Dusty Chalk

At this point definitely go i7. There is no FSB because it's basically all asynchronous direct memory accesses -- they've replaced the frontside bus, essentially (oversimplification, but will do for the purpose of convincing Billy). Asus P6T motherboard is perfectly adequate. Look up reviews. Let me know if you find any reviews that says, "is better than" in front of "Asus P6T". Max out on memory. Make sure you get one that matches the capability of your CPU and motherboard, so that it isn't the bottleneck. 50 inch LCD monitor? You mean you're going to use a television as your monitor, right? Because the largest monitor I've seen is 30 inch. 1080p is easy, practically anything current (graphics-card -wise) will do 1080p. < US$100 Nvidia's constantly go on sale at NewEgg. I'll let others answer the Raid question, as I haven't been following that at all. One thing I will say is someone mentioned to me that they wanted to Raid their OS disk not for safety/security/backup reasons, but to go faster. After they explained it (you're essentially hooking up the drives in parallel so that they act as one big multi-platter drive array that can deliver data amongst the "platters" simultaneously and independently at the same time), I could see how it might be a good idea in that particular scenario. I know this is not where you're coming from, but I thought I'd mention it if it interests you. Fans -- don't skimp on cooling. Overclocking is one thing yes, but lots of video and music == lots of disk access, you want your hard drives not to burn up neither. Especially if you're Raidin'.

Yeah, that's it -- a "Prince Albert".

Yeah, 'cause if anyone had a ... whatever that thing is called when the penis has a piercing ... that would su-uck. Of course, maybe he does, and maybe that's why it is on the top door.

I disagree, it was refreshingly honest to hear him say, "I don't know". Sure, like he's going to say anything other than that he knows what he's talking about. Alright, maybe he'll say something to the effect of John Atkinson does not know what he's talking about...with more or less diplomacy, I'll not say which. That said, the statement was based on his measured impedance phase -- if it turns out to be completely different, he may change his tune. Hey, Dr. Gilmore -- do you have the capability to measure the impedance and impedance phase? It'd be nice to have a tiebreaker.

Ravel, Jarvi, SACD

I think it's because you started that thread. I'm not sure I want to know what that says about me that I know how to think like him.

Ah. Thanks.

I don't know -- that third one looked just like your old avatar. "M&P"?

It could translate everyone's posts into Billy-speak. And then we could fix it.

No. I changed my post to show Headroom's plot, but the HD800 is in the current issue of Stereophile, so it's not online yet. It's on p. 89 of the orange-framed issue with a Boulder device on the cover. The phase is really mild -- I don't think it strays more than 15 degrees. I can attempt to describe the impedance plot verbally: there's a peak at 100 Hz, but the peak is at 310, the minimums appear to be at 210 (starting at 10 Hz, and another swale around 1.1kHz-1.4kHz), and then slowly going up again, to about 300 @ 50kHz. You can look around the Stereophile site, or check Audio Asylum -- I think he posts there, there might be some discussion, I don't know.

Here is John Atkinson's response:

And don't touch the soldering iron to the backs of any bullets.

You have the best taste in music -- your own.

LAGQ's Guitar Heroes, SACD

You should have bought two pair and left one in the box.

Yeezh.

I liked the K701 when I heard it, it didn't seem to do anything wrong, but it didn't seem to do anything that any of my other headphones did, neither, plus it wasn't a sound I "go after" (L3000/VTG/PS-1/etc.). Also, way too white.

Their measurements don't have that same peak -- it only goes up to 310 on theirs. I just wrote John Atkinson and pointed it out and asked him to conjecture as to why the measurements would be different. I'd ask Tyll the same thing -- Tyll?

I suspect that this is it exactly. And also to make them sought-after.

He got a new one, and this is his first excursion away from it.

Jarvi, Berlioz, SACD

What amp are you using? That's a big deal with the HD800's.

So they're the next house over?

Okay, now read up on capitalization.