If I didn't respect your work in the Doors so much I would have created an especially sassy retort to that post
― Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 11 November 2015 23:47 (eight years ago) link
More like DORKS amirite????????
― Austin, Thursday, 12 November 2015 00:34 (eight years ago) link
That's great entry level stuff, I'm sure it sounds awesome! I was thinking of buying the DacMagic 100 for myself, think it'll be a good value upgrade and a very good match for your system. I'll see if I can take it home tonight and try it out. Can't come up with anything better - though you may also consider one of the new Cambridge amps w built in DAC such as the CXA60 http://www.crutchfield.com/S-pfePpt2A3YH/p_779CXA60S/Cambridge-Audio-CXA60-Silver.html - have only listened to it once but was impressed.
― niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 12:32 (eight years ago) link
yeah i've been happy with it. i'm not really looking to upgrade my amp. so i'll checkout the DacMagic, just adding a $35 Chromecast Audio and a solid bargain audiophile DAC should be good.
― Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 12 November 2015 14:44 (eight years ago) link
I might be looking for something that can play a USB thumb drive through a home stereo...would one of these aforementioned DACs be the solution? Or something else?
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 12 November 2015 15:14 (eight years ago) link
a Heos Link can do that (and many other cool things) http://usa.denon.com/us/heos-link
― niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 15:21 (eight years ago) link
Ums: brought the dacmagic100 home and tested - gotta admit I'm no big fan of a b demoing... but think it works really well, it's not a huge revelation but it makes everything sound more clear and relaxed, I'll probably get one (or a more expensive dac)
― niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:11 (eight years ago) link
Have a somewhat expensive system that sounds a bit cheap w/o the dac but proper expensive w the dac :P
― niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:12 (eight years ago) link
Thanks for the info, niels!
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:20 (eight years ago) link
You're very welcome
Applying for jobs that match my degree in literature a bit better, but always happy when my experience with hifi turns out to be just a tiny bit useful outside of current job
― niels, Thursday, 12 November 2015 20:33 (eight years ago) link
Cool Thx, also read about the Musical Fidelity V90 which is at a similar price
― Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 12 November 2015 21:55 (eight years ago) link
So I looked around and for OSX users there's a desktop app called Soundcast
https://github.com/andresgottlieb/soundcast
which will send iTunes audio, and audio from a browser, to ChromeCast--
seems to work!
― Swag Heathen (theStalePrince), Friday, 13 November 2015 04:58 (eight years ago) link
okay back on topic, Sennheiser's new $55,000 headphones!
http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/03/sennheiser-new-orpheus-headphones/
"As you can imagine, there are numerous design improvements that work to stamp out any audiophile kryptonite -- such as building amps into the ear cups to avoid any noise introduced by cabling, and eight DACs in total with a sampling rate of up to 384 kHz."
― Amira, Queen of Creativity (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 14 December 2015 22:19 (eight years ago) link
So if the amps are built into the ear cups, what is that marble tube amp thing?
― schwantz, Monday, 14 December 2015 22:34 (eight years ago) link
that marble will tickle your eyeballs at hundreds of THz
― Sufjan Grafton, Monday, 14 December 2015 22:35 (eight years ago) link
xp good question. anyway, by using crazy electrostatic headphones, you are forced to move away from small signal design in an area where you usually don't have to, so you can no longer leverage amazing and cheap op-amps. that is quite a trade off.
― Sufjan Grafton, Monday, 14 December 2015 22:47 (eight years ago) link
Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Monday, 14 December 2015 22:59 (eight years ago) link
Do these weirdos ever actually enjoy listening to music qua music or are they constantly listening for impurities/imperfections. Sounds maddening
― lute bro (brimstead), Monday, 14 December 2015 22:59 (eight years ago) link
I don't really understand why you need 8 discreet dacs??
― Amira, Queen of Creativity (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:00 (eight years ago) link
7 wasn't enough in the lab
― μpright mammal (mh), Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:06 (eight years ago) link
they first tried 7, but their digital signals were analog and their analog signals were digital. so they added one more.
― Sufjan Grafton, Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:49 (eight years ago) link
(it was shingy's idea)
― Sufjan Grafton, Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:52 (eight years ago) link
24 bit signal, no more than three bits per DAC, otherwise the electron orbitals clash and there's some kind of gravitational interaction. Got to keep those bits as far apart as possible until they combine in the ear. They're triode valve DACs of course, one bit per ode.
If I keep this up I might get hired to write their promos.
― MatthewK, Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:55 (eight years ago) link
I thought this was really funny:
http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/THETA%20Universal/theta.html
― los blue jeans, Sunday, 28 February 2016 18:56 (eight years ago) link
that is utterly great
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 28 February 2016 19:08 (eight years ago) link
lol, when the first paragraph described the size of the Theta, I thought to myself "that's bigger than a laserdisc player", and then I scrolled down...
― bored at work (snoball), Sunday, 28 February 2016 19:14 (eight years ago) link
Amazing
― robbie ca$hflo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 28 February 2016 20:08 (eight years ago) link
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--IEHpDUxc--/18s3sd0a10tf3jpg.jpg
― nomar, Sunday, 28 February 2016 20:18 (eight years ago) link
amazing story
― goole, Monday, 29 February 2016 21:11 (eight years ago) link
looking at this and reviews of diff components online, they all read exactly the same -- "better definition in bass, greater depth and openness in the soundstage, increased separation in treble." i just read a review of a damn turntable mat that had that language
― goole, Monday, 29 February 2016 21:22 (eight years ago) link
Definition, schmefition, here's the REAL test: Listening to Caetano Veloso Foreign Sound is a hallucinogenic experience with the Theta. My brain is immediately fooled that I am inside a vibrating cloud of sound, and Mr. Veloso is too real and too close for my heterosexual comfort.
― Retro novelty punk (Dan Peterson), Monday, 29 February 2016 21:29 (eight years ago) link
I currently only listen to streamed music on my iphone earbuds and I gotta say the bass soundstage is spread wide open
― petulant dick master (silby), Monday, 29 February 2016 22:29 (eight years ago) link
This isn't snake oil, but pretty cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CE_zmpHcWQ
― schwantz, Monday, 29 February 2016 22:31 (eight years ago) link
Excellent. I watched it all waiting for him to mention Nakamichi, and he did right at the end!
― Michael Jones, Monday, 29 February 2016 22:43 (eight years ago) link
Wow!
― Mongolian Cow Yoghurt Supergirl (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Monday, 29 February 2016 22:52 (eight years ago) link
That is totally nuts.
I saw one of those Nakamichis in a stereo store in the '80s; it was ridiculously expensive for its time, and for the fact that cassettes were never going to be anywhere close to a serious audiophile format (iirc, it was around $500, while decent consumer-grade decks went for $80 and up).
Also, I thought the main appeal of auto-reverse was for recording; if a piece is longer than the length of a side of tape, in theory, if the auto-reverse was quick enough, you could continue recording onto the next side missing far less music than if you had to flip the tape yourself (particularly if you're taping a concert or something off the radio). The quickness of the reverse was a spec often touted by manufacturers (I seem to remember one deck changed direction in .02 seconds).
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 1 March 2016 00:16 (eight years ago) link
I thought I was seeing something exotic when one of these came in to the store recently:
http://i66.tinypic.com/20uubue.jpg
― Mongolian Cow Yoghurt Supergirl (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Tuesday, 1 March 2016 00:57 (eight years ago) link
that is so cool! a tape duplicator, yeah?
― the 'major tom guy' (sleeve), Tuesday, 1 March 2016 03:59 (eight years ago) link
'theta' is a very apt name for snake-oil high-end audio b/c it reminds me of scientology, and the guys who write about this stuff make about as much sense as l. ron hubbard.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, 1 March 2016 04:04 (eight years ago) link
xp It's actually just a dubbing deck but you can load seven cassettes into the playback deck; maybe if you just want to make a comp of cassingles? Heh.
― Mongolian Cow Yoghurt Supergirl (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Tuesday, 1 March 2016 08:43 (eight years ago) link
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/03/15/high-definition-vinyl-will-soon-become-a-reality/
― Cosmic Slop, Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:15 (eight years ago) link
Interesting idea. Not totally into the idea of new HD turntables, would be interested to see how these sounded on older ones.
― bearded flack trickster god (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:28 (eight years ago) link
lol HD vinyl you have to be kidding me.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:37 (eight years ago) link
All in, Rebeat and Joanneum estimate that stamper-related costs will be reduced by 50 percent, while the time required to produce a new piece of vinyl slashed by 60 percent.
on the minus side a new copy of "Thriller" will cost the end consumer $100+
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:40 (eight years ago) link
that's actually really interesting and makes a lot of sense, why bother with lacquer or electroplating when you can just burn the grooves with a laser?
Rebeat and Joanneum estimate that stamper-related costs will be reduced by 50 percent, while the time required to produce a new piece of vinyl slashed by 60 percent.
― the 'major tom guy' (sleeve), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:41 (eight years ago) link
i don't think the "gigantic production bottleneck" nowadays is necessarily from the stampers taking too long to produce, but from the flood of repressings, which a new HD VINYL product would just add to.
the wording is kind of ambiguous and probably tweaked in their favor. i don't see how shortening the time to make a master plate will slash total production time by 60 percent. it seems in this case they consider production time to be from making the master to printing the first vinyl record ("a new piece of vinyl").
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:51 (eight years ago) link
like you're still going to have to wait in line until they finish printing RSD gimmick records and another million copies of "Abbey Road" (now in HD!).
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:56 (eight years ago) link
anyone else have this:
http://www.audioquest.com/usb_digital_analog_converter/dragonfly-dac
― Thomas H. Handy (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:57 (eight years ago) link
"Buy your music again, again!"
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 14:57 (eight years ago) link
xp yes and I love it
― the 'major tom guy' (sleeve), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 15:19 (eight years ago) link