HeadphoneAddict

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...

Thanks, I'm thinking that if I get the S95 I'll get the Richard Franiec hand grip recommended earlier in this thread to make it easier to hold one handed. I know you had the S90 and not S95, but I have a few questions if you will indulge me: 1) Did you feel the S90 worked fast enough for you, or did it make you wait too long for taking shots, focusing, or zooming? 2) How was the image quality with ambient indoor light and no flash? 3) Was the 200 shot battery life a problem for you? 4) If I don't want to use RAW and process the shots later, will the jpeg quality be good enough? 5) Were videos saved in .mov format? I've been reading more and saw some complaints about lower jpeg quality in the LX5, and that the S95 jpeg IQ is a little better with in camera processing but still worse than RAW. The complaints were about yellow splotches in the images saved in jpeg mode of the LX5. What I like about the LX5 is that you can use zoom in the video mode, and you can adjust shutter speed or aperture as well. But I import all the photos and videos from SD card to iPhoto, and I would have to convert all the Panasonic .mts videos into .mp4 and can't double click to watch them from within iPhoto (so I'm told). But a .mov file could be double clicked within iPhoto after an import, and Quicktime will open and play it right away without conversion. Maybe the stereo sound in S95 videos will make up for lack of zoom? We stopped using our panasonic digital video tape recorder a while back, and although importing videos via firewire wasn't too bad we liked using a digital camera for videos more. Thanks!

Thanks, the only thing I'm going to buy from him is a used 50mm 2.0 lens for my Mamiya 35mm SLR camera, which will be in next week, since all I have is a 28-70 zoom with 3.5 aperture at the lowest zoom. Lenses for this old camera are hard to find, and the 50mm lens on our broken Canon AL-1 doesn't fit. The other Camera shop I know of only carries Canon and Nikon, and they didn't have the S95 in stock (sold out). And Leicas are special order, so I skipped that shop today. I stopped at Best Buy to see the S95 and the battery was dead so I couldn't play with it. It was significantly smaller than the G12 for sure. I'm stuck between the LX5 and S95 based on reviews I've read, and price. So, I'll stop bugging you all and keep reading up on these and try to find one to play with somewhere.

I went to a local camera shop to look at some of these cameras. It's a local small dealer and he had a new Leica D Lux 5 but not the Panasonic LX5, but it was $799 new. That's well above my budget, which started out at $300 then got pushed to $400. They had a used Leica D Lux 4 in excellent condition, which is basically the same as the 5 but with less zoom, but that was still $499 and more than a new Panasonic. I did like it and it's bright lens, as well as all the manual adjustments one can make. I spent the most time playing with the D Lux 4. They also offer a standard 6 month warranty on the used cameras, or an optional Square Trade Warranty. He suggested that if I really want the LX5 that "they sell 300 a day at Best Buy", but he felt the Leica is a little better build quality although performance is probably the same. So, if my budget was pushed to $500 he felt the used Leica D Lux 4 was a little better camera if I must have a PnS. But the LX5 is about $399 at Amazon last I checked. So for $100 less than the used Leica D Lux 4 I think a new LX5 makes more sense. He wouldn't budge on the Leica price. (and Best Buy doesn't sell the LX5 as far as i can tell). He did have a Panasonic TZ5 which is a lesser model than LX5, and it was new open-box for $300, but I didn't have time to look at it more closely because I had somewhere else to go. I didn't ask for the price on their Canon G12 because I thought it was too large. They didn't have the S95 either (but I can get a new one for $370 on eBay). Nor did they have the Olympus XZ1. Like some of you suggested, instead of a PnS the shop owner noted that he could find me a used Canon 20D DSLR with a 50mm 1.8 lens for $400-450, and he thought I should get that in addition to keeping my Nikon S6 or Canon A460 to use as my pocket camera. He says the 20D image sensor is pretty big, and the Canon is a generation ahead of a similar used Nikon DSLR, and will work better indoors without a flash than the PnS. He felt a used EOS Rebel would not be as good of a camera. The other camera store I've been to before is usually more expensive, but I might go by there to see the S95 and Olympus.

Home Comcast cable internet, via 802.11n WiFi Airport Extreme wireless to my Macbook Pro.

Thanks for the advice guys. I will try to stop by a local camera shop and look at some in person. I was at a store recently looking at some DLSR cameras, but had decided to go for a PnS instead for that very reason that if you don't have it with you you can't take the photos. Plus a PnS could save me several hundred dollars. I don't want to put this on the credit cards that I finally paid off in full.

Well, that's still a lot of choices to me - and I'm in the process of deciding what the most important features should be. I'm leaning toward the S95 for the picture and size/portability, but don't like what I've read about the battery life or the aperture when using zoom. However, I can deal with carrying a spare battery. One review I read comparing the Olympus to the Canons and Panasonic found it's not as sharp. I like the idea of the better "brighter" lenses on the Olympus and Panasonic, and figured I might go for the LX5 over the XZ-1. Having to deal with a removable lens cap seems like a pain in the butt, but if the camera is good enough I could deal with it. I just want to be sure of what I'm getting this time, so I'm trying to do more research. I think picture quality and speed of obtaining the shot will be my number one, especially indoors, then ease of use, size, and battery life. I'm mostly tired of missing shots because my camera is too slow to get ready or focus, or blurring the shots indoors. I also want one that saves movies as a .MOV and not an AVI, because my Macs all seem to choke on AVI videos - if they are imported into iPhoto and I double click on them from within iPhoto they wont open. I have to open them in the finder, after setting VLC to open all AVI files. I can't seem to find enough information about the video formats these cameras save files as. I appreciate all the advice, thanks!

Yeah, happy birthday!

Man, there are just too many options to choose from for a good PnS camera. That shouldn't be a bad thing, but it can be overwhelming.

I'd rather they sell things in 16/44.1 ALAC without compression than worry about 24 bit.