Sherwood

I didn't forget about the draft, exactly, but I was not able to hold on until 4AM. I didn't set any keepers, because fuck those guys.

I know which one I'd rather have breakfast with, at least.

I'm really glad you're enjoying it, @MLA! I've been bounding back and forth between the closed-form filter and the polysinc short filter shown in my settings above. The closed form seems to have better imaging and spatial cues, while I like the transient response of the poly sinc filter. All of them I've tried are good, but those are my usual go-to.

That's a good question, Antonio. I've already converted all my .iso to dsf, which both Roon and HQPlayer play wonderfully. I'll try to grab another .iso and see how they handle everything.

Well, if you get too deep down the rabbit hole, I can share my settings:

My latest signal path has started with Roon, which is a piece of software I really enjoy. It sounded excellent, but recently I found that I could fuck with it a little more and spend time twiddling knobs, and I'm powerless to resist that. Most notably, Roon makes it simple to delegate all the actual "file playing" duties to another program, HQPlayer. Roon and HQPlayer represent significantly different approaches to music playback and management. Roon focuses on metadata, art, liner notes, reviews: basically the kind of edifying stuff you read and think about while listening to music. HQPlayer focuses on filters, and by Jesus are there ever a lot of them. And not just filters! You also get to play with modulators, sample rates, etc. There are a lot of parameters you can set regarding how you would like your D/A math performed. Many people who use HQPlayer with a DSD DAC prefer to upsample everything -- DSD and PCM -- to the highest resolution DSD stream their DAC can process. This is exactly what I've been doing, and it really sounds fantastic. Is anyone else using an external upsampler, either as part of software or a hardware piece like the dCS, and getting good results? I'd love to know why it is that this sounds so good.

Wake up, my subjects, your king has returned.

Happy birthday, Ryan!

This one is real bad. The Fugees haven't put out an album in 20 years.

I don't care about modding Stax headphones, so I wouldn't have seen any good content you posted there. If I followed you with great interest I would surely have noticed all your life-changing posts by now, though. I propose a simple test. We will measure your output here against the standard you set, as quoted above. If you were posting garbage, Dan would ask you to read the welcome PM, right? You asked me to go dig through your old threads, so I did it, and I remembered why I knew your name.

Man, I'd pick the fights you think you can win. For everyone else, my friend Chris Chappel breaks it down pretty well.

I'm not speaking only of your last few posts, I'm speaking of the entirety of your time here and elsewhere. As to why the history of 20th century China, and specifically the war between the PRC and the ROC matters to "China today making fake products, producing non genuine goods and getting away with all sorts of copyright and intellectual property issues", it matters a great deal. It matters because the primary actor in Chinese IP theft is not a series of private companies or "shady individuals", as you intimate, but a codified branch of the Chinese military tasked by law with doing exactly this. Likely, these companies spend more time on networking products, wind turbines, car parts, and other high profit industries than they do on headphone amps. Nevertheless, it is the source of the culture of theft that permeates the professional world in China. It's naive to think that their "shitty president" (I mean come on, you can't say they're not a democracy then call their leader a president...) is the root of this, as it predates Xi by generations. The root of it is in the root of the communist party, and specifically their plan to sustain themselves through sustained economic growth, which now requires outright theft to maintain. They don't exactly get away with it, but how is anyone to stop them? Again, they're not popularly elected, and they're not beholden to Chinese citizens in any meaningful way. As long as they can stave off revolution, they're in good shape. So whether or not they are a democracy is terribly relevant, as it explains a great deal about the country and its internal governance. I don't expect people in general to take a great interest in Chinese politics, or to be accurate in how they speak about China, but you're contradicting people who know what they're talking about.

Happy Birthday Jefferson!

Look like a good fit for the HP1. Will report back with problems.

This is simply an ignorant world view. You post a lot of garbage, but this is too much to go uncommented on. China was absolutely a democracy, and the fact that the PRC was allowed to claim the title of "China" impacts all of our lives profoundly. None more so than the poor souls who have to live there.

Happy belated birthday wish to you, Doug. Please continue your unabated string of excellence indefinitely.

I spent the day on a delightful little island, Buyukada, that's about a 90 minute ferry ride from my home. It's full of renovated Victorian mansions, cars are forbidden, and tourism is down this year so we were especially welcome. We took a horse carriage ride around the place, had some sub par wine, generally enjoyed life. Couldn't have asked for more!

Welcome to Head-Case, Ozgur, I hope you enjoy it here.

This fuckin' guy.

No need to swear.

Gorgeous beyond words, Doug. You make the absolute best stuff.

You are beyond help.

It is, of course, anathema to suggest this, but I'ma do it anyway. I can't fathom a use for 1.8 watts (per channel!) into 600 ohms. A theoretical 600 ohm 90dB efficient headphone still hits 120+ dB at 1 watt, and since that theoretical headphone would have been manufactured by children in East Berlin, I doubt it's deserving of the claimed resolution. I wonder if a better design brief might sacrifice some output power in favor of size, cost, and legitimacy of parts.

It's super easy: HD 800.

A coworker of mine was recently declined for a Chase Sapphire card. I know what she makes, as a public servant, and I know what her husband makes, too, since I hired him. They are clearing ~$60,000 a year disposable (as in, after taxes, student loan payments, housing expenses, etc.) She was a practicing attorney in New York and Munich for three years, has tenure at a position where it's nearly impossible to fire her, and is a married, 30 year old woman. She suspects it's because she's only ever had one credit card, and she never increased the $2000 limit. I am sure she's right, but that seems like an awfully narrow risk for Chase.