peanutbutterjam

Kudos to an iRiver H-1x0 series appreciator! It is indeed my personal favorite thus far.

Haha yeah something fun and not poisonous Whoa you guys are seriously on the ball

I'm currently using the Zero...

Yep thanks again to Jig. That must have been a real monster to move around. Anytime Eric Maybe you might just decide to change target from the B22

Source is important. You definitely want to be looking at a good source next if you're planning to spend more. My next purchase (if it does happen) is definitely on a source. My current DAC is totally just choking my headphones. Can someone recommend me some?

It really depends on what you want. Generally for headamps, unless you're talking about budget china products, you can expect to go above 1k for a tube amp. However if you're referring to a tube power amp, then you're looking at a way different budget. Also you have to consider the cost of the tubes. Some tubes aren't cheap.

Hm somehow the Blue Hawaii doesn't look as majestic as it was in real life. Is it the lighting? But man just the looks of the real thing is... The sound that came out was again another head-spinner. This forum is getting more and more populated by dangerous ideas and images

Eric, your xindac's balanced outputs are crying for attention

Wa I just looked at the thread again, somehow my Linux computer at my workplace didn't load the pics. That B22 look is just amazing. Period. There are many that can build a B22, but clearly building a beautiful one is a feat only achievable by the few wizards. Yet another amazing contribution from AMB.

tbln, could you put the permanent post link? Yeah Eric, the B22 is calling to you already

I would even say one of the nicest. Personally I find it way better looking than the rockhopper audio's build. The laser engraving is just superbly done. Wish I could see it in person and hear it

Chassis is also another major issue. It might seem insignificant, but getting the cosmetic aspects of the amp in good order is much harder than imagined, and it definitely cost money. I really wouldn't call B22 budget. The parts alone already don't come cheap. Throw in the extra work for a proper build and good chassis work, it won't come up cheap.

Maybe you want to ask wlkwb? Very nice guy.

wack

Eric where are the pics??? How did the wood change the sound? How big was the difference?

Yeah the last one was already quite packed, and the next one is going to be way worse.

wet

Wow you used the LNS and 4070 before? How is it really? I've heard many good things about the LNS, but finding one to hear is more than very hard. Wilson does have one on display, but I'm not hoping for anything from that side.

cold

Yep the STAX really does classical well. But even rock on it is fantastic. I prefer the rendition of Hurricane 2000 by Scorpions in the STAX. I guess its your preference of sound presentation. Me I demand all those details and space even on rock. The bass guitar might be blasting, but I still want to hear that pluck of the string, and a very clear definition of instrumental placement. It certainly isn't anything like the the Grado's typical wall of sound. STAX's bass is very deep, it goes down to the levels that you "feel" rather than hear. I really love it on the bass drum in classical. One of my absolute favorites is the cannon firing in Tchaikovsky's Ouverture Solennelle, L'Année 1812 (try the one recorded by David Hall for this). I heard that this effect is even more pronounced in the O2's, so... Haha no lor. I think only mine and hellfire's are really "humble". The rest is just Man a BH in singapore! I'm really curious about tweaks. What are you using? Any impressions? I can't say I'm a believer yet in tweaks, partly cause my system is too bottlenecked by the Zero DAC to reach that kind of resolution. Year 2009 is the year of sources for me. Time to hunt down a proper source Its also the year of listening to music and not equipment.

Hm offhand I can imagine that this might be due to the sampling rate his music is encoded in. USB only supports up to 16 bit due to transfer speed limitations. The on-board SPDIF would not suffer such limitations. Thus if his audio is orginally encoded in 24bit, it is imaginable why this is so. Maybe you could post the link to that VRZ issue? I think it is interesting, since I do have an on-board SPDIF out but it sucks compared to the USB because I can't use ASIO for it. Stock windoz kmixer is tey pwns.

Rachmaninov piano concertos? This is nice. [attachmentid=4079]

Hm this is a good point. Agree on the re-read part. But from a data perspective if the drive can read data to 48x, the kind of error at 1x shouldn't be too disgusting right... But this is just pure conjuncture. How is SPDIF lossy? Or do you mean "lossy" as in SPDIF does not have an error check mechanism? Nope, I don't believe that digital is always perfect, but there are limits to how "audiophile" a digital circuit can be. In any case this looks like a really interesting project, since I happen to have a CD drive on hand. Has anyone tried something similar before?

No it isn't in SPDIF format. Its in some digital format called TTL, and you need to convert that signal. Haha bro you know in many upmarket CDPs most of them use computer drives. The error correction in your PC CDrom drive is way superb, since data generally has far less tolerance than audio. To put it in a nutshell, if your computer CDP can read 800mb of data reliably from a CD without a single bit corrupted at 48x, it most certainly can do so for audio at 1x.

This is interesting. Does someone know how this works? http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f43/fs-cdrom...troller-365981/