scanfiend

As in lack of response, lack of replies, lack of opinions on the headphone in question

Simple economics - Apple has 75% share of US market vs 4+% for Creative. But yeah, there is a dearth of accessories for Creative products other than travel speakers

Another point to consider is comfort. With the customs, you never even know it's there. It varies by individual, of course, but in my case, it's very, very comfortable. With the comply tips, you tend to notice something in your ears after about an hour I have tried a whole bunch of tips for my UM2, ranging from tri / bi flanges, to hard rubber tips, but in my case, they all resulted in poor comfort and / or lousy sound quality. For isolation, it's there, but it's not appreciably better than the comply tips, IMHO. I donno, maybe silicon conducts sound better than foam? Anyway, with music playing, all external sounds disappear. I'm also playing music at lower volumes. With regular comply tips, I used to play music on my iAudio X5 on level 10. With the customs, level 10 is too loud, so I am now listening on level 09

A UM2 with a custom UM56 tip gives better treble extension. The highs really sparkle now. Someone in headfi commented that the comply foamies absorb the higher frequences and excentuate the bass, and now I can "hear" what they were saying For want of a better term, the comply tips make the UM2 sound "warmer" and more bass heavy. With the UM56 customs, and if you have a good seal, the bass becomes much tighter, not as "boomy". Soundstage and detail improved tremedously, probably due to the treble extension.

You could try one of those tea-sachets thingies they sell in NTUC or Daiso. You know, the type where you stuff the tea-leaves in and pop the bag into the cup or kettle. Makes cleaning up those tea leaves a cinch. It's porous, so it should work

Congratulations on the arrival of your long awaited 'phones In fact, I was the 2nd person in Singapore to see them, after Wilson of course! I happened to walk into the shop yesterday afternoon just as he was unwrapping the package They sure look nice. Please write about your impressions

Just about forever on rechargeables Seriously. I would think over 20+hours at least.

oops....make that a Xin Supermicro (I think). I have that for years....it's one of Xin's 1st amps, I think. Runs on 3 AAA batteries (!)

Well, I have the following amps if you guys want to audition 1. Crossroads 2. Xenos REP 3. Xin Supermini ver 4 Stock and Cardas HPI interconnects. Can't really comment on the sound because everyone "hears" differently

Here's a review of a basic CMOY amp and an explaination, in layman's terms, of what a headphone amp actually do: http://www.dansdata.com/cmoy.htm I think it would be better to audition some amps to see whether it actually result in a noticeable difference on your current setup, before plonking your cash on one. Headphone amps can range from relatively cheap to exorbitant amounts The "cheaper" ones are the Crossroad amps (below $100), to the Xenos REP & RHP series (below $200), and also the PA2v2, as Top-Gun mentioned. I think you can audition the Xenos amps either in Stereo Electronics or Jaben Network. Jaben brings in the Crossroads, but I think he's out of stock at the moment.

Oh, my first "serious" computer was an Apple IIe equipped with a 64K (!) 80 column CP/M card. The CPU was a blazing fast 1 Mhz (!) Ah, Wilson and me had a good time waxing nostalgia on the good 'ol days I know Apple computers are easy to use. Their computers look and feel beautiful. I mean, look at the aluminium G5 towers. In retrospect, they probably needed those aluminium to cool off their notoriously hot PowerPC chips, but that's an entirely different story At that time, all PC's were all boring beige and square boxes. I don't think that has changed all that much over the years. I mean, what got me was that Apple played hard and fast with their "facts" and marketing vs the PC. And the adoring fans lapped it all up. Those in the know sorta laughed at the naivete of their fans. The "fastest PC" ever, the "most reliable" - heh, yeah, right. In their eyes, Apple could do no wrong. Apple has always been a marketing and design company. A computer company? Huh? A software company I can acknowledge, but a hardware company? Their PC's uses bog standard off-the-shelf parts. PCIe slots, IDE HDD's, USB & firewire, ATI & nVidia video cards. About the only Apple specific hardware in there is Firewire. Granted the video cards needed Apple-specific firmware to run, but it's all bog-standard. Apple provides a pretty case and its admittedly excellent OS to run, at a hefty margin. There were some who thought that with the switch to Intel, prices for Apple hardware would come down, but that hasn't happened. No, my friends. Any, I do mean, ANY company that can garner that kind of customer loyalty is surely deserving of respect. Apple wasn't the first to the MP3 market. Arguably, their MP3's aren't the best-of-breed. But their design and marketing blew away all its competitors. Let's face it....prior to Apple's arrival, most MP3 players don't look good. I still have one of Creative's Nomad smartmedia player, and the original Diamond Rio player. They were U-G-L-Y

Hey, it looks like your friend was affected by the RDF or Reality Distortion Field that the "fruity" company gives off. Or maybe he's too deep into that Kool-Aid I'm constantly amazed by the distorted sense of history & reality that some of these folks have

The weak headphone jack is a fairly well-known problem for the Zen Micro. I believe the later versions fixed that. Not to say it excuses Creative of course. The headphone jack is a point of vulnerbility for any DAP. That's why I always look for L shaped jacks on my interconnects and headphones - it gives zero stress on the jack compared to a straight plug. However, I have ZERO problems with the other Creative players that I own....A Zen 4GB Muvo, a Zen (20 GB), Zen Vision:M. Maybe I've been lucky Creative makes competent products, only their design is a bit lacking.

The design is not very exciting, especially compared to the more recent DAP's from other competitors - iRiver, Samsung, Sansa etc. Having said that, the sound should be OK since it's a Creative. I feel that Creative has way too many MP3 product lines....it's confusing. The naming convention should also be revamped. You have the Zen Vision, Zen Vision:M, Zen V, Muvo, Neeon, Zen MicroPhoto, Zen Micro, Zen Sleek, Zen Nano etc. How do you come up with a coherent marketing and advertising message for so many products & designs? Especially if they're all functionally similar.

Wait....I thought you meant the Zen V! Anyway, the Zen Vision (what's with all this confusing naming? ) is a PMP right? Please let me know how it goes

That's why I always look for L shaped jacks. They may not look as pretty as some of the fancy looking plugs, but they put almost no stress on the headphone jacks. Makes it a lot easier to stuff the amp & DAP into my pouch, too

That's a most informative thread, Mackie. Thank you for linking it. I'm a headphone guy, and never really had the chance to play around with speakers, interconnects, speaker wires and such. I've read about the endless debates about the pros and cons of various types of interconnects, and never put much stock into them.....some of the proponents seem to infer some kind of mystical, other wordly properties onto cables, while others counter with cold, hard science I must confess that I was a skeptic....after all, wires are merely the conduit for electrons to flow from point A to B. Unless you're using really terrible, unshielded cables, all reasonably high quality cables should sound similar. I put more stock into the view that your other components, i.e. amps, source, speakers play a more important part in determining the sound. However, even my untrained ears can detect a change in sound between the stock IC's and that of the Cardas! Oh no....is that a slippery slope I'm descending?!

I could be wrong, but strictly speaking, a signal from a line-out is unamped and free from any sound effects like bass-boost, EQ & volume settings applied on the player. That should be the case, since the line-out is supposed to bypass the opamp circuits on the player. Connecting from a line-out to the amp is the most ideal. Unfortunately, most DAP's do not have a line-out jack. For those that do, most of the "line-outs" are not truly line-outs (in the strictest sense of the word), because the signal out is still coloured by whatever EQ and volume settings used on the player. I have a Vision:M, and I use my amp through the headphone jack. Although the Vision:M has a so-called "line-out" via the dongle, what is does is simply blast the signal out at MAX VOLUME. It overwhelms the input on my amp, and I can only turn the volume knob by JUST A LITTLE, before the volume becomes too loud. Subtle it ain't I certainly hope the Vision has a dedicated line-out circuit, but given the lack of it in its flagship Vision:M, I am not hopeful.

can wires have a sonic signature? arent they supposed to be just transports, n thus be as uncoloured as possible? Browse any self respecting "audiophile" boards, and you'll come across endless debates about exotic wires, plugs, and other stuff that goes clear over my head. There's good wires and there's lousy wires. Beyond a certain point, you'll rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns, no matter how expensive the wires get (IMHO). Having said that, using the Cardas HPI interconnect, the hiss I get from the amps using the stock IC vanished with the Cardas. The sound was warmer, but sounds more "congested" compared to the more airy sonic signature of the stock unknown IC's that came with the amp. Dunno why that is so....different materials and / or impedances? There! I can throw them adjectives as well as any card-carrying "audiophile", eh?

*sigh* with all these security checks being implemented, it's going to be hard to bring much of anything on board - unless you are willing to trust to check-in luggage. Not on your life!

Easiest way to check if it's IE or your comp is to try another web-browser to surf. IE is notorious for being exploited by Trojans, worms, spyware and other nasties if you're not careful and did not apply patches.

It uses either FreeDB or Amazon (US or Germany). Some folks also recommend MediaMonkey. I downloaded & installed it, but found it to be extremely confusing to use That's just me, I guess. MP3Tag is extremely easy to use.

^^ This guide is hugely informative. I use EAC with Lame, and the guide walked you through on the download and setup. http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Main_Page If you have a "brand-name" DAP, the installation discs should generally contain the ripping and ID tagging programs - e.g. Mediasource for Creative, Jetaudio for Cowon, Itunes for Apple etc. Using those programs should be a lot easier, as it's basically a 1 click process. On the other hand, I tried EAC with lame, and I think it produced better results than Creative's Mediasource, especially if you're using VBR encoding. The differences are very slight though. You have to weigh whether the extra hassles and steps involved with EAC ripping is worth it for you 1. This is what I do: I rip and encode using EAC & lame (following the guide) 2. I then manually tag the mp3's using MP3tag (a freeware program). 3. I like to use MP3tag because it allows you to easily include album art into the ID3 tags. So if you have a player that supports album cover art, it's great.

The Lonely Shepherd, by Zamfir. I got to know of this piece of music from the soundtrack of Kill Bill Vol.1 (of all places ) There is something plaintive in the musical arrangement that just tugs the heart. Say what you want of Quentin Tarantino, but this guy knows how to choose his music.

biased towards the boss??? what does that mean? Dunno leh. My chinese ain't that good so I could be wrong. If you can read well, you can visit www.erji.net . Could it possibly mean biased towards the BASS. Probably a typo