cetoole

The Black Halo is worthy if for no other reason than the inclusion of Simone Simmons. I have probably been listening to as much Arch Enemy as anything lately, but playing some Katatonia right now at work.

I love Edge of Sanity. Crimson II is my favorite, though I dont listen all that often due to length. As a normal album, I generally favor Purgatory Afterglow, though I love stuff off Spectral Sorrows and Infernal too. For just one fun song, its hard to beat Sacrificed for me. Heck, any Swano project is worthy. Moontower FTW! Also a huge fan of Nightingale.

Got home.

Congrats Doug! They didnt even mention kilts as a possibility over here.

8 hours on the train, but I am now in Quebec city. Pretty cool so far, went wandering the streets and came across several blocks where it was roped off to traffic and people were playing music. Saw a bunny on a leash in the middle of what appeared to be a rave in the middle of old Quebec city.

Ouch Al, really sorry to hear about this. Dying amps suck.

I have never seen or heard a TakeT H2, but from what I have read, it takes significantly more voltage to drive than at least my Pioneers. I havnt listened recently, but seem to recall it being a bit rolled off on both ends, and maybe a bit slow (but my memory of this is quite fuzzy). I do think there are a few ways it could be improved, especially with different pads, but the main reason I bought mine was because it is a cool old phone with a pretty unique driver, and I really wanted an example of a Piezo headphone. I have not tried driving mine off anything but a pretty standard headphone amp.

The 700 is round, though the driver isn't quite. Still, it would hurt me a bit to see such a headphone used as a fosterphone, though some of that is going to be the geek in me. Inside, you will find a very unique driver (assuming it is like my 700) consisting simply of what appears to be a very loose piece of plastic metallized on both sides, with a sheet of foam pressing directly on the back to provide tension. The other issue which makes them poor candidates for a fosterphone is that they likely will be quite uncomfortable, as pioneer didn't seem to realize that the ears are not parallel.

I just got back from Matt's place, which rocked. I agree, the burgers at Turtle Jacks are quite good, as were the fries. I had a great time listening to some familiar tunes, and it was nice to get a good listening session in on a good rig, as I have been living with my laptop, touch, and MX560 buds for the past week. This is the first time I have had any serious time with either the K340 or the K1000, not counting short periods at noisy meets. As seen in Matt's pictures, we were using a Squeezebox transport with lossless audio files, to a Parasound D/AC 1600HD DAC, and a Hafler P1000 amplifier. Both headphones were terminated to spades, and had some fancy wire on them. I really enjoyed the K1000, and IMO, it is one of the best dynamic headphones I have heard. K340, not so much, though I was happy to have the chance to listen to them a bit. My only slight issues with the K1000 is they were a bit more tipped towards the treble than I personally prefer, though I didnt play with the toe of the drivers at all, and it was the sort of brightness I can certainly live with. They were also missing a bit of the lowest bass, but I didnt generally miss it too much. The K340 are quite different, much slower, less smooth response, and just generally didnt sound too good to my ears. Bit muddy and with an odd coloration in the mids. Forgetting now though, as we listened to them first and I quickly was wanting to change over to the K1000.

Slow, rainy day in Toronto. Did some laundry, browsed the net, but then met up with xand1x and rocked out with his K1000 rig. That was fun.

Got back to the hostel, and Katatonia's The Great Cold Distance was on in the lounge, so I decided to grab my laptop and stay up for a bit listening to it. Not up to the level of the K1000 rig I was listening to earlier tonight, but still quite enjoyable.

Steve, I have the next step up from that, the SE-700. Its neat, but dont expect too much.

Shipping for my Lambda sigs and assorted pads (which finally came in).

Not sure, raif seems to think they are actually elecrets. I was assuming ortho just based on the model number. The KH-83 uses Fostex T10 drivers, and the KH-82 SHOULD just be the previous year version with just maybe minor changes. Either way, should be cool to have.

Drove to Montreal. In a hostel now.

This is taken care of, thanks a bunch raif.

There is a fairly rare set of Kenwood orthodynamic headphones on Craigslist that I would love to buy, but the seller wont ship.

You have a Lambda Spirit? How about the complete Nova line? There are always moar stax to buy.

woo hoo indeed

I seem to have kicked the I/V noise issues in the ass, unless I am measuring wrong. Appears to be ~200uV p-p on my Tek 7704A (7A22 plugin), though I really don't trust the resolution of my system at these levels. Need a measurement preamp and some new probes at a minimum. Next, I must add in the LPF caps and output buffers (which weren't necessary for this first stage testing), and then actually listen to it to see if there is anything audible. Unfortunately, it seems I may have had to sacrifice the ESP950 to achieve this, as there is now a very audible noise in the right channel there.

Yes, its a pretty cool little chip.

Sure, they are pretty groovy, for D-S DACs.

Nightingale Box o' Rock preorder

New earpads for my Sigs, spare set of SR404 pads, and a few SR-X pads for orthos.

Lambda Sigs, about to buy some new pads for them.