Currawong

The Audio-gd DACs are fine and, IMO, the PCM1704UK-based DACs are good value. The designer is completely genuine and not just yet another person trying to make an eBay DAC from a generic design. I'd have hoped that someone here with a lot of experience and a good speaker rig would at least have given one of them a shot instead of just dismissing them because of one person. I agree most of the differences in DACs involves splitting hairs and it's probably hard to make a bad choice. Indeed avoid recommendations from people who have not compared it to anything else.

This makes me wish I was in the USA just to try a pair, they look awesome.

I see what people mean by "flat". Reminds me a bit of the O2s (out of a Stax amp), though they have a gradual drop from bass to treble for the most part.

Where's this FR graph? The only pictures on previous pages said "No longer available".

WTF, more headphones to add to the list to try and kill the HD-800s with? Meh! I like the look of them. Specs say they 91 dB/mW, so does that mean lots of current will be required most ideally?

BBQ! Aira is standing on the left, explaining to friends that the helicopter that just flew overhead is now "Gone!" and mum is sitting on the right next to the small tent. Autostitch on the iPhone FTW.

Apple will take this as far as they can for the simple reason that, though they might cop some bad media publicity, letting Gizmodo get away with it will encourage others to try the same thing. They'll go to the guy who found the iPhone, show him the evidence and the law and give him the choice of telling everything down to the last detail to them or having the book thrown at him. Since he was an epic idiot, he'll cough up the details and Apple will spare him. Gizmodo shall not be spared shit, and even though they might cry and whinge, in a year they might be offline or sold after Apple crush them.

Sony could have done with that advice 10 years ago. If they took it now they'd have to wipe out most of their company.

I picked up my 404LEs a couple of days ago. I wanted to see if they were more resolving than the LNS. I really need a new headband for them as the leather is a mess and the sliders don't hold their position properly. Not to mention they creak, which is annoying. Anyway, possibly because of the pads the LNS sound a bit wider with a bit more bass and the 404LE sound like they need to loosen up. They don't suddenly go all ultra-boomy if you lift them a little like the LNS do. The included FR graph suggests they are very mid-forward, though I don't feel they don't sound that way so much, but they do have a spot-on forwardness that suits vocals. All this out of the T1S.

I have boxes of shit I still don't know where to put and it has been 4 years... I'm with thrice on purging. I need to move just for this alone. I get around it by re-arranging rooms every so often and getting rid of some crap.

$4k of new fucking bathroom because the old one leaked. At least I don't have to pay it straight away in the sense that the tenants end up paying for it and I just get nothing for a while. On the good side, I picked up the 404LE today. I didn't think it was possible to own a pair of lambdas that visually matched that ugly gold finish found on my borrowed T1S.

That's crap Vicki. After having lived in Sydney for 5 years I'm fanatically paranoid about where all my valuable possessions are when I'm out and about, even though I live in a country where you can leave your car running while you go shopping and it, and it's contents will still be there after you get back. I've heard so many similar stories about iphones going missing that mine is either in my hand, a zipped pocked or pouch and never gets put down, anywhere public. My work finally redeemed itself where before they had hired a full-time teacher to take over all the classes of the one that quit, instead of giving the classes to us other teachers, which we were in desperate need of. The new teacher couldn't handle all the driving (honestly! I swear Japan attracts serious slackers) so now not only have I got all the classes I need, I was offered more, including two highly sought-after school positions. Other than that, the little one spent half the day at her grandparents house, where her grandmother played with her non-stop, so I arrived to find a 20-month old (as of tomorrow) so high from excitement that she screamed hello at me. She crashed so hardcore in the car on the way home I could lift her out without her waking up (otherwise impossible). She climbed up the stairs to the fifth floor by herself yesterday too, which is pretty good going considering she usually bails out after one flight.

The HD-800 tends to be, IMO, rather "just the facts maam" kind of cans, so if the facts are the gear is lacking at all, then so is the listening experience. I like how I've got them set up now, but I'm sure they suck in more rigs than they would be good in, and then there's the *cough* stock cable which I put back on the other day thinking it can't be that bad and it was even worse than I remembered it. Anyway, I'm going in this week to nab the 404LTDs and was wondering if I should punish my wallet some more and get the matching amp...I'm thinking not as I'm going to build the eXStatA and KGSS soon anyway and it's not as if the T1 will be a bad match with it.

Thanks. I seem to have not a bad knack for composition on the fly. My father was a big fan of people never facing the camera, whereas I, on the other hand, like to capture the feeling from people's eyes in entirely natural poses. I forgot to add to my post that the only correct I do most of the time is whatever Aperture does for RAW processing, sometimes with an exposure adjustment (since most of my photos are impulsive and the camera doesn't always guess right about what I am shooting), so within obvious limitations, the colour in that photo is a good reflection of how things looked.

The issue I have with people in audio and other debates claiming science is on their side is that the way they present science is not science at all. Much of what I've seen people debate when they refer to science is "Because of XYZ you should take this as true without question." which is the opposite. The same goes for quite a bit of what I've seen taught as science, where people should be learning to learn and find out things for themselves, not have their brain filled with so-called facts (which change every few years). Very few people anywhere I've found, are interested in discovering what's true and what's not about their beliefs or thoughts, let alone making the effort to truly learn, about anything. /end rant. What, I wonder, prompted grawk to bump this thread?

charliex: The guys here tend to recommend older, discontinued PCM1704 or PCM63-based DACs, such as Parasound, Assemblage and Sonic Frontiers. Keep an eye on the "Forsale Elsewhere" thread for those. I recommend Audio-gd DACs, which are, from what I've seen and experienced, fairly similar good value. Certainly the second-hand DACs, sometimes available for as little as $300, are going to walk all over anything new at that kind of price and considerably higher. Anything along these lines is going to be great with your 404/T1 rig. You may find O2s too mellow and your rig too "polite" (to pinch The Monkey's description from a while back) overall in the end though, as they are considerably different-sounding to Lambdas.

I've been using mostly P and A modes on my D80, though recently re-discovered how handy manual mode can be. I usually set up auto-focus, white balance and whatnot for whatever I'm shooting beforehand. I really want a D300 though. I use the 18-200 outdoors out of laziness, and a straight 35mm as a universal lens otherwise. I really need a 12-24 or similar, as I've been going nuts shooting panoramas with my iPhone and Autostitch. It's more likely I'll pick up a 24mm and a 50mm sometime though when I feel it's time to get more kit again. Anyway...the little one in the breeze with Cherry Blossom petals:

I don't know anything about ADAT, but it does look like the tried to include everything but the kitchen sink just about.

I didn't see this posted anywhere already, but when I saw "balanced I/O" I immediately checked the price...bit steep though at around 600 Euro yet doesn't have Firewire. The VGA plug break-out cable will make DIY dead easy though, and it's not recessed like the Duet's. From: RME Delivers Babyface Audio Interface

Nice lava flow... I like that.

I posted a review on the other site if anyone is interested.

Micromega made some nice CD players...back in the early '90s. Not sure how any of that gear would stack up now without knowing what's inside it at the very least.

Now Rhydon is offering free version 2 drivers to existing customers, just as I was going to finish a review.

Can you open up the Console (In Macintosh HD -> Applications -> Utilities) and see if there are any interesting messages about USB coming up when you get the clicks or pops? If anything starts getting screwy with USB you usually get a console message about it. As for hubs, I'd probably buy a Belkin and definitely a powered hub.

Back in the '90s, my favourite hi-fi store was selling high-end gear made by a small Australian company, named after its founder, Kostas Metaxas. At the time it was impressively better than famous brand names (in Australia at least) for what they were asking. They certainly were pretty hard-core about their designs, for example: Anyway, aside from that, I found they had put up some recording samples they'd made of jazz and classical, which, apart from a considerably amount of background hiss, are pretty good. Metaxas Audio Systems Hope you all enjoy them.