HeadphoneAddict

It'll be so sad if her Germany trip is canceled or disrupted by this, so I'm praying you're right. She's a great kid and I'd hate for her to not go after all her hard work to win the trip.

Happy Birthday!

My LaCie Network Space MAX 2Tb is pretty reliable, however when it's serving variable bit rate music (ALAC, VBR MP3) on the shared drive the bitrate and song length is reported incorrectly. Once I play the songs, the time and bitrate changes to the correct amount. I spent 2 months with a service ticket with LacCie before I gave up hope. Even after 3 updates in 5 months they haven't fixed my problem, although they posted that the update is supposed to fix this. I had even bigger problems with a Netgear Stora.

That's good to know. I had read the following link from March 1st where it implied that firmware SD23 had the problems, and that SD24 fixed them - Seagate Firmware Update After I installed my drive I saw that it has Firmware Revision SD24, which I thought I had the latest. I also ran the Serial number checker at seagate, referred to by the first article, and it says "no download available for this serial number, and no action needed." But it seems that I missed the addendum at the bottom of the first link, and there is a new firmware SD25 that came out on April 1st. New Firmware - I will end up updating it, but might wait until I have issues. PS: I didn't go for a $900 480 Gb SSD because I may end up with a Macbook Air once they have lighted keyboards and Thunderbolt ports. If I don't keep any iTunes on the internal drive I'd have 40Gb free space on a 256 Gb MBA, with iTunes now on an external 1.5Gb drive.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday!

Another one blows: Iceland Volcano Errupts They say it's not expected to disrupt european flights, at least for now. I hope not. My daughter is flying to Germany for 3 weeks as a school ambassador on 6/4 and I'd hate for this to screw that up for her - the whole trip is free and the flight is already booked.

I ended up with that Seagate Momentus XT 500 Gb SSHD Hybrid 7200 RPM drive for my 15" Macbook Pro. The things I read about it looked good, and $900 for the 480 Gb SSD I wanted was too much to spend on that right now. It's definitely faster than the Western Digital 640 Gb 5400 rpm drive that was previously installed. Even in an external case and booting via USB to test my clean OSX install, as soon as the drive learned what files to put in the flash memory the Macbook seemed to operate at normal speeds, despite using USB. With the drive installed internally the Macbook Pro boots faster and loads apps noticeably faster than before. Mail and iTunes pop open almost instantly now. I also have no slow downs after migrating all my data and apps onto the drive from backups. Based on the advice here, I did trim down my iTunes Library a good bit; and I put a full copy of my iMac iTunes library on a portable 1.5Tb FW800 drive to carry with me (and as back up). So, despite giving up 140 Gb of internal storage I still have over 50 Gb free space like before; and I managed to retain a 200Gb itunes library on the internal drive. Not keeping a subset of my favorite music and movies on the internal would be about as uncomfortable as "going commando", but if I had to I could make due with a 256 Gb internal, like on a future Macbook Air (want lighted keyboard and Thunderbolt port).

Seagate Momentus XT 500Gb SSHD Hybrid 7200 RPM drive for my Macbook Pro.

I have an inexpensive set of Sony bookshelf speakers and a cheap pair of Radioshack bookshelf speakers that both sound like ass compared to the A2. Same with my Travagans mini-desktop speakers. Not even the PWD and ZDT can extract any kind of enjoyable sound from those (nor with extra power from my vintage Marantz receiver connected to the PWD). Like I said before, my new A5 are a noticeable step up from the A2, but I bet there are a lot of speakers out there that are not as enjoyable as the A2 on stands. If the A2 were enough to keep me happy I'd have not bought the A5 at RMAF, but I just don't agree they sound like ass (horrible, unlistenable is what I assume ass sounds like). On my small rolling laptop table (no walls within 5 feet) with MacBook > DACport driving them they have a decent near-field soundstage which is more intimate than spacious, somewhat rolled off highs, and boomy bass - but the mids are not bad and detail is not terribly blurred.

In most cases I would agree that they don't sound great; except that when placed on stands the mid-bass clears up and doesn't drown out the mids and highs, at which point they're really not so bad. PS: I bought the A5 at the last RMAF and those are a noticeable step up in sound quality, but I still can't say the A2 sound like ass.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with flames. (Okay, my bone-headed move was that I gave Jery permission to surprise me with a secret design, since he gave me free artwork so that they would look good for my review, because I ordered clear shells at first and he didn't like the look). I also have the UE11Pro that look like a foamy mug of beer.

I was never able to exercise with IEM because of bone conduction sending a loud amplified thump of footfalls into my ears with every step. I found something like a Sennheiser PMX-100 or iGrado to work better and still stay securely on my head as well.

That was a great post, right up until the last paragraph where you ended up back at zero...

Thanks for the help. My main iTunes library is 998Gb on an external drive with the iMac, and my Macbook Pro internal HD Library is 280gb, but I use automatic management. So I won't be syncing on two computers after all, since I don't want to resort to an external iTunes library on the MacBook Pro just yet. But I'm considering a Seagate USB 3.0/FireWire 800 external 1.5Tb drive for portable, and then switching to a smaller SSD in the MacBook, at which point this might work out better.

Agreed. My neighbor owns a home theater store and I program Harmony and Monster remotes for him all the time. The biggest problem for the customers is when the remote gets out of sync with the power status and source settings on the gear being controlled. Many people don't keep the remote pointed at the gear until all of the macro commands are complete, so some gear could stay with the old settings and not respond to commands properly. If the remote thinks you are watching a DVD when you are trying to change the cable channel, then it acts like it's not working. Often one can use the help button to get things sorted out again. However, occasionally the database has how the TV input is switched from one source to another programmed wrong, so you have to manually change some settings about whether it uses a distinct button for each input, or cycles through all the inputs in sequential order, etc. We have a Harmoney 680, two 880, and a Monster MCC AVL 300. They're very useful.

What happens if both computers don't have the same items in their library? Does each computer sync a portion of it's files, and the iPod retains a mix of the two available at the same time.

My WD 640gb 2.5" drive seems to be dying in my MacBook pro. Can't reinstall OSX in an attempt to stop the crashes, spinning beach balls, and copy errors.. My last backup clone was 2 weeks ago, and I get errors trying to copy the more recent files onto another drive. Fortunately most of the files will copy when I boot from another drive. Thinking about a hybrid HD to keep the budget really low. Best Buy has the Seagate Momentus 500 Gb 7200 rpm hybrid SSD HD for only $139. Anyone with experience with those? PS: the directory errors return sooner or later after repairing the drive with disk utilities.

Woo Hoo!!! Great news.

Nice! That's the same Bluray player that my wife and kids gave me last Xmas but I didn't know it did 3D. I just looked at it and it is definitely that model, and says 3D on the front sticker. We also have the PS3 in the basement theater, so now all we need are a couple of 3D TV's, someday... The picture is nice on our 42" Sony HDTV, and it works well with Netflix over wifi. When we first set it up we couldn't add shows to the instant queue, but there's been a software update automatically installed not too long ago that added that and more to the Netflix player. We use digital audio out into our AVR, so I don't know if the analog output sounds good or not. Still pretty happy with it, and I think the wife only spent like $160 on it at Best Buy.

Happy birthday!

Holy Crap!

Happy Birthday!

Neither, just saying I'll try to hold out longer (maybe till the urge to answer fades away).

Actually I waited a week to post, but I'll see if I can last 2 weeks next time.