HeadphoneAddict

Well, once the ESP950 has been charging/running for about 10 minutes or so there is no channel imbalance and both drivers are at full volume. The sound is great at that point. The question is whether to live with the long charge up time to get equally loud drivers, or remove the cable and send it in for repair and then have to reinstall the Stax PC-OCC cable when it comes back (and maybe remove the dampening again). I'll see what Blutarsky wants to do, and help him out with the return if he wants. To get the repair, the Koss website says it needs to have the ESP950 registered through their website. I don't know a date purchased or where, but all I have is the S/N. 1. Is this true about registration, or can I feign ignorance and ship the ESP950 without registering it, and just include name address phone email and description of the problem - "Slow charge up with left taking longer than the right". 2. How do I explain the missing cable? I know it says "no questions asked" limited warrantee, but it's like, how do I know the drivers take a while to charge if there is no cable? Shouldn't I explain something like, "the old cable had a short so it was replaced last year with a Stax cable and adapter to use with the E90 which could not be returned with the ESP950". Spritzer, can you tell me when and where this ESP950 I got from you was originally bought?

Eddie Current ZDT (well, the 50% deposit if that counts). If not, O2 Mk1 yesterday.

With the O2, the SRD-7 Pro and SRD-7 Mk2 have a lot of potential, but I've only been using low-end $200-300 speaker amps. I am looking forward to trying a much better amp with them. Last time I tried the O2 Mk1 they were easier to drive and sounded a little better with the transformer and 8.5 watt/ch Qinpu A-3, although the mk2 are nice off the GES ever since I changed my source to the PS Audio DL3 DAC. The O2 Mk1 just needed a little more pizazz or spark than they got from the GES. Listening to Diana Krall "Live in Paris" just didn't feel live with the GES, and vocals were a little recessed. However, classical with O2Mk2 and GES was pretty good. Switching the Mk1 to the transformer really woke them up.

Well, it looks like I'm be trading with Blutarsky tomorrow for Naamanf's old O2 Mk1, and spending more time trying to decide between the Mk1 and my Mk2 again. I likely will sell one of the O2 eventually, but I'd like to hang onto both until I can listen to them via SRD-7 Pro out of my Eddie Current ZDT speaker-out first. I just don't know if I want to hang onto both until it arrives in June - the 6 week delivery date is pushed back a month.

Yes, my devices on N are transmitting 2 - 2.5x faster than the 54g ones, all at the same time on the same mixed g/n network.

x2 - very happy with mine. All our macbooks, iMac, Apple TV and airport express are faster due to the 802.11n, yet my 54g devices still play nice with it too (verizon XV6800, iPhone, Nikon S6 camera, 2 Windoze PC's, older airport express). It was not too hard to configure port mapping to get into my slingbox and dottunes music server. I keep a 1TB drive hooked up to it as a server for all the computers. The only problem is that it can have either a hard drive or a printer connected but not both. We got an HP wireless printer so we could have an HD connected instead (free after rebate when I bought the Macbook Pro). Well, the other problem is that it router can't be configured over the internet remotely like a lot of other routers, so when we added VOIP I had to configure the router myself for the comcast guys to add the VOIP box and cable modem to the IP reservations and MAC address filtering (and the same thing when we added monitoring for the alarm company to ride on the VOIP service).

Thanks for the reminder - keep forgetting sla = sealed lead acid battery I would think most DAC with XLR out will still give you higher levels than you want, and maybe you need a preamp instead of a new source, or an amp with less gain?

What changes did you hear by moving the mini-DAC to battery power? I use a Sigma 11 PSU (that n_maher built) with my mini-DAC. The highs seemed to get smoother and more refined with it, but gain or output volume didn't change.

APS (1) removes the dampening behind the driver (2) installs PC-OCC cable (3) includes koss-stax pigtail adapter to listen to Stax headphones (and re-cabled 950) on the E/90 amp. The drivers, as noted before, have always taken approx 5 minutes to fully charge up for me, when not used for a couple of days. And now Blutarsky who traded me a PS Audio Digital Link III for the 950 says he may want to send it in for repair because it is taking even longer for him with the E90 or the SRD-7 Mk2 that I found for him. There may be a small channel imbalance off his SRD-7 Mk2 that wasn't there when driven off my GES or SRD-7 Mk2 just 4 weeks ago. I bought them from Spritzer with the APS mods already done, so there is no Koss cable. I do have a spare cable off a Sigma normal bias, so I suppose if we swapped it onto the Koss and sent it back, we could put the good cable back on upon return. Can anyone here tell me the step by step to disassemble the 950 and access the cable connection, without destroying pads or baffle or anything? I don't have them here to see how the pads to come off, and whether there are simply some screws under the pads, etc. Thanks!

Yeah, someone posted the photos of it not too long ago. On another note - Blutarsky informs me that the O2 Mk1 pretty much suck when driven by the Koss E/90 amp.

The question still remains - what will they do if you send an APS modded ESP950 with the Stax PC-OCC cable and the stax-koss pigtail adapter, along with the amps and stuff? Can you request they return the Stax cable and pigtail, in the event that they have to replace the headphone? Then one could just send it back to Alex to be un-dampened and re-cabled but save on the materials costs.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Now that I have the D10 for portable and iRiver I believe I'll stick with the upcoming Pico DAC-only for my laptops and iMac. I also have the Headroom Micro Stack (portable separate amp/dac) for my bedside rig, and was told it is slightly better than the newer 2 in 1 microportable version.

I had seriously considered making an offer to Beefy for his Gamma 1 Dac but it was for sale in Australia only and he probably doesn't like me enough to have sold it to me. Now I'm on the list for the Pico DAC-only.

Justin, I brought the D10 with me on spring break, so I will see if using the analog input from Macbook Pro line output causes any ground loop while doing USB charging. I'll report back later. Once I get the Pico DAC-only I may be using that with my P-51 even more than the D10. Then the D10 will get paired up with my iRiver H140 optical DAP. We'll see.

I really really like the D10 connected to my Macbook Pro optical out and driving a wide variety of headphones. I did a review of it recently on head-fi and picked it as my top choice for DAC/amp for computer transport listeners. The sound via optical DAC is as detailed as the Pico and the USB DAC is very close. The sound is sligthly warmer overall than the Pico - kinda falling in between an RSA amp and Pico amp, but with the larger spacious soundstage of the Pico. It is very transparent sounding and I find little fault with it except the RFI from iPhone is a PITA. You can roll opamps to make it sound closer to the Pico as well, and HiFlight found an opamp combo that he feels beats the iQube (AD8599 LR/AD8656 buffers). The "iQube" clone setup sounds very good with the Sennheiser HD600 and IE8, but sounds too cold with my other phones. A good in-the-middle compromise is to replace the stock ADA4841-2 opamp with an LTC6241HV instead. It also sounds good with the AD8656 in LR and buffers bypassed. With that opamp combo mine ran for 28 hours on battery while using the optical DAC to drive headphones. I especially like the USB charging feature.

JonL also highly recommends that same amp for driving a Stax Transformer with O2. I haven't heard anything bad about it yet, and it is on my short list someday. EDIT - I should read all the posts before I post anything, sorry.

I suspect a bit of that could be rectified by a change in tubes as well.

I got an email reply from Jack Woo earlier today, stating the same thing he discussed with you. I really appreciate how responsive he and Woo Audio are to suggestions from email and people at the meet. I also mentioned adding the option of one SE output next to the 4-pin XLR. I look forward to hearing more feedback from head-case peeps about how it sounded to them at the meet.

Can I get any documentation of that happening, so I could use it to help me contest the denied warrantee on the Touch?

Looks interesting. I sent Jack an email about putting the jacks on the left and volume on the right, and offering a 4-pin XLR as an option, as well as a SE jack to go next to the 4-pin. I love my maxed WA6 and GES, and would likely buy something like the Woo 22 to replace my Square Wave XL Balanced amp, after the impending fire that I am waiting for any day now...

See, back in the old days when I wanted thumpy "hard" bass I was listening to ZZTop instead of MJ...

FIFY

IF we could reach the goal of an HD800 I would chip in another $40 via paypal. Anyone else think that is a worthy goal?

I wanted to. I bought a used broken touch for $80 that died and the owner opened it up to see if the battery was disconnected. He got it used and didn't think that it was under warrantee, but I checked and it was, so I bought it and sent it in, and they sent it back saying it was abused and water damaged. I figure they must have a way (red dot) inside to know about water, and how could I fight that. The seller denied getting it wet, and I'm stuck with it. I figured at least I have a spare screen for my 16Gb touch, except my son lost the touch on a ski trip 3 weeks ago, so I'm even more screwed. PS: Does your iPod play both channels through the line out dock? You get get a cheap amp to velcro to the iPod and still use it.

I used the Micro$oft Live 25% off deal that was so hot at the time these came out, and got a $128 refund on my ESW10JPN, so in the end it was like $384. One of my few safe investments... To the cable question - I don't know enough about the new APS portable cable, but I'm waiting to see how portable the cable will really be before I make the jump. I think Lil'night or someone like that did an APS cable of some sort to their ESW10 and he loves the sound but doesn't like the bulk and weight of the cable. I wont like that either.