals or they ran her voice through 50 stages of post-processing, same thing with half the instruments. Yet it still sounds pretty good with the SE, while with the regular I find I'm more distracted by the sterile-sounding vocals & instruments, and I don't think I'd want to listen to it more than once a day at the most. With the SE I wouldn't mind spinning the disc every day. Soundstaging & imaging is pretty close, the SE is a bit more precise and seems to have more depth, but I'd need a lot of listening to tell for sure. Dynamics, frequency extension, and the other stuff I haven't mentioned yet is also like that, the SE is marginally ahead but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do an ABX test with money on the line. To sum things up, the SE is better, crap CDs, "audiophile approved" CDs, and everything in between sounds better with the SE. It gives a little bit more of everything, particularly in the treble, and doesn't have any downsides as far as I'm concerned. Is it worth $700-800 more? For me, no, cause I can't justify nor afford a Capitole. For someone who can afford one, and whose system is good enough, I think it's a worthwhile upgrade to consider. Unless of course that person is saving up for a Simaudio Andromeda.

Teaser: So my local dealer has the entire Audio Aero CD player lineup, SE & non SE, but they were always setup in different systems and I never got to hear them on the same gear. Until this past weekend. In short, the SE is better, but I still don't think it's worth nearly as much as they're charging for the upgrade, which is quite a few hundred bucks. As a person who knows which end of a soldering iron to hold, chances are I could do the upgrade myself for a hell of a lot less. Of course, if one can afford a Capitole at retail prices, money probably isn't an issue. Gear: Artemis Labs LA-1 linestage and SP-1 power amp, with Wilson-Benesch Discovery speakers. I was going to start the impressions today and finish tomorrow, but for some reason I'm a lot more tired than I thought I was, so I'm going to call it a day.

I was waiting till I could borrow a 650 to try out before commenting. Maybe it's because I only have a Technics receiver/integrated amp that I picked up from the pawn shop for $20, but my observations don't really jive with those of catscratch. I also rebuilt my 8W p-p tube amp, but it didn't fare much better than my receiver. The best match is my K340 amp, running 6BX7 output tubes, which I find to be too bright and lacking in bass with any of my own headphones, but even then it still didn't match my K340, let alone my RS-1. I didn't think there was a monumental improvement when driving the 650 with a p-p amp, the Technics was about on par with my DIY Gilmore Lite while the 8W tube amp was a bit better, and my K340 amp was another step up. On the other hand, the 650 out of the headphone jack of the Technics is quite possibly the best match for my turntable out of all the headphones I have. It sounds damn good with vinyl, but with digital it sounds pretty meh. My new working theory is that Senns are voiced for analog playback systems.

He ate them, and they tasted nothing like chicken.

For a hand held 2 second exposure in 30mph winds, it's pretty damn stable.

Looks nice, but for some reason, I don't exactly have high hopes for its durability.

It's not the camera, it's the guy behind the camera. Some of my best pictures were taken with $5 disposable cameras. That's why I have a point & shoot instead of a DSLR, my Canon SD800 goes everywhere with me while the DSLR would spend almost all of its time at home. I can't lug a DLSR and its lenses around with me all the time and as a result I'm going to miss a lot of nice photos.

I haven't had any real issues with my digital Elph unless I'm trying to do something dumb like taking long exposure pictures of people at night. The picture below is a hand-held 2 second exposure at night, image stabilization rocks.

In my area, the only time I see square or rectangle pizza slices is when the pizza place makes a rectangular pizza. Every round pizza I've ever seen until half an hour ago has been cut into wedge shaped slices, and I did not think there was any other way of cutting a round pizza.

This is the first time in my life I've seen a round pizza being cut into rectangular slices. I am deeply disturbed and confused.

As told to the class by one of my university profs. A group of Polish tourists is flying on a small airplane through the Grand Canyon on a sightseeing tour. The tour guide announces: "On the right of the airplane, you can see the famous Bright Angle Falls." The tourists leap out of their seats and crowd to the windows to see the falls and the plane violently loses control and crashes. Why? There were too many poles on the right side of the plane.

Needs more cowbell! Literally.

I hear your mom likes them. Stuffed up her ass.

It is also a speaker amp, for when/if you get Duos.

Tell him to go nuts and build this.

If you build it, don't use the 12AU7. The joy of DIY is that there are many excellent tubes you can use which the commercial guys can't since they'd have to stock 10,000 spares. Use a pair of 6J5's (single triode version of the 6SN7) instead, or if you don't need quite as much gain, the 6P5GT which is the octal version of the 76.

What was the question again? I got the naked chicks part but I seem to have missed something important in the process... Ok, seriously now. I have a burning hatred for the Beyer 880 (painfully bright, harsh, and sibilant) so it's gone, I dislike the K701 as well (more bland than vanilla ice cream) so it's gone too, meaning the Stax wins by default. Even the entry level Stax 2020 which I heard years ago can match the 880 & K701 in terms of detail, and I find it's more neutral than both, ie. doesn't bore me to death or make my ears bleed. It won't play loud and dynamics are kinda meh, but I suspect that's more the fault of the cheap wallwart powered amp box than anything else. I'm not exactly satisfied with the Stax either, but at least it doesn't outright piss me off like the 880 & K701. That's basically what I meant when I said "win by default".

Every Chapters/Indigo store I've been to so far has it on their shelves. Some branches of the Toronto library system carry it, and the Mississauga central library has every issue going back for at least 2 years. Please tell us more about your man-love relationship. On 2nd thought, maybe not...

I read them for free thanks to the local library. I just have to wait an couple months or so for the issues to go into circulation.

I haven't done that one yet, but I've reversed left & right on RCA input jacks a few times and then wondered why the channels were reversed.

True, but chances are we've both made enough goofs so that we can tell stories about them for a long time to come, well, at least I have. Did I tell you about the time I forgot to put the fuse in and wondered why my amp wouldn't turn on?

The great thing about diyAudio.com is that there's boatloads of information and in-depth technical discussions with lots of highly knowledgeable people. The bad thing is after a year or two there, you come to realize that many commercial products are pure utter shit.

I know someone who put a Van den Hul Colibri on a Pro-Ject Debut for shits & giggles. As far as I know, that's the most absurd cartridge to turntable price ratio I know of. Anytime PJ, anytime!

Somewhere, there's an XV-1S which is crying out for you to buy it.