Dusty Chalk

There's certainly room for improvement -- I for one would welcome a new top-of-the-line entry from Sennheiser with EXTREME curiosity.

Candy.

Did I read that correctly, that none of them are going to start shipping until January, including the first set? FTFY

Well, being that the Creek OBH-11SE was my first love, headphone-amp-wise, I am definitely the target market for that. But I just don't feel like buying another amp right now. Does it come in "moar black"?

Sounds almost perfect.

Don't expect them to work well. I don't care if god himself suggested it. Here's my suggestion: accumulate as much newspaper as you can stack from floor to ceiling in four piles. Put them in the boxes. Notice I left out the crumpling part, so yes, I mean stacking newspapers in their original delivered format. The boxes are there to keep the newspaper stacks from falling over. The other nice thing is, if you only have enough to stack to halfway up, you can start with that, and as you accumulate more newspaper, you can keep going. Feel free to run this idea by him. Also, feel free to look up "ethan winer". He's got a whole forum dedicated to cheap, DIY room treatments, despite the fact of being in the business of selling them himself. Makes him a cool cat in my book.

Magnatune? CDBaby? The times have changed, dude. You don't need a record company, you don't even technically need a distribution deal -- you just need distribution.

And now it's even cheaper (same link as above).

I'll just register my (ongoing) skepticism and shut up, then. See if these things "scale like a bastard", then the reverse is also true, neh? Chacranajxy -- what 'scaling' means is that the better upstream components -- amp, source, music, cables, etc. -- you put in front of the headphone, the better it sounds. I don't know if the HD650 scales like a bastard, but I've heard it does.

Say whut?

I'll just tell you right now that people should assume you meant "...for your setup", because some actually will come back with HD650, but that wouldn't be a good idea out of a receiver jack. I have a feelling that the answer the "idiots" were giving you were taking that into consideration. I already told you what I would do -- start smaller. Sony's. Blow the rest on dames, liquor and music.

Do want!

Let's start with...where are you? As in, what headphones do you currently have? How's it working out of your Pioneer? How good's your hearing? EDIT: That was written before you posted what you have. If you don't have anything less than freebie earbuds, you might want to start smaller, like Sony MDR-7506/-V6, and take it from there. The reason I pick those is that they're already pretty sensitive, so should be driven well by your Pioneer, have plenty good bass, and are decently comfortable (more so than Grados, anyway). They can sound a little bright (not sibilance bright, but if there's any sibilance anywhere else in your chain, it'll be enhanced...more like just a lot of emphasized upper frequencies bright -- it'll also force you to listen at more reasonable volumes), but you can get used to that -- even addicted. And if you're older and deafer, it might even compensate for those frequencies being attenuated. EDIT: The above recommendation remains. I don't think HD650 would work well out of a receiver.

Yeah, I probably have a couple Model M's lying around -- so you're saying I should just get a couple USB->PS2 adapters, then? Have one at work and one at home, and then I don't even need to "tote" them, except on special occasions (being at a friend's house, having car worked on, etc.). Yeah, that might actually be a good idea.

x2 You'd need a USB -> digital converter, though.

Those are gorgeous.

There are different types of mechanisms? Yes, I am that ignorant. What are most of them? That's what I'm used to. Or proximity capacitive touch sensor "mechanisms". What's so special about the happy hacking keyboard? Will it make me happy to hacK? See, I'm already doing it. Are all the hip script kiddies using it? No, seriously, what's so special about it?

So, either what's the best "value" keyboard that I should get, or how much should I consider spending, if they're all the same? Basically, I need to get an add-on for a laptop that I've been using more frequently, and everything I have is PS2. $10? $25? Should I get this? Or should I just get the cheapest thing I can find with full-size keys (currently, the price to beat appears to be US$10)? Or should I get one of those roll-away ones? I'm asking for experience from people who've gotten keyboards for their laptops as well as advice on price-setting.

I guess. Who cares? http://tinyurl.com/6ynwhc

Dew et. You can't really be a snob about it until you try it and hear it for yourself in your own system. I double-dog-dare you. Uh...except that you would need moar amps.

No, that's the definition of an equilateral triangle. If both of those are seven feet, then that follows your/Cardas' definition, but that's not nearfield. Nearfield means you're close to the speakers, period. I mean, think about it -- if both of those are 15 feet, then it still qualifies as that definition of nearfield, but I would still not call it nearfield. 7 feet is not "close to the speakers", that's a body-length away and then some. Think of an engineer sitting at a mixing board. The speakers are usually at the other side of the listening board and no more. That's nearfield (unless, of course, he has a 7-foot mixing board [which is not unheard of] -- not all engineers listen in nearfield -- some of them have it in the wall, which is some distance from the mixing desk). I would say within a couple feet. It might be a function of the room, but I'm not going to do the math. Intuitively, it'd have to be some small fraction from the distance to the nearest wall, like on the order of one order of magnitude (1/10th). That's just off the top of my head...basically, you're listening such that first reflections are essentially irrelevant. And it's also got to have something to do with the size of the room -- obviously, if you're in a closet, you have to be right up against the speakers, and if you're in a huge auditorium, you have a little bit of room to play with before I -- anyway -- would stop considering it nearfield. But you still have the floor to contend with (again, when I, anyway, would consider it to stop being nearfield), so there's an upper limit, that no matter how big your room is, it wouldn't be nearfield. 7 feet would be outside of that, IMHO.

10-band parametric EQ? That's pretty nice. Alright, I stand corrected.

No, boominess is a function of overhang, not amount. You can have emphasized bass without it being boomy (cf. PS-1). One of the nice things about listening to my Dynaudios with their fancy shmancy tweeters was that despite the elevated bass, is that I could still hear the midrange and treble, and clearly. The only time I got distracted by the bass was psychologically -- I.E. I caught myself listening to the bassline, rather than the gestalt. But listening nearfield at modest volumes will help -- you'll be listening more immediately to the speakers, less to the room's resonances. That's why I recommended listening to your floorstanders in nearfield -- it'll give you an idea if your new supposed listening situation -- the nearfield one -- with its combination of volume and distance -- is enough to overcome the room's acoustics.