Iron_Dreamer

Yeah, the things he tends to dislike about the HP1000 are what make me prefer it over the other Grados. But such is taste/preference/whatever, and hence the silliness of trying to assign numerical ratings to something so subjective.

Indeed it's always nice to see someone else who really appreciates the Qualia for what it can do. I never failed to be floored upon listening to them.

I was really hoping for Georgia to come play USC in the Rose Bowl. Oh well, at least it's a nice story for Zook and Co. (well, at least until the actual game starts). It will be rather goofy seeing the field in Pasadena painted orange and blue. That being the case, they should have invited Boise St, it probably would have made for a more interesting game. I'm not buying all this "OSU can't compete with LSU" talk. It seems to me that OSU is playing better than last year, and LSU is not the team that Florida was last year, and between QB controversy, losing their defensive coodinator, and getting overly talked up before the game (much the way USC was before playing Texas), they might be in for a surprise against OSU. Of course they still have the advantages of playing right down the road from home, and having cut their teeth in more challenging games this season.

I think I'd go with: used EMU 0404 (~$50) + modding parts (~$20) used Gilmore Lite (~$200) throw in a few bucks worth of parts for a couple of DIY RCA->TS cables, and then snag a used midrange headphone of choice (I'd probably go back to the SA5000).

I definitely don't get Radiohead. Never have, and don't see how I ever will (probably because I'd fall asleep ten minutes into a given album). By "don't get" I mean that I don't understand what it is that people like about them (much like how I "don't get" Etys). There are bands like Pink Floyd who I rarely feel like listening to (and hence I'm not crazy about them as many people are), but I can appreciate what they've done and understand why someone else would be crazy about them.

Gregory Z35 backpack, as I've gotten more serious about my hiking and whatnot lately.

Score! How you go through so many phones is beyond me!

Heh, no matter what I do, my PM box over there constantly complains that I have a new message.

My PM's are from about mid-2006, including a bunch I'd previously deleted. Go figure.

And thus we begin week 3 of the outage.

[needs to buy damned SPL meter one of these days....] It's 8-9 o'clock with my Apogee and L3000 these days, depending on recording. I remember needing about 12 on the DAC1 with HD650's.

Hmm, see I'm not the type to really care if a band puts out something new sounding every time (as evidenced by having bands like Iron Maiden and Running Wild amongst my favorites). So long as it's exciting/compelling, and not completely derivative, I'm in for the ride. And Paradise Lost is a face-melter in my book. I would say I prefer the more melodic side of SX, but the heavy side seen on most of PL and a good chunk of the Odyssey is pretty nice too.

Not really. It's sad, but quite factual. And aside from a few listens when I first got it, I really haven't felt compelled to waste much time on it. Really sad, considering how much I like a lot of what they've done. BTW you can read a short review of it that I wrote if you scroll down a bit on this page.

Hmmm, FWIW I've never been particularly obsessed with Tarja, it's always been Tuomas' great sense of melody and songwriting that has attracted me to Nightwish. And I think this album is his best yet in that regard. Not to say that Tarja probably isn't a better singer, but I'll generally take better songs over a better singer, assuming both are competent and expressive. I've got that Epica album, I just haven't found a listen for it yet...

A preliminary top ten list: 1 ) Symphony X - Paradise Lost 2 ) Therion - Gothic Kabbalah 3 ) Nightwish - Dark Passion Play 4 ) Allen/Lande - The Revenge 5 ) Dark Tranquillity - Fiction 6 ) Devin Townsend - Ziltoid the Omniscient 7 ) Helloween - Gamling with the Devil 8 ) Threshold - Dead Reckoning 9 ) Vision Divine - The 25th Hour 10 ) Gamma Ray - Land of the Free II And the two albums whose crappiness really pissed me off: Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos Iced Earth - Framing Armageddon

1) What I do is keep my entire collection in lossless. When I need a song in lossy format for a portable or in my car, I encode a lossy copy to a temp directory. This cuts down on wasted disk space (by not needing an entire copy of my collection in lossy), but it does require a bit of time to re-encode the files to put them on the portable or CD burn (although if your iMac is recent enough to have a Core2Duo, it shouldn't be too bad int hat regard). I use foobar to do these things, and I really have no idea (or interest in) how iTunes works, but I'm sure someone who does wouldn't mind helping you. 2) My lossless collection is about 575GB at this point, so it is spread over two 500GB disks in my main system. I have a 1TB external backup disk, which doubles as a way of bringing my collection along with my laptop when applicable. 3) I don't know of a DAC in the DAC1's price range that blows it away, or is on a completely different level of performance. All the units I can think of which are cost $3000+, even used. 4) Whenever you have some free time, just grab a beer, put on some tunes, and pop a CD in and out of your drive every 7-10 minutes as needed. You'll find that re-ripping your collection isn't as daunting as it might seem now.

Thanks! It's just a Nikon D70s w/18-70mm kit lens.

JP I need your address so I can get that special birthday goodie on the way...

A definite thanks to John for putting together this great little meet, in the biggest "back room" of a coffee shop I've ever seen. I'm very glad he was able to overcome the server problems and convert this to a Head-case meet! I had a fun time with guzziguy's rig. It's not the most extended or resolving setup out there, but what it does have in spades is bass punch and midrange goodness. The Extreme sounded much better to me than any of the other sub-$3k Singlepower amps ever have. The combo of it and the Exemplar Denon 2900 really had me rocking out with the L3000. The Darth Beyers, which I'd never heard before, really did have an almost comically huge bass (I'd swear more bass than the stock DT770, but it's been years since I've heard one). I think they might sound a lot better with the port holes covered, which should greaty reduce resonance. They certainly look excellent and lack the stock 770's upper-midrange harshness. The K340 had an excellent midrange that played well to the system's strength. The APL NWO 3.0 really was quite a fantastic sounding device. Listening to the balanced Qualia straight from its' XLR outputs sent my jaw to the floor. I am now completely certain that the Qualia in and of itself is not harsh, just brutally revealing, as I've never heard such a smooth but detailed treble (a quality which came through the ES2/HE90 system as well). The Qualia's immediate viceral impact which I love so much sprung to what seemed a superhuman level. I hardly have the requisite experience with uber-high-end sources to place this one in a pantheon of others (let alone accurately judge its' value), all I know is that what I heard was quite spectacular. Neil's complete system with the NWO, ES2, HE90's, and nuclear-plant grade cabling certainly sounded much better than when I last heard his system at head-fest. Gone was the somewhat over-warm/colored/romantic/whatever sound that has bugged me in the past with the HE90 in every instance I'd heard it. The bass was also well-represented and more impactful than I'd come to expect from the HE90. Ultimately, my only "criticism" of this system is that the presentation, slightly diffuse or relaxed, is not ultimately the way I prefer to experience music. But discussing this with Neil, it's pretty clear that this is just what he is after, so he should be happy as a clam! Good thing you got out of that movie in one piece! In other miscellaneous listenings, the Edition 9 still sounds funky, the PS1 still has too much bass (though I do now think more highly of them than I had), the Omega II and HE90 need drastically different sounding systems in order to excel, the Zanden/K1000 combo is still a beast, and the Singlepower Qualia headband kicks major ass! Certainly moreso than listening to anything, I really just came to hang out and enjoy the company of everyone who makes the Bay Area group just such a blast (as evidenced my Neil's method of greeting me ) I'll definitely have to arrange a place to crash next time so I can kick a few back with you nuts!

Mikeymad's Marantz SA-7S1 SACD player... ...and Singlepower ES-1 foo_me's Zanden 300B amp: Voltron's tower of power: ...and Satan's favorite toobs at work JP#'s had to have the Pellegrino! The latest from Eddie Current, the HD2! Perhaps the oddest looking DAC yet, the Wavelength Cosecant! Sacrilege! A recabled HP2?!? Ori's shiny K1000 amp... ...with an odd tube complement The star of the show, the APL NWO 3.0 The 3.0's innards... ...as compared to a stock Esoteric UX1

I only had that prototype for about a week. Justin needed it back to take to a meet, and I assume also to send to another tester.

Coming up on the one-week anniversary of the greatest crash since '29 , it seems that many might enjoy a little speculation on long long the rebuilding process might take. Notice the question pertains to when the site might be working again, as normal or prior to the crash (if possible). I'm really not quite sure myself. I was surprised that problems have persisted as long as the have, until I read about the nitty-gritty going on in serverland, which made me understand the magnitude of the problem.

Schweeeeeeet!!!!

Here's what you need, AK! http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D114645%26page%3D4 http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D114645%26page%3D10 http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D114645%26page%3D11 http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D114645%26page%3D12 http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D114645%26page%3D13 http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D114645%26page%3D14

Consider the audience