Currawong

1. HD-800 2. LNS 3. SR-5NB 4. HF-2 I suspect things will get very interesting once the Symphones Magnums arrive and I can build an eXStaxa and get a pair of O2s again.

Fuck it, I'm getting a Core i7 27". My MacBook Pro is now 3 years old and 3GB of RAM just doesn't cut it.

Mine are still sitting as Posted/submitted. I have emailed Rhydon to suggest he do something as I am sure they are still sitting in the post office where they were submitted.

I have to throw Rudyard Kipling in here, though I agree with Boomana. My favourite book is Stalky and Co, which is about naughty schoolboys.

My parents couldn't get me back inside for dinner when I was playing with the neighbourhood kids. Then they foolishly bought me a computer and couldn't get me off it. I remember in high school, on the weekends if i wanted to play with friends, I could only call their house and if they weren't home, I could only try other friends...no way to find out where they are. Now there are people tweeting when they take a dump and the Japanese introduced a tag that goes on the bag of kids in elementary school so their parents can track which street they are on going to and from school.

I need to update it to include the latest sponsor forums, if i can work out which ones are new as sponsor forums keep coming and going rapidly over there. You need to right-click and bookmark/copy the link. You can't use the link after you've opened the page as it's a temporary search result.

It's especially noticeable listening to pianos and violins. Piano notes sound hard-edged and artificial, violins just don't sound real to me. Speaking of which, this is one reason I miss Australia, as I still own a piano. I'd love to do some amateur recording and compare results between DACs using it. I do have a rich friend who has a grand piano though (to have a house big enough that you have spare room for a grand piano in Japan, you have to be seriously loaded). I don't own a Duet any more though to record with.

Sorry to hear about the car accident Doug...they are often more awful in feeling than in physical damage. What Nate said about injuries...it's easy to not realise how badly hurt you are until some time afterwards. If you feel strange at all, like having a sudden desire to buy Skullcandy as your next headphones, get yourself checked out at a hospital immediately.

I emailed and got my shipping confirmation today, which shows up in both Canada's and Japan's EMS sites, so I guess this week for mine.

The Apple store monkeys don't get told anything. They aren't stupid though and everyone and their dog knows how to spot an upgrade about to happen. If they receive a new product ahead of announcement, the boxes are covered in black plastic which they aren't allowed to touch until a certain date. They wont tell you if they have anything covered in black plastic out the back either.

I reckon a P-1 for $800 would be very damn good, excellent if you consider it's a brand-name amp and the premium one normally pays for that IMO. I was in Best Denki (Best Electric) today where they have a proper headphone listening area (to go alongside their shithouse racked headphone area, which has an Esoteric and Yamaha CD players, as well as the AT amp and what I thought was a P-200 because of its size, but what turned out to be a P-1u. It was a great opportunity to try the SA-5000s, W5000s and other cans. Since the staff (probably in fear of having to speak to a foreigner in English) completely ignored me, not that there are many around that floor, even on a Saturday, so I just traced the wire for the AD-2000s on the rack to the headphone distributor, pulled them out and took them to the listening table for a proper evaluation. It was rather hard to evaluate well, as I felt that likely the Yamaha CD player and cables weren't good enough for my tastes, especially as most of the cans I tried were strong in the areas where any harshness is most noticeable: SA-5000s, W5000s, A2000X (very fucked-up sounding cans they are, seriously, and that's before one gets into fixing the fit, which requires serious wire bending), and AD-2000s. OT for this thread, but my thoughts on what I tried: SA-5000s: Nice treble, needs more bass punch (rather like the new aluminium ATs in a way); W5000s sounded the least like an AT woody, ie: least dull; A2000X is just indescribable with tonality just all over the place, maybe something like if you go from HD-600s to 650s, but with all the gains in complete revsere -- more treble, less bass; AD-2000s: Remind me of HF-2s with bagels, but with strong mids instead of strong bass/mid-bass. Not really great descriptions, but that's what struck me most about each.

If you're going to open up a Mini, either sharpen the end of the putty knives or use a large-bladed kitchen knife. You need the sharp edge to get in between the metal case and the plastic and then the knife has to be strong enough so you can give it a twist to pop the latches.

After JayDee's long posts in the CryoParts sponsor forum, I understand his point of view, and feel he answered criticism well in a place that isn't really his market for what is probably the cheapest item he sells. I think it would require comment from Kevin Gilmore at least regarding anything technical he mentioned. Since I have been playing around a little with converters and having gotten some good results (I can now hear clearly the players' breathing on Chesky's The Body Acoustic with my HD-800s, something I thought I'd need an O2 rig for) I'm at the point that there are a number of directions I can go if I want to improve my rig. I was thinking it would be helpful to have some kind of reasonably definitive information available rather than just playing pot-luck with converters and other gear, especially that which is controversial. I figured this might be the kind of problem that one might run into, that is, being able to make valid measurements. However, even if one just RMAAs gear to show the tonal "tricks" dialled in to make listening enjoyable, then people might learn something, if measuring jitter is too hard, for example. I was reading various complaints about the RME Mac drivers recently. I have in mind to have a dedicated Mac Mini with SS HD as a music source, and I'd love to have a Firewire interface instead of optical or USB, but I don't know if I'd just be spending a lot of money for very little gain, though my hi-fi nut friend in Cali reckons that AIFF only is the way to go and that all other processing by a computer degrades the SQ etc etc pushing me towards buying a dedicated power conditioner for just my Mac. Ditto. Coax was distinctly less harsh on the DACs where I'd compared. By rights, my DAC shouldn't be affected by the source very much at all, yet improves with a better transport, and the same can be said for other DACs that supposedly don't have issue with jitter. Some more Dan Lavry and others discussing possibilities and findings would be interesting IMO, though leading to something practical rather than the pseudo-knowledge that goes around would be most helpful.

Officially fake...news.com.au posted it as fact across the web sites of a bunch of newspapers around Australia, even after most people already knew it was a fake. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the idiot in question who posted it got called up for a "performance discussion" over it.

Happy belated Birthday. I was in a store today looking at the replica pellet guns here and was thinking of your awesome Browning HP.

I'm entirely for the anarchy it will create if random people rock up and get their stuff measured, then the whole thing is posted on HF. This mainly because there are too (two? ) many people waking pseudo science in the Sound Science forum (Sound Pseudo Science forum?) and I want them to shut the fuck up. I noticed, btw, JayDee posted measurements of the SonicWeld Converter, which were suitably impressive, if not comprehensive. Can't be bothered finding the link though, it's in the review thread I think from about 3 or 4 days ago.

I have to add, the HF-2 sound ridiculously good out of my iPhone to the point I could easily live with that as a travelling rig. I ended up finding some bagels, so I'll experiment with them once they arrive, which should be tonight.

I recall something somewhere about the Northstar pinout for the I2S being the reverse of normal, whatever that is. The PCLinkII is the TeraDak without the DAC, isn't it? That's what I was using for a while anyway. I really would like to see all this gear measured for jitter and whatnot by someone with some serious gear who knows what they are doing. Maybe Canjam 2010 needs a Sound Science table manned in such a way?

That's interesting, as the P1 I tried was a nice match with HD-800s IMO.

Did the first school ALT lesson of the year...arrived to find they had no useful materials for the lesson plan and improvised the entire lesson instead, then repeated it three more times. Afternoon lessons were at a daycare run out of owner's house, where the kids are beyond excellent and had me (and them) laughing uncontrollably at their silly rendition of subject material (reviewing basic greetings) which is normally extremely boring. HF-2 baby is now trying to walk, a little.

I had to replace my MatsuSHITa drive for this very reason, and that it was not recognizing burnable media either.

Excuse the hijack, but I was talking to my friend in Cali about getting a Drobo and he mentioned a friend who works at Promise technology who recommends this. I'm considering it now once I get around to upgrading my MacBook Pro.

So far, the thing that kills listening with HF-2s for me is listening with HD-800s first. Some of that is definitely because of the different treble between both.

Doug: Sorry to hear about the R1. I feel your pain. Are there any R2R DACs in production other than the PCM1704 currently?