HeadphoneAddict

I agree - my HM-901 sounds more like a desktop rig with my custom IEM than a portable rig. I keep a 64GB SD card loaded with FLAC in it for using in my bed. But using the Perfectwave DAC Mk2 > ZDT > JH16Pro and others is pure bliss. Often it's more convenient to use my CEntrance HiFi-M8 with macbook and IEM while surfing the web, but it's not as rich & warm sounding, nor as refined, although equally as spacious and open. Like Nick, I have often used my Pico DAC/Slim with iPad and IEM, and it's quite good together, like a mix between the warmth of the HM-901 and the treble of the CEntrance. I almost exclusively use my JH16Pro FreqPhase and ES5 at home with these rigs, but use my older JH13Pro or ES3X for travel (so in case I lose one it won't be my best).

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday!

Done! Have fun!

Happy Birthday!

Cinder, Ben's new cat is doing well. The only problem is that some days he gets totally nuts and too playful (my arms look like I went swimming in a rose bush), and he likes to eat up the other cat's food so he's putting on a little too much weight in the belly fat. Well, and I'm really worried for our expensive Lazy Boy chairs when he's racing around the room and leaping from chair to chair. His claws get sharp too quickly after trimming them (like he needs it every 10 days). So, Cinder is doing better than my peace of mind.

Target is like 3-4 miles away

My daughter is there for school (well, at Duke in Durham) and she's having no trouble getting around in our AWD Subaru Impreza 2.5RS

You can't imagine how happy reading this makes me, so glad you are enjoying the Sq Wave XL after Kevin fixed the PSU. It performed on about the level of my Maxed Woo WA6, with slightly less detail but slightly larger soundstage, and a lot more power. It did a good job of taming bright phones and paired well with my balanced HD800, but made my K1000 sound a bit dull. It also drove the HE-500 and LCD-2 extremely well, same with HP-1000.

You need to move back to Colorado. Blutarsky moved to work in Wash DC and I need more head-case locals (autocorrect try to use "fiends") here.

That sucks. Last summer my neighbor had just bought a used pickup truck, and when they prepared to come to our garage sale to haul away some left-overs we found that a tire was flat. Since they were doing us a favor, my son and I changed the tire for them, in the burning hot sun with metal too hot to touch, only to find out that the spare was also flat. Fortunately there was no puncture, it was just an old spare that was never used so the air pressure got low. So our air pump was able to put it into drivable condition. The good news was that they also had the opportunity to discover that they had a jack but no tire iron, before they were out on the road with a flat.

Well, our regular plumber called me about 7AM that Friday and had someone out by 8:30AM to cap off the burst pipe and turn the water back on. We have a 5 yr service contract with them on plumbing and HVAC, so they didn't charge us anything to do that! The photos that I took right after the leak helped him pinpoint the spot and cut a 1'x1' hole to work in, because the wet area got too big to know where it first happened. The burst occurred about 5-feet inside the house, at the juncture of the wall and ceiling above our 60" HDTV and PS3, etc... So it could have been really bad with the ceiling coming down on top of the home theater rig, and then water eventually soaking the theater chairs, electronics, and spreading to treadmill & pool table legs. and whatever else it got to before making to the floor drain by the furnace 30 feet away. Tomorrow our plumber should be here with a new outside water faucet, using the newer PEX pipe running about 10 feet into the house. The pipe is hidden behind walls and ceilings so it doesn't have an inside shut-off and drain. If we installed a cut-off and drain in the unfinished portion of the basement it would also shut off cold water to the kitchen sink. But he thinks that 10 feet of PEX between the outside faucet and the original copper pipe should keep the copper from freezing. Cost is estimated to be $289 for that. Our front yard water faucet has exposed pipes in the un-finished basement space which helps keep them warm, but I think that I'm going to ask him to install a shut off and drain as a precaution. I forgot to ask about a price. Then the water restoration company came out at 11:00 AM that day, and found a good amount of water in the insulation behind the wall, extending about 4 feet to each side of the burst pipe. There was a vapor barrier on the outside of the insulation, but the builder didn't seal it to the top of the 7.5 foot concrete wall and water got in from the top. The ceiling was also wet for about a 10 foot length across the room, running along the joist bay at a 90 degree angle to the wall. They had to remove all the drywall in one stud-bay (floor to ceiling) and then reach in about 3-4 feet in both directions and pull out an 8-feet wide swath of insulation x 9 feet tall wall. After spraying everything with antimicrobials they set up a blower to dry behind the wall and another for the ceiling, plus a huge dehumidifier. The carpet was only slightly damp for about 6-12" out from the wall, and 2 days of drying and demolition came out to be $850. The project manager didn't come out and used photos and texts to come up with a $1400 estimate at first, but I argued it down to a $1000 deposit to let the techs complete and write up the job first, so with the lower price they refunded me the $150. Then I have to get a drywall guy to close it all up. I think I'll use the guy who fixed the wet drywall after the September flood. No idea of the cost for that. The plumber suggests putting a fake ventilation register (vent) in the burst-pipe area to let warm air behind the wall and ceiling, with several 1" holes in the joists on either side to let warm air travel across to the other joist bays, but that will only be warming up the PEX that he doesn't expect to freeze. He also recommended putting something on the outside to cover the faucet. Because we had a $20K claim for roof replacement for hail damage in July 2012, and $6K for flooded basement in Sept 2013, our insurance broker says filing a claim before our renewal on April 26th is a bad idea if we can afford to fix it ourselves. So, we aren't going to use insurance for what we hope will cost less than $$1700-$1800 total. We were lucky enough to save up an emergency fund and pay off enough debt to have the cash flow we need to pay for 2 kids in college. Despite the fact that I've been coughing up 1-3x a day blood since Sunday, God has blessed us in many ways - with just enough money (always need more) and just enough health to keep going.

Just spent the past hour and a half trying to get a 24 hour plumber here for a burst water pipe in the basement. They don't mean "available 24 hours a day", they mean "we'll be there in 24 hours" (or more). We were lucky because I caught it at the beginning. I was in the kitchen at 12:20AM restoring my son's MacBook backup onto another computer, when all of a sudden I heard a loud burst of sound, like white noise from a radio or a portable compressed oxygen tank valve being opened. I went to try and turn off the Big Jambox, thinking I did something with the computer to make it start roaring at me but it wasn't on. Then it sounded like it was coming from the heater vent in the floor next to the Jambox, so I went to the basement but the furnace blower wasn't running. But I could hear the water pipes humming, so I turned off the water and it stopped! I went into the theater room under the kitchen area, which was flooded last September with the heavy rains in Colorado, where it had rained hard enough that the sump pump had tripped the breaker, and sure enough I found water along the baseboard seeping into the carpet. There is a spot on the drywall at the top edge where the wall meets the ceiling which has a growing wet spot now. So, now we have no running water and no idea when this will get fixed, or for how much. We spent $6K fixing the last flood, but fortunately insurance paid for 90% of it. This time I caught the problem and shut off the water within a minute or so. If I hadn't been an insomniac and up working on Ben's MacBook, we'd have been swimming in the basement by breakfast! I bundled up and went outside in -4 degree weather and there was no sign of leaking water outside, but the water faucet is frozen shut. The faucet is quite flush with the house, with almost no pipe between the faucet and the house. In 8 years we've never has a hint of a problem. Sigh....

I'd say the HE-500 are the best bang for the buck, after the HD600. I highly recommend them in your budget. The Lyr or M3 would be a great small amp for them too.

This photo was at 1:30PM, and then it dumped another 7-8" by 6PM. I had to take the snow blower out at lunch and dinner time to clear the driveway, and by 7PM we had another 2-3" on the driveway. At dinner time I actually had to do the driveway and sidewalk twice back to back, just so the accumulation wouldn't be back to 6-7" by the morning. I also did my neighbor's driveway, and he had two foot snowdrifts to deal with. No snow day for Ben, but school is on a 2 hour delay for Wed.

Yeah, just saw this too Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, has died http://usat.ly/1eK6GXi

Just bought my son a re-furbished current Gen 15" Retina MBP (8GB/512GB) to replace his 5 year old MBP. I still think the old MBP works fine with 8GB Ram and a 500GB Seagate Hybrid HD, but it's 2.4Ghz Core2Duo just doesn't handle the modern day games that he tries to play. His current MBP is too old to support mirroring the display to an Apple TV. And if he uses AirParrot to mirror the screen, or uses AirDisplay to use an iPad as a second screen, then it requires putting the old Mac to sleep and waking it up after every restart (otherwise you can't drag files around in the finder). For everything else the old MBP still feels faster and more responsive than a one year old 13" MBP with 2.9 Ghz dual core i7, mostly due to the much faster HD. But the two year old battery is giving less than 4 hours of battery life with constant use now, and while the battery is not swelling it's obviously going to continue to diminish over time. This is probably the perfect time to sell the old one.

In the year and a half that I owned the 950's I never heard them squeal once, with the stock amp or my SRM-1 Mk2 Pro and Woo GES. My ESP-950 were re-cabled by APS with an SR-007 cable and had the dampening removed, so I don't know if that changed the issue. But they sounded smoother than my SR-Lambda Signature (slightly too bright) and sounded more balanced than my SR-Lambda Pro (too much midrange suck-out). The 950's sound kinda reminded me of an older Grado RS-1 with flat pads, especially in their flat soundstage - they were energetic and slightly aggressive sounding, but without grain or an edge to them. In comparison, the SR-Lambda Pro and Signature could become slightly fatiguing over longer listening sessions. I still preferred the SR-Lambda normal bias, so i didn't keep the others. I'm pretty sure that I'd like my current pair of SR-Lambda Nova Signature more than the ESP-950, but I sold the 950's before I got the LNS and haven't compared them.

Bingo!

Happy birthday!

Wow, get well soon!

Happy birthday!

My snow thrower is a mere toy compared to yours. Yours looks/sounds like a jet taking off... It moves fast. I can push mine about 2mph.

I'm using an apple leather case with Zagg screen protector most of the time. Sometimes a Lifeproof case in inclement weather.