HeadphoneAddict

Thanks. My daughter did a wood sculpture of a lion, and my son did a photograph. We both took a photo of a snowscape with our iPhones, after we pulled over to the side of the road, but his came out better than mine. This is the photo he won the ribbon with, which I posted a while back in the photography thread (click to enlarge): Here is the one I took, and I missed the ray of sunlight coming in through the clouds:

Got the stitches removed in my mouth from surgery last week. Turned 49. Went to an art show where my daughter won a national silver key and my son won an Instructor's Choice ribbon. Had a nice quiet dinner. Ate birthday cake.

Did you order a WES? I thought my old GES was excellent with my SR-Lambda, SR-Lambda Pro and SR-Lambda Signature, as well as ESP-950; but it seemed to need more power with HE-60 and O2 Mk1/2. So the GES might be a cheaper alternative for the 507. I know my WES sounds very good with LNS, giving a nice warm euphonic tone and big soundstage, and it drives my HE-60 and O2 Mk1 better than my old GES; but the WES's power, micro-detail, and air was not as good as the BHSE at RMAF. So I'd worry the WES might be overkill in price just for the 507. The biggest improvement to me is the WES soundstage width and depth is certainly bigger than my old GES which was more narrow and closed in sounding, although the GES soundstage wasn't what I'd call small. And the WES seems to give me that extra 3-4dB in headroom that I was always wishing for in my GES. All my brothers-in-law who compared the O2 Mk1/WES to my re-cabled HD800/ZDT over last thanksgiving liked the WES rig more (same PWD DAC/Bridge source). They all preferred the O2 Mk1 over the HE-60 as well, citing better warmth/bass and a richer more natural sound.

I think I may have said something more like the sound of the Behringer UCA202 was "mediocre at best and it hissed like a snake with my Livewires", and that i sold it and was happy to even ship it over seas. The only thing I've heard that sounded worse than the Behringer was a Fiio E3 and a Radioshack branded boosteroo 3-jack amp. So it might have sounded like ass (whatever that sounds like). Maybe my problem with the Berhinger was because I only used it with my low impedance IEM, and NwAvGuy says it has a 50 ohm output impedance and will sound worse with low impedance phones. On the other hand, I haven't noticed the 6 ohm output impedance of the uDAC-2 to cause issues changing sound among a variety of headphones and IEM, nor has the 10 ohm output impedance of the DACport and DACmini been a problem. I should note that the 1st prototype Nuforce HDP that I had in my hands "to give feedback before production" did have a very high output impedance (possibly over 100 ohm), which I only found out about after I commented to them about bass and power problems with low impedance IEM like Westone 2. They fixed the issue right away and put it into the production version of the HDP, resulting in a noticeable improvement in performance with low impedance IEM and phones. So, I agree that a higher output impedance can sometimes make a difference in the sound but not always, and as long as it's low enough I suppose it's not very noticeable. Interestingly, Nuforce got significantly more power output from the changes, but I never saw them update their specs to reflect the improvements.

The whole thing with Japan is terrifying. I saw videos of the tsunami waves overtaking fleeing cars, and later a photo of two parents looking at their deceased daughter in a driving school car that was caught by the waves. Very sad.

He looks like the main character in the movie "The Illusionist". Nice disappearing act.

I haven't been so time in a long drunk! Happy birthday.

It was an interesting day. Fuck it it's not worth it anymore.

X2, you never know when someone will beat the odds. In 1999 my doctors gave me 5 years to live because my lung disease was advancing so fast and there is no cure. So keep praying for the best!

I previously owned the Behringer for a few weeks and only used the headphone out, but that was pretty mediocre sounding and hissed like a rattlesnake when used with my IEM. My iPod 5.5G Video and Macbook had slightly better sound and less hiss, so I sold it and was happy to ship it overseas at a loss. I think my uDAC-2 sounds fine and for the price it's hard to beat, but I don't listen to brick-walled music that sits at 0 dbfs, which is apparently where the uDAC-2 distortion levels rise to 0.7% on his measurements. The uDAC-2 headphone out is a step up from the original uDAC or Macbook Pro, although still a little behind my iBasso D4 and even farther behind the DACport, Pico Slim and Stepdance. The RCA output to me seems better and matches other $220-350 USB DACs as far as I can tell, and a few others agree with that. As for the CDP-8 jitter issues that turned up, Nuforce acknowledged that and came up with a fix right away. Apparently the issue was at a frequency range where it's harder to hear. While my CDP-8 sounds better than my Apogee mini-DAC as a source, mine is shipping out tomorrow for the free update anyway. I've known about it for months but it wasn't worth the time to send it out, although I could live without it while I'm gone over spring break. It seems to me the guy is acting like he's sharing jesus when he posts about his measurements. Almost like he's pushing some kind of agenda.

I'd love an iPad 2 but decided that I needed a new stand alone camera more than I needed an iPad with a built-in camera. I enjoyed the thrill of getting my WiFi and my 3G iPads on their 1st days out, but this new model will probably have to wait. I'll try to live vicariously through others this time, if my will power holds out.

Well, I'm retarded doing things to myself while looking at a mirror image, and I can't read a schematic or stop my hand tremors, so I'm screwed either way.

I really like that 4th one.

Hopefully it's not adenovirus which is contagious for weeks. Ice cream, yum - I thought you only get that after having your tonsils removed.

I just calculated that my out of pocket for the one tooth would have bought me a brand new KGSS with change left over.

Hey guys, I picked up a refurbished Leica D Lux 5 with a 1 year warranty, which includes the Adobe LR3 software. It was about the price of a mail order Panasonic LX5 and LR3 software with a similar 1 year warranty. So far I'm very happy with it. It's very responsive with almost no lag between pressing the shutter button to capturing the shot, and auto-focus is very fast so I'm not forced to pre-focus if I'm in a hurry. I took all the shots below in automatic mode, and only had to enhance one of them). I can definitely use it indoors without flash, and even with using zoom and no flash indoors it looks pretty good. I have the shot below in a dimly lit restaurant with 3.8x zoom from 8 feet away, and at that point if I look at the image at 100% on the computer I can see the artifacts there from the high ISO, but in a 5x7 print I can't tell at all. I've set it to save RAW+JPEG, so I get both in case I want to adjust the photos in LR3. But even just the JPEG files look pretty good. I have resized photos below, with links to the full image under them. Here is the re-sized shot of my son reading a book in the restaurant, max zoom at 8 feet no flash, dim light: Full Size son I took this one of some dolls 4 feet away in a sushi bar, again with poor lighting and using zoom (re-sized). I think the detail in the full-size shot is very good for the conditions: Full Size Dolls I took this portrait of my son's German teacher, which wasn't posed or planned. I like being to catch a photo without having to tell the subject to wait and sit still: Full-size teacher And another shot of my favorite antique door (re-seized with a link to full-size below it): Full-size old door Macro is also pretty good, and I took this shot of the fake stones over the fireplace in the restaurant from less than 2" away but from an angle so part of the shot if out of focus: Now, this shot in automatic mode of NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain covered in clouds did have the colors washed out a little, but it was easy to enhance the shot in iPhoto - both re-sized below:

Yeah, 20 max strength Lor-Tab will do the trick. Thanks.

Refurbished Leica D Lux 5 camera.

Got a dental implant today because i cracked a molar all the way down the root and had too much bone loss and chronic infection over time. Same thing happened to the opposite molar in 2009 (developmental defect or something). The extraction and bone graft was 8 weeks ago, and I still have to wait another 6 weeks to heal before I will be fitted for the crown. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad as the previous one, but the wallet is suffering a permanent hurt.

Hi Nate, any update on this?

It's too bad there isn't enough love for the EC ZDT. I compared mine to Sherwood's Moth 2a3 amp and thought the two were very similar in sound although the ZDT had more power. I never compared them in detail, or to his Firstwatt F1 later, but the later amp sure did a good job with his Cicadas. I know the ZDT does a very nice job with a pair of Fostex horns - the mids are great although not as transparent as the Cicadas. I thought about buying the Cicadas on Audiogon except for the crinkled driver would drive me nuts, and I have to spend $1000 at the dentist on Tuesday (thank God for tax return). Anyway, I'd love to see pictures of this new amp, and look forward to more impressions.

I can be indoors and try to take a photo of my son at his wrestling meet with my Nikon S6 (no flash), and press the shutter button but by the time it takes a photo a few seconds later the shot is gone, unless I am not using any zoom which slows it way down for indoors shooting, but I can't get close enough to the action to get a good shot without zoom. If I zoom in with the flash on, but am farther away than 5-10 feet then the shot comes out black because it seems to think it's okay to crank up the shutter speed higher with the flash on. The 6Mp photos don't have enough resolution to let me crop them digitally on the computer and throw out the unwanted pixels. Basically the S6 is an outside-only camera if you want to zoom at all or not use the flash. And I'm not shooting in the dark, this was a well lit gymnasium. And inside my home with every light in the house turned on I get slow shutter speeds and blurry photos because it maxes out at 400 ASA (or ISO whatever). So, I get few good photos of the family at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I might just buy the S95 at Best Buy instead of online at a lower price, so I can try it out and return it if I don't like it after putting it through the ringer for a week or two. Right now I'm liking my son's $69 Canon A490 more than my $300 Nikon S6 (2006 price). I just want something better by the time we leave for spring break.

Good job, you can never be too safe when the head makes that "thunk" on the sidewalk.

We got our tax refund last Friday and paid off a car a year early, all the credit cards, and our spring break trip to visit Duke university. We had the return completed on 2/4 but we held off e-filing until some of the old tax forms that had changed were re-approved by the IRS on 2/14, so we wouldn't have to amend the e-filing later. So it was filed on 2/15 and the Feds and State deposited the cash 10 days later. We changed my wife's withholdings, so she'll get more take home cash per paycheck and the refund next year will be smaller as well - but we figured there's no point in letting the government borrow our money for free when we could use it now or save it ourselves for the vacation fund.

Thanks. In regards to #1, if you were to just let the camera do everything itself and you just wanted to snap pictures on automatic, did the camera make you wait very much to start shooting the first shot and subsequent shots? I've seen some pretty incredible shots posted up on the web taken with the S95, so I feel better about that part. And I'm already used to carrying a spare battery with my Nikon S6, so I'd just get one to be safe. I'm frustrated that I missed VPI's used S95 for sale today...