Dusty Chalk

I'm not sure I agree that there's a difference between "bias" and "established preference". I have an established preference for a certain "cleanliness" of sound, and another one for tube distortion. And I will be the first to admit that it's a bias. I think it's more important to let people know what my biases are, than to claim some sort of approximation of knowing good sound on some sort of absolute scale. Sure, there are a lot of common denominators, but look at the number of people who like Sennheiser's HD600/HD650 sound (I'm beginning to think that this is what dreadhead describes as the standard "diffuse field" response?) -- I don't like it, so I'd like to know upfront whether or not a reviewer I'm reading likes that sound or not.

I love the drumming in the original studio version, I don't care if the drummer himself doesn't. Rick Wakeman has also turned his back on the genius of Tales..., which is one of my favorite albums by them. And yes, I meant the songs, not the albums. Black Sabbath -- I can't listen to those guitar solos any more without thinking of Spinal Tap. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love those albums, and they are near perfect, I just don't think smiling at the humor of the imagery is the intended reaction, and didn't used to be. And Paranoid has "Rat Salad", which sucks. I thought maybe you were saying they weren't songs, and I was ready to

Awesome. Grados are the cupcakes of headphones.

Awesome, another one on this forum who got lathe. What's that make, 5 (Nate, Smeggy, Steve, and there was someone else whose screen-name isn't coming to me now...)? Maybe more.

So what are you saying, huh?

Piece! Out...

QFT. Oh, and: bright colors. Red, yellow, orange -- hey, there's a thought, light him on fire.

My older one does that (I call it the meerkat move), I tried to get the younger one to do that (subconsciously -- out of habit), and he just kept walking backwards.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Power of Love" Art of Noise, "Moments in Love" U2, "One" Ultravox, "Visions in Blue" XTC, "Dear God" Placebo, "For What It's Worth" Black Sabbath. "Paranoid", "Black Sabbath" Deep Purple, "April" Yes, "Heart of the Sunrise" Rush, "YYZ", "La Villa Strangiato" Premiata Forneria Marconi, "The Mountain" Roxy Music, "Love is the Drug", Elton John, "Love Lies Bleeding"/"Funeral For a Friend" Chris Isaak, "Dancin'", "Voodoo", "Funeral in the Rain", "The Lonely Ones", "Wicked Game", "Blue Spanish Sky", "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing", Talking Heads, "Houses in Motion" (one of these days, I'm going to throw those three drum hits and grunt in the middle of the song), as well as all of side one: "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)", "Cross-Eyed and Painless", "The Great Curve". Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, "Love is the Drug", "My Only Love", "Windswept", "Jealous Guy" (live version from The High Road), "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" Tangerine Dream, "Cloudburst Flight", "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" Jace Everett, "Bad Things" (Theme to True Blood)

Yup, should work great. Dew et.

The pink light looks photoshopped.

You could try buffing it.

"Perfect" would be too obvious?

Man, golfers are violent! He took about 2 seconds to decide to swing that club at his backside, and he put some rhythm, timing and balance into it!

Well, at least I know what Apple will cook up next -- aromatherapy apps! In Smell-O-Vision!

I suspect it's because they already spent the money, and weren't willing to spend it again.

32- or even 64-bit internal is not at all hypothetical.

You mean if the bits slip while entering the DAC? I guess that could happen. Do you really think they worry about that? Because there's no excuse for alignment errors during the downsampling process. And shouldn't that functionality be built into the DAC? (Arguably.) And yeah, there are other reasons which wouldn't directly effect the listening experience also, like DC offset (again, arguably -- not necessarily the responsibility of the author of the bitstream to alot for that, if the DAC was bullet proof [could handle any legal inputs]), but since it's so easy to accomodate for in the dithering process, why not? I would suggest that the headroom argument could be rendered moot by putting criteria on the input -- assume all the headroom had already been taken up (with some entirely unrealistic hypothetical inaudible soft limiter, or by the mastering digitizer knowing his gear well enough to know exactly where to put levels). But both of those are relatively minor arguments. So by the same token, you'd have to retract your stance on that would apply to 24-bits as well, neh? (In the downsampling from 32-bit example.)

Indeed. 8.3" x 13.4" x 7.9"

Garbage, "Only Happy When It Rains" Lush, "Ladykillers" Breeders, "Cannonball" The The, "Infected" Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Relax" M+M (Martha and the Muffins), "Black Stations/White Stations" Yello, "Rhythm Divine" and "Domingo" and "Angel No" Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" Rammstein, "Angel"

You can call it sound space, I'm not sure there's a word for it. And congratulations, good sound is fun.

Blur, "Song #2" and "Boys & Girls" Stranglers, "Golden Brown" A-Ha, "Take On Me" Jon Astley, "Jane's Gettin' Serious" Edwyn Collins, "A Girl Like You" Tears for Fears, "Shout" Catherine Wheel, "Black Metallic" Kraftwerk, "The Model" Jimi Hendrix, "Purple Haze" Moody Blues, "Nights in White Satin"/"Late Lament" Depeche Mode, "World In My Eyes" Curve, "Coast Is Clear" (did I do this one already?) Barkmarket, "Dumbjaw" Gary Numan, "Cars" New Order, "True Faith", "Shell Shock", "Blue Monday" The Cars, "Moving In Stereo", "Dangerous Type" Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight" Air, "Playground Love" Stabbing Westward, "Waking Up Beside You"

No, I meant if you were, say, starting from a 32-bit master or something. So theoretically, if one was starting from a 24-bit master and listening in 20-bit, one wouldn't need dithering either? You could just truncate?

So you shouldn't need to dither 24-bit audio, then, right?