HeadphoneAddict

Oxygen and nutrient producing parasites infesting the brain?

Bought a 2008 G35x with mild tint and stock wheels just like this one - with the new Michelin rubber it's lots-o-fun. Planning some snow tires if these don't hold up well in snow.

Fastest I've been on a bike was 140 Mph on a highly modded 1996 Bandit 600 with 84hp at the wheels at 6,000 feet elevation. We figured at sea-level we might squeeze 100hp at the rear wheel with proper jetting, but I can't even imagine what 200hp would feel like.

I hate posting on an iPhone, as above, my iPhone's spelling correction of love into > lobe? Sigh...

Great photos, I lobe them!

Thanks for all the feedback. I spent two days with the car, and drove some other vehicles in my $25K price range. It's about as much fun to drive as a new WRX, although not quite as fast. But, without having to work a clutch the G still has a nice kick to it without a turbo, even living at 6,000 feet. AWD, power and handling were my main requirments, as is refinement and build quality and features. And my 15 & 17 year old enjoy driving it as much as my wife and I. They can't drive a stick yet and I'd worry about them being distracted by the clutch and wrecking, at least until they have more experience driving. The other ones that I would enjoy as much would cost me $5-15k more, and some with a manual transmission. I had to give up the STi 4 years ago partly because my chronic tendinitis was so bad that I couldn't work the clutch half the time. My wife reminds me of this every time I talk about another STi or Legacy GT turbo. But I've been dreaming of something sportier since I stopped driving 6 different kids in a car pool a year ago, and I dont think I can wait any longer. My wife told me to get the car. Thanks again! PS: my wife and kids are all 5' 1" or smaller, and fit in the back fine. I'm the only fat one.

I continued this train of thought in a new thread, where I'd appreciate any advice you guys have: http://www.head-case.org/forums/off-topic/9044-need-advice-2008-infiniti-g35x-all-wheel-drive-im-considering-buying-soon-please.html

Sorry for the lengthy post to follow, but I took the 2008 Outlook in today for a noisy power steering pump, and ended up test driving a 2008 Infiniti G35x all wheel drive that I really liked. I'd really appreciate some advice from you level-headed people about maybe buying it, or not. I didn't want to clog up the "last thing you bought" thread with this, but that was where we talked a little about a "next car" recently and got me started. The G has 31,450 miles and has most options except navigation, and very nice new Michelin all season tires that look like they'd be good on the occasional snow we get here. And I got them down from $28,988 to $27,500 + $2,000 cash-back to pay off the final 4 lease payments due on the Outlook (making the G $25,500 + tax). Kelly Blue Book puts the value at about $28,700. I still won't have to turn in the Saturn until 4/4/11, but I'll have no where to park it with a full garage and I still have to insure it if GM doesn't take it back early. Having a nice 5-speed automatic transmission with sport shifter that doesn't hold back the G35x performance has a high WAF, because SWMBO really doesn't want the 6-speed manual of the Legacy GT or another STi. She previously suggested the Audi A4, since we can't afford the S4 or "naughty volvo" S60. I planned to test drive the A4 soon, but the GM dealer let me take the G home as a loaner overnight while they worked on the Outlook (already fixed), and I have to return it tomorrow if I don't buy it. The G handles very well, and with some throttle manipulation I can get a tad of oversteer to swing it around fast tight curves without pushing the front end. It communicated what it was doing through the turns about as well as our 2005 Impreza 2.5RS on street tires, and dedicated summer tires should help a lot if I decide to go that direction. And it's quiet, smooth and fast. The G handles a lot better than the 2010 Camara SS I test drove, which was quite tail-happy and scary in the turns under power, although power delivery of the G was not nearly as thrilling as the SS or my former STi. One of my gripes with the G is the crappy drink holders - seriously, do their designers only use soda cans and water bottles when they drive? If you don't put two drinks in the center console drink holder, then the one drink slides all over the place or tries to tip over. The holders in the rear seat's flip down arm-rest aren't deep enough to keep even a small soda cup from flipping over with light acceleration. And my 17 year old daughter doesn't like the back seat because "the leather is slippery, the middle spot is too humped, and the seatbelt for either of the seats next to the doors presses into her neck" (she's 5 foot small). The other 2 kids and wife are okay with it, and they're all the same size. Honestly, the drink holders bug me more than how my daughter likes the back seat, making me a bad dad of course. (okay, I'll get her a sheepskin seatbelt cover). The back seat is still pretty small, but slightly wider and has a bit more leg room for the kids than their Impreza. Still, I would never want to sit back there with two other people, while the Legacy GT back seat is a bit bigger and not as cramped for three. I also didn't like the 130mph speed limiter that I discovered, but I don't plan to spend much time over 100MPH anyways. Going that fast makes me really nervous, and I'm more into acceleration and handling than top speed. Other than those few gripes, it has almost all the other features I could ever want, except it doesn't have an auto-dimming rear view mirror and navigation (and no good place to place the iPhone on dash as GPS either). My wife is okay with me getting it and hinted that she'd like to drive it if I don't want to, although she's happy to use the Tribeca since it's my turn for a "new" car. After 4 years I'm bored with the Tribeca, and the wife is starting to get bored with the Outlook and likes driving the Tribeca more. But, something is still bugging me in the back of my mind about the rear seat size and drink holders, that makes me worry that the new car honeymoon will end soon after, and we'll find out in the long run that it's not the car we want to take on trips because the family isn't comfortable traveling in it. We could buy the Outlook at the end of the lease in a few months, and the kids love riding in that car because it has so much space in it. It would be just as old as the G and cost less to buy out ($22K), but it just doesn't excite us to drive it. And we worry that value will drop faster now that GM dropped Saturn. There's many of these G35x for sale in Colorado, with most in Denver 1.5 hours away, so it's not like I have to jump on this particular one. But I don't have much money saved up, and their offer to pay the remaining lease payments on the Saturn is very attractive, especially if it get's me something fun to drive sooner than the end of next March when we hand over the Outlook. And, this car looks like new, in fantastic condition. But if I wait until March I could have some money saved up and maybe get a used 2009 if I still want one, plus have more time to decide about the A4 or Legacy GT. regardless, I'll be seeing the CARFAX tomorrow, along with their 125 point inspection, and we can put it on the lift to look at it myself as well. So, what do you guys think about the G35x in general, and this deal in particular?

I've got a 2006 Tribeca that I enjoy driving, but agree that it's a little smaller than we'd like. Rear legroom suffers in the middle and third row, and storage behind the 3rd row is almost non-existant. Our 2008 Saturn Outlook is much roomier and rides nice, but is not much fun for me to drive. My wife likes it though, and the kids love it for longer trips. The buyout at the end of the lease is too high for a discontinued brand, so we return it at the end of March. I want an AWD turbo after that, and the Legacy Turbo GT is looking attractive.

Get well soon kitty!

Looks like VLC for iPhone and iPad is about to be pulled from the App Store because the Open Source Powers That Be don’t believe Apple’s iTunes App Store is compatible with the GPL components of the app. Basically, anything under the GPL has to be freely transferable to anyone without restriction. Since the App Store places FairPlay DRM even on free apps like VLC, even though anyone can still download them, that’s considered a restriction. The long and the short of it is this — if you want VLC for iPhone or iPad, go get it now. If you want VLC for iPhone, iPad get it now before it’s pulled | TiPb

Wow, halloween is rockin at their home.

I made a promise to them, nothing signed, but my word means something (not that I'm saying you asked me to break my word). Exactly, people were speculating on Sigma Delta, R 2R and such, and I thought I could help. GuzziGuy, I'm not trying to show off anything, this is just another example of my posts being picked apart in ways I hadn't expected, because I didn't sit down and hire an editor to look at my poor choice of words. PS: I am simply a beta tester for them, nothing more, nothing special. I didn't claim to be. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Thanks for the nice post. I sure hope Stax didn't voice it for just the SRM-727, where it might sound "off" on the good amps.

The HDP uses a Delta-Sigma DAC, but I'm not allowed to reveal which chip they use (until they are ready or able to release that info).

Heard it at RMAF, gave them my email info, and got a discount code RMAF50. I got the impression that the code expires very soon, but was not told that I can't post it. Listening to the Rolling Stones "Love in Vain" with and without Amarra was remarkable (loved the Focal speakers they used). It was a live recording and not off the "Let it Bleed" album - they started to play, messed up and joked around, and then started again until completion. I want to find a copy of that particular performance. So, I need to email them back for that info. A couple of things that I noticed was that the guitar to the right of center sounded like it was coming more from the right speaker without Amarra turned on; but with Amarra it came from behind the wall and just to the inside of the right speaker, sounding much more transparent and on stage. The vocal that was to the left of center became more transparent and realistic, and more on stage. It went from sounding like a very good recording to sounding more realistic and live - the speakers totally disappeared. I have no idea how much if any EQ they used, and of course their gear was much better than mine, but I'm hoping for similar improvements when using my Macbook Pro as transport. I just don't expect overall performance to be on the same level without a bigger investment in my system.

I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else who develops the same problems. My jailbroken iPhone 4 with iOS 4.01 developed an inability to sync Safari Bookmarks all of a sudden. Some online research showed that this to happen sometimes, only on jailbroken phones. Everything else on MobileMe would sync fine (Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Mail). Not only would they not sync, I could not see any bookmarks but the ones that came with the phone, and I could not save any new ones on the phone. I had to email links to myself or save them as an icon if I wanted to visit them again later. One suggestion I found was removing the MobileMe account and reinstalling, but it didn't help. And, iTunes could not sync the Bookmarks by cable because it was finding the Bookmarks file to be busy. Based on another suggestion, I also opened iSync and reset sync preferences and then opened mobileme on the Mac and reset that too, and replaced everything on MobileMe with my information on the computer. That didn't help. While I was trying to sort out the issue for a couple of days I installed AtomicWebBrowser and sync'd my bookmarks to that using their web interface, which worked fine. I actually use Atomic on my iPad more than the built-in Safari. However, I don't like to have to manually sync the book marks from Safari after they've been updated on the computer. I found another solution for jailbroken phones was to use a mobile terminal app on the iPhone 4 to reset permissions on the bookmarks to everyone, except the only terminal I could find in Cydia would close immediately after launching. This same one worked fine with my 3GS in the past. I didn't want to install SSH on the phone to do this because I would need to run mobile terminal to change the default password from "Alpine" to be secure (although I could just delete SSH app when I was done, I've never used it and would have to learn it). In the end I decided to re-install iOS 4.0.1 (using TinyUmbrella TSS server with my saved SHSH blobs from Cydia). That fixed the Bookmarks issue. After that, I restored from a backup, and re-jailbroke it, and the Safari bookmarks still worked. I must note however, that when syncing the restored iPhone with MobileMe for the first time after it booted up, my Mac's MobileMe sync asked me if I wanted to add 6,800 new bookmarks to the computer. I suspect this meant the bookmarks were restored to the iPhone and MobileMe for Mac saw them as completely new. "Merge" was not offered as an option, and I didn't want duplicates of 6,800 links, so I told MobileMe I would do it later. That is when I reset my sync history in iSync and in MobileMe system preferences. That must have overwritten the bad ones restored to the phone with the good ones from my Mac. Good thing I had MobileMe's sync on the Mac set to alert me if more than 5% of my information changed. Unfortunately, then I reinstalled all my jailbreak apps using APTBackup (with which I had used to save or back up my settings previously). This re-installed all my jailbreak apps in one fell swoop, BUT it made all 8Gb of iTunes store apps disappear from the springboard. The memory on the phone was still being used by the App Store apps, but they could not be seen nor launched from the search screen. I recommend people avoid this app like the plague. I had to re-install iOS and restore all over again at 12mn this morning, and this time I didn't use APTBackup to restore my jailbreak apps, and everything is running great - maybe even faster than before.

Well, there was a time when everything I posted was dissected and torn apart as being invalid, that I didn't feel that I had much to add to the conversation. That might put a chip on anyone's shoulders. Anyway, back to RMAF now. Please?

Heh, I think I'm driven partially by morbid curiosity or something.

Oh Lord, I was hoping something like this wouldn't happen. Someone threw the sheep to the wolves (or he jumped in), and it's never pretty. And people wonder why I feel that I don't really belong in the group, or am not welcome here. That came up at RMAF once or twice.

Well, I don't know if the iPad will recognize the 3A USB input.

Bummer, coupon's expired.

Perfect accessory for head-casers, but didn't know whether to post here or in the iPhone thread: The Ibottleopener - Iphone Bottle Opener - Iphone Opener http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDVVidO8AR4

Boo, for iPod sized player with coax out you could get a used iRiver H120 or 140 and follow directions at head-fi to convert the optical out jack to a mini coax jack. It looked like only a single wire and two cut traces to get it done. Or for iPad you could find a used uDAC 1 to use with iPad camera connection kit as a USB to coax converter. (uDAC 1 discontinued in favor of uDAC-2 which isn't iPad compatible.). I don't know think the hi-face M2 USB to spdif converter is compatible because iPad doesn't support 24 bit USB interfaces. I know there are many other 16 bit USB to coax converters out there I but don't know how good any of them are. I think there was a DJ targeted DAP or something like that which had coax output, but I'd have to look for info back on my MacBook later, but it wasn't cheap (like $600). I believe there used to be an archos player that had coax out. (a Q something model number). I can't go search these before i hit "post" because if I open another page on my iPad and come back to this it will likely refresh and wipe out my post.

I agree with your UE In-Ear Reference Monitor impressions. I get a similar neutral/spacious feeling with my ES5 except the Westone have more bass than the UE demos.