Iron_Dreamer

Thanks all, had a lovely low-key birthday at home!

First shipments expected in late November, upgrades start in December. @spritzer I'll message you. Debates about the price aside, let me know any questions you all have, and I'll do my best to address them. The sound quality improvement from the original is not subtle. And yes it does sound fantastic from the Mjolnir and HeadAmp gear we have at Audeze.

I had the 18-200 with my D200 for a while in the way back days. Loved the camera, that lens less so, it wasn't bad, but clearly wasn't that sharp off-center much above 50mm. It was a heralded, sought-after lens in the time, but I found it pretty overrated optically. I think I ended up with a Tamron 17-50 2.8 that was more to my liking, as my main zoom until I moved to the D700 a couple of years later. That 300mm lens you got there, on the other hand, should be a great lens so long as you find use for it and can get things in focus.

Happy birthday! May your Pliny always be The Younger!

Let me know if you don't find a Qobuz code, I have contacts there I could reach out to and ask for one for you. That said, I've found Qobuz to be not terribly reliable from a buffering standpoint, at trade shows, where even with an uninterrupted internet connection, our systems will often just get stuck "spinning" while waiting for more data, despite maxing out their buffer settings. Offline tracks have been the only reliable solution.

Happy belated birthday! Glad the Euro tour continues to go well!

Happy birthday, cheers!

Happy birthday, enjoy!

I'm safe and good, and as per the official statement "we continue with our mission to deliver best-in-class headphones to recording professionals, audiophiles, and gamers."

I loved my D700 in its time. Had a lot of great adventures with that camera. Can't say I've ever missed it after moving on to the 800, 850, now Z7. But I've never been an SOOC JPEG shooter for my main interests, so all the talk of color science and one company's processing vs another hasn't ever really moved the needle for me. When I had Fuji APS-C bodies, their film simulations could be fun for casual photos, but I always thought Nikon JPEGs looked more natural and real to me, and the Nikon files were easier to get color right in post with as well.

I used the T20 and T30 for a while in a light travel kit for a few years before I ended up with a Nikon Z7 that I got from our good friend Gene. Those Fuji bodies are probably an ideal size/feature/image quality compromise for most people that want something better than a phone photo, and aren't pixel-peeper nuts like me. The little 15-45 zoom lens is excellent for its' tiny footprint, same for the 27/2.8 pancake prime. The 50-230 zoom also has great image quality considering the aperture limitations, at a very svelte weight.

Yep, we run into a lot of people in that exact situation. And I wonder how much those "guys with full Atmos rooms" have ever tried truly resolving headphones, as we work with a fair few people with Atmos rooms who find high-end headphones an invaluable check on their mixes.

So I've had my hands on one of these that works for the last week or so. It's definitely not an amp you'd use to show off a flagship electrostatic headphone. That said, it doesn't sound as bad as I might have expected going in. For the person who's new to electrostatics, or not that knowledgeable about the particular headphone they are using, they'd probably be perfectly happy with the sound. I know empirically that I'm not hearing all the headphone is capable of, but subjectively, it can still be quite an enjoyable sound, particularly depending on the complexity and challenge of the audio being played back.

They're pretty similar in frequency response, MM-500 having a slight edge in balance, with LCD-5 of course being more detailed sounding but much harder to drive. I did a recent demo session with an Atmos-focused mixer who LOVED the 5, but decided the 500 was a very good compromise at nearly 1/3 the cost.

It's great to hear from you again. I think Grahame nailed our surprise to see you pop up, lots of good memories from back in the days of the "old republic". BTW I'm working at Audeze now, we've been doing a thing or two regarding mixing on headphones: https://www.audeze.com/pages/mm-series