aerius

I don't know what kind of workouts you do, but when I do a workout, the music player better be small and on my body or else the wires are going to get in the way, get mangled, and busted up fast. To me it doesn't make sense to run a stationary home DVD player to an amp and then to my earbuds, there's fucking wires everywhere getting in the way and waiting to be broken. It just seems stupid to me. Get something small like a iPod Nano or Shuffle, secure it to your body and run the earbud wires under your shirt and right to your ears. Keep it simple, keep it light, that way shit don't go wrong. Besides, if you're doing a proper workout and not some wussy yuppie crap, you'll be breathing too hard and your heart will be pounding nicely so you won't be able to tell the difference between an iPod and some $5000 setup.

Those must've been good times, sleep, get held, and suck on breasts all day, I wish I could remember that far back.

I was breast-fed as a baby, therefore there should be another stage. In other words, I demand boobies!

PiccoloNamek is a fucking tool, I think I had a run-in or 2 with him before I was banned. Anyway, my impressions of the 650 is quite similar to yours, if I didn't have my K340 I could live with it, but since I do have a K340 the flaws are more than I'd want to tolerate. It has been over 2 years since I've heard the Stax 404 system so I'm rather hesitant to comment on it. It is more effortless than a 650, but at the same time it doesn't have the groove & drive of a Grado, compared to say, an RS-1 it still feels like it's falling behind the beat a bit, but then again pretty much everything does including my K340. The Stax has more of the HP-1000 character, it's not going to put you to sleep like a Senn but you ain't gonna be dancing along and playing air guitar either. Seeing how you like the K1000, I think the Stax 404 should be a good match for you, however, you're still going to have issues lying down with them if you have a big fluffy pillow. They need space to breathe and if the pillow's too big it ain't gonna be good.

The give-a-shit-o-meter remains firmly pegged at zero. The companies can go fuck themselves until they come up with a unified standard and enough affordable content to support said standard. In other words, I want to be able to replace every DVD I have with hi-res whatever for $15-20 a disc. Until then, I couldn't care less what they do.

On the other hand the 600's & 580's still have that hole in the soundstage, and they still sound like they're falling behind the beat of the music. Yeah it's airier sounding, but the other fundamental issues are still there. Beyers will likely give you the same treble issues and thin sound of the W5000, the K340 is nice if you get a good one but that raises more amp issues than you'd likely want to deal with. The K340 keeps most of the K1000 sound, but with a richer midrange & smaller (though still larger than 650) soundstage.

You need to recable your headphones and mod your sources, along with addressing the issues of power conditioning and vibration control. Then, and only then will your headphones sound good. Ok, seriously now. I'd say get K340's, but that opens up a huge can of worms in terms of headphone variability and amp requirements. K1000, same but not quite as bad. Senns ain't my thing but they may work for you, and they go well with the Headroom amp you already have. On a less serious note, I'd advise drinking your favourite alcoholic beverage until everything sounds right.

Sad, but all too true these days. Head-fi is like a fucking soap opera, complete with all the fucked up characters, stupid backstabbing plots and power games, and pretty much empty of actual content. I go there whenever I need a reminder of how stupid and petty people are.

Well, the only 2006 albums I bought this year were Wintersong (Sarah McLachlan), Orphan Music (Sarah Slean), and Ghost Stories (Chantal Kreviazuk). I'm having a hard time deciding which of the first 2 is better, they're both good, but neither's really exceptional.

In defence of Ray, he does have to pay the Stereophile ad costs while RnB and ALO have no expenses other than putting up a cheap website.

We actually had a chance to do some CD, DVD-A, SACD, and vinyl comparisons using the same album in the different formats. DVD-A and SACD are a fair bit better than CD, but still have a ways to go to match vinyl, I wasn't familiar with the music but I didn't need to be, the differences weren't subtle. I thought the new high-res digital formats would be effectively the same as vinyl, boy was I wrong, again. And this was with the Audio Aero Prestige SACD/CD player, definitely one of the better players out there, and worth more than the vinyl rigs. Yeah, then again the same could be said of many things in audio. The Quad ESL57 is almost 50 years old now and very few modern speakers can match it in midrange detail & clarity, the midrange is incredibly clean. The Lowthers are like 70 years old and there's still something really direct and special in their midrange. Some things are just surprisingly ahead of their time and the LP is one of them.

Natalie MacMaster at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga. She broke a string on her violin and then changed the key of the song and finished it before restringing. Did I mention she's cute? Some dude on guitar at the local pub. I didn't get his name but he was doing some pretty killer Eagles and Police covers.

The need to keep the damn things clean is a big reason I'm not getting a vinyl rig. However if I strike it rich and have one of those automated record cleaning machines then that'll change. Of course if I were really rich I'd get someone to clean my records for me in exchange for listening time on my system.

So a few weeks ago I had the chance to get together with some folks and listen to some nice vinyl rigs. Crap, I'm now ruined, because I've now heard what vinyl can really do, and it's goddamn scary how good it is. What was most shocking to me was the soundstage and the amount of low level details. With vinyl, I could be practically anywhere in the room (other than right next to a speaker or something absurd like that) and the soundstaging would still be as good or better than sitting in the sweetspot with CDs. In the sweetspot, it's like there's no speakers in the room, even with non-audiophile records like a 30 year old Bob Marley LP. In terms of detail resolution it was like going from a Grado SR60 all the way to an RS-1, music is a lot more there and real, and you really do hear so much more. Having never heard a really good vinyl setup before, I always figured it was a bunch of trade-offs and that the two camps were just being dogmatic weirdos like so many other things in audio. I thought CD had better frequency extension and dynamics while vinyl had better PRaT and soundstaging, and a slightly better midrange. Boy was I ever wrong. I don't know if vinyl will do 20Hz bass, but that Bob Marley LP didn't have anything lacking on the low end, and the grooviness was unreal. If I had a bong with me I would've lit it up and passed it around. Other highlights of the night, Lowthers and the Quad ESL57. Neither is perfect, but both do things which are so special that I'm willing to forgive their shortfalls. I don't think I could live with either as my only set of speakers, but there are areas in which they'll kill every other speaker I've heard. Listening to the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Sessions album on the Lowthers ruined me, I thought it was good on the Living Voice Avatars, Lowthers took it to another level. But play Metallica on Lowthers and well, let's just say it ain't gonna be pretty, they're pretty music dependant. It was a fun night, very educational for me.

Merry day of gluttony and debauchery!

Horrible construction quality and lack of pride in workmanship. I mean seriously, a random jumble of cables in the open going from jack to jack, the shrinkwrap ain't even cut straight, it looks like something I'd hack together in an emergency when I'm out of parts. At least twist or braid the wires or jacket them, and learn to cut shrinkwrap straight without leaving jagged edges. Honestly, I'd be ashamed to own something with such poor attention to detail.

Remember, rules and laws are for the little people.

Right, so for years now I've noticed that my listening experience is better when I'm not sober. Generally I go with spirits, either brandy or whisky, I'm not a fan of vodka and I haven't tried rum yet. Beer makes me a bit too sleepy and makes me wanna go pee, which messes up the flow of my listening. So what do you drink to make your listening sessions better?

Of course the review makes sense, everything Jude says is final and it'll be soaked up by the mindless masses and spread as the truth and the final word to everyone else. That's from a marketing standpoint of course. In terms of actual useful information, I didn't see any, it was just an excuse to post pretty pictures.

Thankfully the 595 sounds nothing like the 590, other than the fact that they share 2 numbers and Senn made both of them they don't have much in common, thank god. The 590 is among the worst I've heard, the 595 is definitely one of the better Senns. I also agree with 5687, though Senns aren't my thing these days I'd still take the 595 over the K701 and DT880, the 701 is better in a technical sense but to me it's too dead sounding and bland, while the 880 is painfully bright and harsh. Comparing it to the 650 is hard, problem is I've now heard 4 or 5 650's and they were all distinctly different sounding, so the problem is which one do I compare it to? One had boomy overpowering bass while another was sterile and dead, the others were somewhere in between, all were well used, very odd. If I were to broadly generalize based on a median 650, I'd say the 595 has a bit more life & sparkle in the treble and a tad less bass. Overall presentation is a bit more forward, about a couple rows or so in a concert hall, not the back row to front row move of say, 580's to flat pad Grados. It's a little more lively & fun sounding, but there's a slight loss of detail resolution compared to the 650, not something I'd worry about though as it's small enough that I wouldn't really care. Compared to the K501, well, that's a tough call. The 501 has the magic AKG midrange of old like the K1000 & K340 along with the large soundstage. However, there's the lack of bass problem, grooving along to Bob Marley probably ain't gonna happen. So it basically comes down to music preferences, if it sounds good on your K1000's, it'll likely sound good on the 501's as well, likely better than the 595, if you need heavy bass drive, it's going to be lacking with the 501 and the 595 is the better bet. Now, with all that said, and this is IMO of course, I find it somewhat curious that you're getting a 595. Yes it sounds different than a 650, but it's still distinctly a Senn sound. You have the K1000 which gives great AKG sound and the 650 which is signature Senn sound, personally I'd be looking for something a bit more different, like Grados for instance.

There's always the Tyll method, which he demonstrated with hilarious results on a pair of Senn 280's...

And I wasn't invited? I don't love you anymore!

Wow, that guy's a complete tool.

Your mom.

This question came to me while I was taking a dump this morning, and contemplating the finer points of taking a piss...